High load cycles on secondary HDD

I'm a little concerned by the amount of load cycles my secondary harddrive is using each day. I've had the drive a little over a month and it's already at 26k load cycles, compared to the OS HDD with 2.3k (2months). The drive is a HGST 7k1000 and has a 600k load cycle rating but I'm wanting to decrease the daily load cycles for more longevity but I'm unsure what to do exactly to decrease this. The drive is used for storage of music, games, pics, a few movies. My daily habits include listening to music and playing games for extended sessions.


A proper explanation of load cycles could also help too if someone is able to explain that as google is not really helping on that subject.
Thanks

Just for reference at the time of this post, LCC is 26,284 (Own record and monitoring purpose)

Edit: I have done some looking into HDD programs and stumbled upon hdparm; which alters the APM of the drive which is supposed to prevent excessive LCC. Is there any downsides to this in regards to longevity of the drive?

 

Control Panel -> Power Options -> Change [active] plan settings -> Change advanced power settings.

Set to Never (0) the following:
* Hard Disk -> Turn off hard disk after;
* Sleep -> Sleep after;
* Sleep -> Hibernate after.