Vaio Z HDD power management

I replaced my Vaio Z13 optical drive with a WD Scorpio blue 500gb HDD. Now HDD is working like a optical drive, speeding up when reading and then parking immediately when reading writing is complete, so every time I read or write something on the new HDD there is a lag for about 4-5 seconds for the drive to spin up. How can I change the hdd so it is not on so aggressive power management? or what to do?

Thanks for your help in advance

 

A thread on this was started a few days ago.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/son...tical-drive-hdd-can-feel-spinning-normal.html

 

The case in this post was about vibration problems, but in my case that is not the problem. In my case it is more that it feels like the power is cut from my second hdd when it is not beeing used.

 

^Have you tried adjusting the spin down setting in the power options applet in the control panel?

 

If you mean the "turn off hard disk after xxx min" then I have tried to change that, but in my case the hard disk turn spin down in some seconds after read/write has happened.

 

You need to change the settings for the optical drive power down from automatic to manual.

It's one of the Sony drivers, and is separate from the Windows power options.

-Ed

 

It is common knowing WD HDDs problem. When HDD idle, after 8sec. it stops spinning and parking heads. It takes about 3-5 sec to starts again. I have the same on my external usb WD Elements HDD. Just replace WD HDD to Hitachi 7K ore 5K.....

 

I've set that to 'Power on'. I guess I need to take out the hdd and try if it will behave same when connected to a desktop pc.

 

I now tested the HDD in my desktop pc and it works in similar way there so this is not an Vaio issue. So I need to find something to prevent my hdd parking all the time

 

In Linux there's a utility called "hdparm" which can be used to configure pretty much anything you could ever want with a harddrive. So if I were you, I'd boot up a linux liveCD, and then read through the manpage of hdparm. In a terminal:
man hdparm

and then start using its options to check the settings of the drive, and see if there's a way to set them.

The real question is whether or not this is something that *can* be configured, or if it's a property of the drive's firmware itself that probably can't be changed.

Warning: hdparm has options that can really mess up a drive, but it should be pretty obvious which ones are those, and/or if its options are safe to use. But be careful, but see what info it can tell you about the drive.

 

Is there a jumper on the drive to change that behavior?

 

No. I would out about a program called wdidle3 that could do the trick for some harddrives but I'm not sure if my is supported

 

Any Luck sorting out your problem?

I have your exact setup, WD Scorbio Blue 500 GB

Its so irretating, and I actually use it to install all my games, and while playing, it LAGS for 2-4 seconds, making the whole experience so bad.

Will

 

What you all describe is very strange. I have the exact same setup, WD Scorpio Blue 500, but I don't suffer any lags or delays while I play. Try enabling the hard-drive caching policy, this should do the trick, I believe. My problem with the hard-drive, though, is the very audible CLICK sounds when the head parks every few seconds. It's ANNOYING.

I tried the wdidle3 trick. It didn't work, because it's designed to work directly after POST, before Windows loads up. The only problem is that the Vaio Z's BIOS doesn't recognize the Scorpio Blue at all, so the wdidle3 executible claims you don't have a WD harddrive installed at all in your system, even though you clearly do.

At that point I simply shrugged and kept on using it as it is. I got used to the clicking sounds, eventually. Your issue, though, is not so easily ignored. Granted, I usually play turn-based strategy games and RPGs so perhaps I just don't notice the lag, but I didn't exeprience the behavior you are mentioning while playing a few high-end shooters as well.