Do all modern 2.5" drives have a head load/unload mecha

Spartanicus · Post by **Spartanicus** » Sun Jan 15, 2006 10:43 am

I replaced a 6 year old 2.5" Hitachi drive with a Seagate Momentus single platter 20G drive. Although the bearing noise is much reduced, the "Clikety click" noise from Seagate's head load/unload mechanism is very irritating.

The 10 second load/unload cycle also causes the Seagate to be slower for things like reading news and email compared to the old 4200rpm Hitachi.

I emailed Seagate saying that I had no use for the load/unload feature (less power consumption and greater shock protection when unloaded), but they replied that it could not be disabled.

Do all modern 2.5" drives have an load/unload mechanism? I don't think that I've seen the associated noise and delay mentioned in any SPCR review of Seagate 2.5" drive review. I have read others complaining about the noise in these forums.

scaryduck · Post by **scaryduck** » Sun Jan 15, 2006 1:49 pm

Sorry, can't answer the question directly, but a little program that accesses the disk from time to time should prevent the drive from unloading the heads. I should be able to put together something that does this, if you need it. Folding@Home can be configured to write checkpoint files to disk periodically.

jaganath · Post by **jaganath** » Sun Jan 15, 2006 5:24 pm

Do all modern 2.5" drives have an load/unload mechanism?

All of the 2.5" hard drives listed on the SPCR "Recommended Hard Drives" page use head load/unload technology (some give it made-up proprietary names but it's essentially the same technology). I suspect you will have to look long and hard for a 2.5" HD without it (probably have to look for a much older model).

I have read others complaining about the noise in these forums.

Then you will also have read that sometimes enabling "Minimal Power Management" in Windows Control Panel-Power Options makes the noise go away.

Devonavar · Post by **Devonavar** » Sun Jan 15, 2006 11:56 pm

AFAIK, yes, all modern laptop drives use head unload technology. However, you should be able to disable it on a Hitachi drive by using their feature tool to disable APM. That doesn't help you with your Seagate, but it does indicate where you can look for a replacement. Who knows, the Hitachi tool might even support changing the option on the Seagate (I doubt it, but it's possible).