Apple → WD2500BEVE in PPC Mini - High Load Cycle Count

I have a 250GB WD2500BEVE in a PPC Mini (1.33Ghz). The thing clicks to death, which I finally I figured out was because of the Load Cycle Count (its trying to park/unpark the head.) Trying utilities such as DeClunk, Turning off/on HD power management in the System preferences, etc, have not helped. It's on a 10.5.5 machine. Its 250GB SATA brethren in my MBP and my wife's MB don't do the same thing....

(There's an article here about it, but with an iBook: »www.xlr8yourmac.com/arch ··· 408.html )

Anyone else have this problem? I'm about to RMA this drive; its only 8 months old. I'm kind of scared about the 1.3 million load cycle count on the thing....

Thanks

When in doubt, I RMA. If you bought it aftermarket then it should be pretty easy to go to www.wdc.com and request an advance RMA -- they send you the replacement drive first.

Well, I swapped it out with the new drive from the RMA... the new one doesn't seem to do the incessant drive clicking any longer! Yay!!

On the Mini, I used CCC, and since it was a clone to a USB drive, I had to boot from the Leopard CD and set the startup disk once I replaced the drive. All seems to be well now, and since the drive isn't always parking the head, the system seems snappier.

This issue keeps popping up. Now it's happening on the new late 2008 macbooks and pros.

»dougitdesign.com/blog.html
»forums.macrumors.com/sho ··· t=601707
»discussions.apple.com/th ··· =8587395
»discussions.apple.com/th ··· =8587295

There isn't much you can do, other then RMA the drive if you can or try and get a replacement from apple if its the stock drive. You definitely did the right thing swapping the drive.

I had this problem with my AL FW800 powerbook. It turned out to be a power management problem. I did all the usual tricks of resetting everything possible to no avail. What did work was toggling everything under Energy in sys-prefs to 'Normal' a few times with reboots in between. The head parking click stopped and hasn't returned. I'm not saying that's your problem; this was the stock 80g drive.

I'm sticking by my assertion that Apple, and probably other brand names, have nothing but half-baked solutions in place for power management of notebook computers. How many of you have seen people at schools and wifi hotspots using aftermarket usb Wifi dongles in macbook and MBPs?

I'm thinking of buying one myself, if for nothing but range problems on my 9/08 MBP. The dropped packets problem I could probably live with ... though grumbling about it on a two grand machine.
--

Well, the new WD2500BEVE from the RMA is starting to rack up load cycle counts again. At last count, it was at 120,000. (Keep in mind, 600,000 seems to be the lifecycle of a 'normal' drive, and the 120,000 is only a little over a month's worth of load cycle count!)

Anyone with a PPC mini using a 250GB drive? What brand and model are you using? What are your load cycle counts? I tried running hdapm (»mckinlay.net.nz/hdapm/) on the drive, but get a "not supported" on the mini. (PPC issue?)

On a side note, my MacBook Pro has the same WD drive, only the SATA variety. (It's a WD2500BEVS-60UST0). The Load Cycle Count on it is almost 1 million. I used hdapm (»mckinlay.net.nz/hdapm/) and set it to max performance, and the clicks stopped. Still, I'm not keeping a drive with almost a million load cycles in this machine. (hdapm at max also keeps the machine from going to sleep properly.)

I'm sending a RMA to WD for the 250GB MBP drive, and am going to sell the replacement drive and going to try this one in my MacBook Pro:

»www.newegg.com/Product/P ··· 22148374
(Anyone try this drive yet?)

Edit: A nice long thread about it on Apple...
»discussions.apple.com/me ··· =5877067

BTW, here's the MBP's Load Cycle Count - its getting RMA'd...

Also, the Wife's MB uses the same HDD - and it's at 500,000+. It might get RMA'd, but I got hdparm to stop the insanity for right now.

I really think this is a problem that goes far beyond any particular drive model and it's something in apple's power management. For example in an aluminum macbook with a stock apple installed 250gb fujitsu drive, it has 595 hours of power on time just under 34,000 load cycle counts, or about 57 load cycles per powered on hour. This is apple's newest hardware and newest operating system and its still happening. If you scroll up a couple posts and look at a few of the links I posted they are all similar to your link.

I asked fujitsu, I skipped fujitsu north america and went right to engineering in japan, they said at least for the fujitsu sata drives, the drives firmware does not control parking like this and its all up to the operating system.

It seems like every drive at least in macbooks/mbp/minis is doing the load cycling, its just you can only hear the clicking on some drives. »dougitdesign.com/blogs/b ··· _08.html is one guy's journey of how he used hdparm to stop the clicking--it's quite convoluted, but it's a good summary of the issue and some instruction if you want to try.

And you guys called me crazy when I said the hard drives in Apple laptops are more prone to failure. "Apple uses off-the-shelf drives" (with an Apple logos on them none the less) said the naysayers.

Xlr8yourMac.com has an article on this now:

»xlr8yourmac.com/
»www.xlr8yourmac.com/feed ··· ml#start

If you've been having the problem, send them an e-mail... I'm curious as to what everyone else's load cycle count is on newer 2.5" drives..

I've sent my report and a few others I've checked. It's happening at least on all of the aluminum macbooks I've checked.

I'd be very curious to see what's going on and if any other owners of the aluminum macbooks and macbook pros or mac minis in this forum would be willing to check the load cycles on their drives.

What software do you use to check the cycle counts?

This is what I use: »www.volitans-software.co ··· ucts.php

I'm using SMART Utility too. It's also possible to build Smartmontools »smartmontools.sf.net using darwinports or manually.

But that mini is having the same kind of crazy about 108 disk loads per hour. I'm still getting 57 loads per hour. Which isn't normal in anyway.
Fujitsu doesn't publish the load cycles either, but I'm taking the same attitude and just making backups because I think regardless of the drive it will fail prematurely and Apple can pay to replace it.

HiVolt - you had my Mini's 250GB beat slightly.

Does hdapm work on your Intel Mini at all? I can't get it to work on my PPC one at all.

Why do I get the feeling almost every drive will be "failing" with this utility?

Yeah i dunno... on my MacBook, I have a 250GB Seagate, its maybe 6-8 months old and it says it already failed. hehe... I've had no issues with it.

I ran it out of curiosity on my iMac. It didn't show a load cycle count. No errors were found, but it gave a bunch of old age "failings". What exactly is "old age"?

The only thing in red was some form of high temp warning (which the instructions indicated might be inconclusive). The fans work in this machine, and they have never ever spun up enough to even be audible. (and I did check with temp checking utilities, and things were always relatively "cool")

The raw value is what you want to worry about. Post a snapshot and we'll look at it and tell you what you do and don't have to worry about.

Hi, you have a few things going on with your 160GB:

A bunch of read errors... almost 400,000.

Load cycle count is really up there.

Bunch of errors that were recovered (3.7 million!)

16 of something (sectors) were moved to a different area of the drive because they just couldn't be read/written anymore. And there's one more pending.

So, the LCC count isn't all your problem. Check my MBP's full stats out - attached.

Some drives don't report or record smart data quite "properly," hence the impossibly high power on hours. You could always double check with smartmontools if you're curious. There's also maxwell but I'm not sure if that's been maintained past 2005. Another way to verify if a disk is failing is using the apple disk utility it has very basic(pass/fail) smart checking as well.

I know at least with this fujitsu the load cycles in the smart log is accurate as after the audible click the load cycle count increments by 1.

acadiel: you're still at 98 loads per hour, this loading problem problem looks more and more universal.

I never hear any clicks out of the hitachi or the seagate.

I've noticed on some drives(particularly seagate and toshiba) you can't hear any audible clicking during a park, it seems to be the loudest on fujitsu.

Yeah, I had a Fujitsu drive in an old Thinkpad (30GB). I could hear that bugger click all f'n day long. bothered me like hell.

Yea the fujitsu in the macbook is driving me insane with the parking; it clicks just about once per minute. That's my real motivation for a solution. I almost wish I could get Apple to give me another drive just to stop the clicking, but with no smart failure (yet) I doubt they're just going to start handing out disks. I don't want to shell out $ on a 2 month old computer so I make use of headphones quite a bit, when I'm using the macbook in quiet places.

Im surprised they havent improved this in the fujitsu. The one I had was around 2002.

Thanks, but honestly, I am not worried. Some of this data might truly indicate a legitimate concern, But, I really wonder if reading into this info is like wading through log files: if you never looked at them, you would never notice an issue. But, if you ever read them in detail, you would think your computer was hosed!

Sometimes, ignorance is bliss, and a serious issue really doesn't exist.

I wonder what Apple's policy is in regard to SMART readings...

BTW both of the drives in the mini & macbook say "SMART Verified" in Disk Utility...