How to disable HDD heads parking

[enryfox]

Hi,

I'm re-configuring an old iBook G3 dual USB (mid 2001) with all its original hardware, but I'm noticing that the HDD heads are parked as soon as there are no reads/writes for more than 2 seconds. And when data is required again from the HDD, the heads are to be replaced on the platter causing a delay in the UI responsiveness.

The HDD is the original Toshiba 10 GB drive and it is not exactly whisper quite, the constant parking/unparking adds even more noise.

Is there any MacOS 9 tool to disable that feature ?
How can I read the drive SMART status ? I ran the AHT and it all passed with no issue, but I would like to get more detailed info.

thanks
bye

[Mat]

First try the Mac OS´ "Energy Saving" features.
Go to the Apple Menue -> Control Panels -> Energy saving and disable the idle state for the HDD.

[enryfox]

Thanks for your reply.
I looked in the energy saver panel but there is no way to disable the idle state in the HDD, there is just the setting for the pin down timeout, but that is set to 1 minute. Are you referring to a more advanced energy saver panel ?

thanks

[Mat]

No, nothing advanced. I was talking about exactly that possibilities form the Control Panel. My idea was that, as it is an iBook, perhaps the values are set to "immediatly", and thus your HD is always powering down. What is happening when you shut all energy saving off? Does it still spin down immediatly?

And sadly I do not know any tools for IDE or SATA HDs that care about idle times, spindown, SMART status and more. There are a few tools that can manipulate SCSI drives in this direction, but not for IDE as far as I know.

In general; are such tools at other plattforms not from the vendors directly (just for Win in most cases)? Or are there free, or at least external tools to access all the HDs possibilities?

[enryfox]

The problem is not the spin down, which happens after 1 minutes when on battery, but the fact that the heads are parked as soon as no data is required from the disk; the platters are still spinning, it is just a "ti-tlick" noise after a read/write operation. Then, if more data is required, again "ti-tlick" noise and data is read from the disk.

OSX and win have several tools to access smart status, but so far I found none for macos 9.

thanks
bye

[devils_advisor]

i'd start backing up and find a replacement.

[enryfox]

I'm already planning and HDD transplant in the next days ...
I have a used Seagate UATA 50Gb that will take the place of the original Toshiba 10Gb.
If it wasn't so complex to disassemble the iBook I would have done it already before reinstalling Mac OS, but the noise is getting too annoying, I hope the "new" HDD will be much quieter.

If I'm successful in replacing the HDD I might consider an SDD to make it even more silent !

bye