Made a mistake of buying a couple of new Seagate ST3000DM001 3TB drives without consulting here first. In my setup the noise is tolerable (not WD Caviar green 2TB quiet), but tolerable.

Except for the constant parking of the heads.

I've tried the following software to set the AAM/APM values (to 254/255 respectively):

- HDParm 6.9 (win32 binary)
- quietHDD (latest build)

And I can't seem to be able to get the constant head parking to stop.

I'm running windows 7 and my power profile is constantly on, with no sleeping for the HDDs.

Does anybody know how to get the recent Seagate HDDs to not constantly park their heads with the annoying click sound?

No ideas from anyone?

Any success with Linux based tools to set AAM/APM models *permanently* (i.e. surviving cold boot) on modern Seagate drives?

Information seems to be a bit thin on the ground on these, or I just can't seem to be able to find the right keywords to go with the search button

Seagate and AAM

"As a result of the lawsuit, Seagate stopped supporting automatic acoustic management on hard drives beginning with Seagate Barracuda 7200.7, before rulings of the trial had been decided. Nevertheless, some Barracuda 7200.7 drives included AAM support.[31] In later products such as Seagate Barracuda 7200.12, the quiet seek mode is set at the factory and cannot be adjusted by end users.[32]"

Thanks Steve.

You of course right and I had forgotten about the AAM thing.

BTW, after moving the drives to older chipset on Linux and trying the latest hdparm, I could set the APM to 255 (disabled), but of course it does not survive cold boot. I have active cooling on my hard drives so this might have been an option for me, although generally it is advised against due to rising of the temperature of the drives when the heads don't park.

As for AAM, just as detailed above, setting AAM with hdparm under Linux for the aforementioned Seagate drive only resulted in:

input/output error
acoustic = not supported

So much for ST3000DM001 as decently quietish drives.

Summary: do NOT buy new 1TB platter seagate 3TB drives ( ST3000DM001 ) for quiet usage. The head parking sound is really loud and fairly constant and cannot be disabled. At least I cannot find a way (hdparm, smartctl, crystal diskinfo, quietHDD). Also the parking sound is very LOUD. If you think WD sound was loud, you haven't heard anything yet.

A big disappointment for me and a good reminder that:

Always check at SPCR storage forums before buying new drives or you'll be sorry

What about using drive enclosures like the Scythe Quiet Drive?

The next gen of Seagate drives *should* have AAM available - since they closed on their acquisition of Samsung's HDD biz and Samsung had licensed AAM....

Thanks for the idea Steve.

My full tower is already full and only 3.5" slots are free.

I could of course buy two Quiet drives and install them vertically in the 3.5" HD bay/rack.

That might work.

Now just have to find out what kind of heat dissipation Scythe Quiet Drives can handle?

ST3000DM001 normal heat dissipation is somewhere around 6-11W (idle - load) as per Storagereview tests:

http://www.storagereview.com/seagate_ba ... t3000dm001

Unfortunately Scythe Quiet Drive 3.5" appears to be discontinued. All the retailers in Europe are listing it as back-ordered, nobody seems to have stock and many are listing it as "discontinued". Although Scythe USA site doesn't mention this : http://www.scythe-usa.com/product/hdd/0 ... etail.html

Good idea, thanks!

Yes, the 3.5" SQD has been unavailable for quite some time now, at least in Europe. And the global Scythe site lists it as discontinued: http://www.scythe-eu.com/en/products/hd ... inued.html

Thanks for the heads up.

I ordered two pieces of mCubed Vertical Silcence Rev. 2 hdd enclosures. They didn't test too badly here against Scythe Quiet Drive 3.5".

I'll report back when I've installed them as to how well they work.

Thanks for this post. Was really deciding between this Seagate and the cheaper WD Green 3TB because Seagate seems to have better reviews. The head parking nonsense was the deal breaker for me.. at least with the WD, I can lengthen the time or disable it.

Despite having read this thread, I still bought the ST3000DM001 because it was simply the best on paper for what I was looking for, and Western Digital seems to also use idle head parking as well. I do hear this noise every now and then which I am guessing is the head parking. It isn't as loud as I thought and I don't think it will both me. But I am wondering, what is the benefit of this feature? Does it cause any mechanical wear?

The manufacturers will deny that it does but from all the RMAs that ppl are making on the green drives, I feel it does affect the life of the unit. I mean they specify that the unit can last 300,000 head parks but in a couple months, the head parks get into the millions. Surely, something is wrong there.

On the other hand, you also have Hitachi that does not do head parking on any of their drives, including the 5K3000, but they also seem to have alot of duds. So far, mine is ok, so fingers crossed.

The head park sound is definitely the most annoying sound coming from my computer for the WD green drive. I just run HWmonitor 24/7 and that seems to keep the drive alive enough to disable the head parking. Unfortunately, for the 3TB greens, you just can't disable the feature using their WDIDLE tool.

That's annoying. It seems that most manufacturers are standardizing this head parking feature and it doesn't make sense why they would do that if it's detrimental to the drive (unless they seek to make drives that do not last long so that consumers can buy more). Speaking of the Western Digital Green drives, my 2TB Green just died on me, and I've only used it for about three days!

Just for some perspective after having used this drive for over a week now. For context, I am using this as a secondary drive, for storing data files including media, documents, and I am also running games off this drive too. Windows and applications are stored on my SSD. So far the drive is averaging a load/unload cycle count of 41 per day. If the rated limit is 300,000 cycles, then at this rate, this drive should last me 20 years.

Of course there are other factors such as whether the drive is a system drive or not, or how much the drive gets used and in what manner. But initially, I had the impression that the frequency of the head parking was unreasonable, but maybe it is not so.

Seagate has posted at least two firmware updates for this drive. I have updated my drive firmware to Version CC9D. It still makes the parking noise but at a much lower frequency(less times per day). The firmware can be downloaded at the USA Seagate site by searching the site for "Firmware ST3000DM001". I used the bootable ISO CD method to update my firmware.

Direct link to firmware update:

http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/e ... uage=en_US

I would like to know what other people think of this firmware and if they believe it reduces the number of times per day the drive parks it's heads.

Hey Guys, Brand new user...

I searched google for this issue with the 2tb models which i got onsale inside the expansion series...
Nevertheless I returned those drives because of the noise... (head parking, chck.) 3 drives. all the same noise, random times.

Figured id go out this weekend and buy myself the 3tb model because of Price. im not gonna lie. 160$ ~ canadian tax in vs. 200 before tax @ WD30EZRX which i read is worse performance, 5900 vs 7200 and asortment of other things (aswell as the headparks) Also noted, the data recovered 1bit @ 10E14. not 1 bit @ 10E15 which made the older 2tb greens better for some people i guess business grade or something i read......

Either way, I have the same problem with ST3000DM001 as i had with the 2 seagate 2tb which were ST2000DM001...

I have to ask the same as the rest... Im looking around dont find a solid answer

I have like 15-20 unload/loads per day And ive written almost 3tb of data to the drive, All the other smart info signs are normal and no errors or any weird reallocations already or anything, Drives are less then 1 week old...

I can return this drive for a better drive IF they exist...? I thought / read this was the best drive to buy... Id like to know what the Original Poster and Peter are doing...

Id like to add my drives shipped with the latest CC4C firmware. Meaning they are the latest batch..

While I appreciate the concern that some users have about high head park counts, I really don't get why anyone thinks they know better than the manufacturers about how it affects HDD life.

1. A relationship between high head part count and HDD failure has not been shown by anyone, afaik. This is in general, and also specifically to heat parking in WD Green drives, now going on ~5 years(?).

2. The # of head parks before a drive becomes unreliable -- this has to be a guesstimate by the manufacturer.

3. different storage controller drivers may interact differently with different drives. Try different AHCI drivers.

4. Head parking is not only a power savings feature; it also protects the drive from physical damage in case of shock in idle or power off -- basically prevents the head from touching the disk (and damaging it). Drives NEED this feature, automated for power off.

5. Finally, Larry and I both played around with our Seagate cuda 3T drive sample & neither of us perceived the head park noise to be either too frequent nor too noisy. I'm surprised so many here seem to perceive differently.

Hi Mike, initially I did think that the number of head parks would be bad for the life of the drive, but in my later post, after doing some more research, I've come to understand that this does not appear to be true.

Regarding the head parking being also a feature to prevent damage to the disk, I see this as mostly unnecessary for a desktop hard drive. I can see why it is useful for a laptop as it gets moved around a lot, but I would imagine desktop PCs are stationary almost all the time when powered on, I may be wrong with my generalization. In the case that the drive is used as an external drive in an enclosure, this feature will be useful for damage prevention.

One thing to note though is that I have found that sometimes the parking appears to interfere with the picture when watching a video file. What I have noticed a few times is that while playing an avi video file, at some random time, I hear the head parking or unparking noise, and at the exact same time, the picture of the video will "stall" for lack of a better word, and ghost until the video goes to a completely new scene. The artifact that you see is probably influenced by the way avi videos are encoded, but it appears to be caused by the parking or unparking.

This makes me wonder that for purposes other than straight forwarding reading and writing of data, such as playing video files and games where the need to fetch data could be unpredictable but still needs to be quick, if this feature is a hindrance.

I'm going to keep the drive, because overall I think it's probably the best drive for my purposes. The performance of the drive appears to be superior to the WD Black according to many reviews, all the while keeping the noise and temperature down.

At the moment however, I normally leave HWMonitor running in the background because it does appear to prevent the drive from parking/unparking as a previous poster has mentioned, to make sure that it doesn't interfere gaming.

My firmware is the CC4C, which is also the latest according to Seagate: "CC4C, CC4D and CC9D (released together and are functionally equivalent)". This is the firmware the drive was shipped with, and I purchased this a month ago, so all my experiences are based on this firmware.

Hey, I use the same firmware, After tested for 3 days, I have 43 unload/load cycles with 60 hours power on... I talked to seagate personel last night at 2am about our headpark sound issue... Talked to an actual TECH.. not sales people..

They also adviced me of the 2400 power on raiting which was reduced from 8460 in previous models / units...

He claims the Head parking noise, and activity will not cause any detriment to our drives... But that doesnt fix his advice on not using it in my machine 24/7 as these are not made for 24/7 use, when i asked well why dont you have a XT series or something i can keep on, They replied, This is the only family of drives we support now... Very very weird, I love seagate, still run tones of their drives...

But all i can say is luckily i cannot find a Samsung F4 in canada at a store, not a fan of buying online

3 days ago, I bought the 2TB Baracuda ST2000DM001, Firmware CC4C. Before loading data onto it, I proceeded to run various scans and tests to make sure it was OK. Halfway through my tests, I was very concerned by a clicking sound I started to hear from the drive every minute or so. CrystalDiskInfo was showing a rapidly increasing number of (Head) Load/Unload Cycle Count. I spent the better part of the day trying to figure out what was going on since all the scan results were good. I will cut to the chase and just report my final findings.
Turns out, CrystalDiskInfo (version 4.6.2a) was actually causing this (on my system anyway). I have not figured out why this is yet, or if I can find a workaround. Perhaps it is not CrystalDiskInfo on it's own, but rather a combination with a driver or software specific to my setup. If I leave CrystalDiskInfo off for several hours, and then launch it, I will find that the Load/Unload Cycle has increased by a few digits only. But leaving CrystalDiskInfo open would trigger a very audible Load/Unload every 60 seconds on the dot! But only if the drive was Idle. Incidentally, it is not a coincidence that I have my CrystalDiskInfo set to Auto Refresh every 1 Minute! I tested with every 3 Minutes and then the clicking was every 3 Minutes. I also found that it was doing the same with my 2TB WD Green drive, except the WD drive was performing the Load/Unload quietly. So it was not a Seagate specific behavior. However, while CrystalDiskInfo is open, if I am running a scan or reading/writing on the drive, it will not trigger a Load/Unload. As soon as the "drive activity" ends, 60 seconds on the dot I will hear a click (I timed it several times). Now, with CrystalDiskInfo NOT RUNNING, if I leave my drive Idle for a long while, and then start any activity on it, I will have to listen very closely (physically have to lean into the PC too) to barely hear the head loading. And my PC is very quiet, as I have made every effort to have the quietest possible air cooled PC.
So my conclusion is this:
Under normal circumstances, the load or unload of the head is practically inaudible. So the reason it is so audible only while CrystalDiskInfo is running is probably because either the head is being whipped into parked position and then instantly right back into unparked, or the other way around. Most likely the former, as the drive was active 60 seconds before the click occurs. Under normal circumstances when the head just parks/unloads, and then later unparks/loads, it will do so more or less quietly!
So, I am no longer worried about my drive. I hope this report of my particular experience will be helpful to others concerned about the health of their brand new Seagate.

I bought a 3TB Seagate last week and it was chirping quite frequently.

I upgraded to the latest firmware today, and haven't heard a chirp in the last hour.
What I did hear was a kind of a juddering sound from a cold boot, and then once in a while at a fairly long intervals when the drive is idle.
My System is on an SSD, so I suspect that if your using the Seagate as a system drive, you would never hear this juddering sound after you boot up.

ST2000DM001 2TB 1CH164 fw CC29. Seagate show no newer firmware available.
Default, parking heads (Unload) occurred at 30s of idle (since the last activity). APM = 80h = 128
WD had modified idle time to a decent 300s, why can't Seagate do the same?
I've tried Hitachi Feature Tool, but couldn't change APM on the Seagate. Same story with WDIDLE3 tool.
So, if Seagate doesn't offer a way to modify this parameter permanently, we can only use different programs to set this temporary. Question remains, what value should APM have to correspond to 300s idle time?

128 = 80h - 30s
186 = BAh - 57s
187 = BBh - 58s
188 = BCh - 58s
189 = BDh - 59s
190 = BEh - 59s
191 = BFh - 60s
192 = C0h - same value after 12h - no parking
193 = C1h - same value...
As soon the value is set > 191 = BFh (that happens to be half value between 128 and 255, coincidence?) parking event no longer occur.

I used Windows HDDSCAN and right away it says AAPM disabled.

From the research I've done so far, for quiet drive, let the user customize at our will, DON'T BUY THE SEAGATE TERABYTE drives, cuz you won't be able to tweak it. FAIL.

This HD died on me a few months after I bought it, my first HD failure after having all Samsungs over the years!

I replaced it with a one of the newer and quieter Western Digitals - much happier