HOWTO: Disable Seagate DM001 APM Head Parking *Permanently*

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FunkyRider
Posts: 4
Joined: Mon Oct 05, 2015 5:15 pm

HOWTO: Disable Seagate DM001 APM Head Parking *Permanently*

Post by FunkyRider » Mon Oct 05, 2015 5:21 pm

HOWTO: Disable Seagate DM001 APM Head Parking *Permanently*

This tutorial applies to DM series: ST1000DM003, ST2000DM001, ST3000DM001, ST4000DM000, as well SV35 series

This is supposed to fix the random "Chirp", "Click" noise and stop SMART C1 Load Cycle Count from increasing fast.

Hardware needed: Seagate STx000DM001 disk, empty USB drive (any size)

I have tried to disable my Seagate ST2000DM001 head parking for quite some time without success, but after I tinkered with HDAT2 again today, I am able to save the APM value to disk permanently. Now the disk runs silently without any head parking. Feel free to share this instructions anywhere.

If you follow the instructions right, your data in the disk will NOT be deleted.

Warning: HDAT2 can be dangerous if mis-used. It can wipe your disk clean, or make persistent size / attribute changes or lock it up. Please follow the instructions carefully. If any step gives you any error, or the instruction does not match your screen, STOP!

Steps:

1. Get HDAT2 1.44M IMAGE from: http://www.hdat2.com/files/hdat2img_50.exe

2. Extract the content of the file to a temp folder, the file you need is named "HDAT2FDD.IMG"

3. Get Win32 Disk Imager from: http://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/

4. Use Win32 Disk Imager to write HDAT2FDD.IMG to an empty USB drive

5. Boot from the USB drive to DOS prompt, type "HDAT2", <Enter>

6. Select the DM001 drive to modify in the device list, <Enter>
** If the intended disk is not on the list, you need to change your SATA mode from AHCI / RAID to IDE temporarily and start over.

7. Select "Commands Menu", <Enter>

8. Select "Commands/Feature Sets", <Enter>

9. Select "Advanced Power Management (APM) Feature Set", <Enter>, <Y>, <D>, <Enter>

10. <Esc>, <Esc>

11. Select "Device Configuration Overlay (DCO) Menu", <Enter>

12. Select "Modify", <Enter>

13. Select "Security Mode Feature", <Right Arrow>, <S>, <Y>
** We only do some changes to be able to save DCO, since this item is disabled by default, removing it does not affect any disk functionality. Saving DCO will result APM setting being saved onto disk.

14. Keep pressing <Esc> until quit to DOS prompt.

15. Power off, all done!

Don't forget to change SATA mode back to AHCI / RAID if you changed it in step 6.

The default APM value for the disk should now be 0 (Disabled) instead of 0x80 (Minimum)

stlc8tr
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Oct 16, 2015 2:46 pm

Re: HOWTO: Disable Seagate DM001 APM Head Parking *Permanent

Post by stlc8tr » Fri Oct 16, 2015 2:50 pm

Awesome!

Thanks for the detailed steps. I was able to disable APM on my Seagate 5TB unit using them.

One slight change though, I wasn't able to boot correctly from the USB flash drive. I used the ISO version of HDAT2 instead.

http://www.hdat2.com/files/hdat2iso_50.exe

Extracted the ISO image and burnt it to a CD then booted off the CD.

silentbobbo
Posts: 108
Joined: Sat Mar 31, 2007 1:45 am

Re: HOWTO: Disable Seagate DM001 APM Head Parking *Permanent

Post by silentbobbo » Sat Dec 05, 2015 6:00 am

I have booted with a hdat2 CD but a Windows 98 console opens, so I press SHIFT+F5 to enter DOS prompt, and I type "AUTOEXEC" and "HDAT2" to enter the program.

The external ST4000DM000 drive connected via USB doesn't appear on the main device list of hdat2 so I can't select it.

Does this method really work with external drives? Does it need to load manually any driver?

Thank you.

Fei
Posts: 9
Joined: Mon Sep 25, 2006 5:31 am

Re: HOWTO: Disable Seagate DM001 APM Head Parking *Permanent

Post by Fei » Sun Dec 27, 2015 2:55 am

Thanks!

JazzJackRabbit
Posts: 1386
Joined: Fri Jun 18, 2004 6:53 pm

Re: HOWTO: Disable Seagate DM001 APM Head Parking *Permanent

Post by JazzJackRabbit » Sat Apr 16, 2016 1:29 pm

Wanted to say thanks for the tutorial. I have a file server full of the ST4000DM000, both retail and shucked. And all of them were parking heads like crazy, not only that, but they would often park heads at the most inappropriate time seemingly just because. I'd be copying a file and all of a sudden the transfer would freeze for 5 seconds for no discernible reason. This also wrecked chaos when I was running SnapRaid which I use to protect my data against hard drive failure. I couldn't even run a SnapRaid check because the hard drives would constantly stall.

I finally have had enough so I pulled all the Seagates and disabled APM on them one by one. I'm running full SnapRaid check on them right now and the speed improvements are already obvious, whereas before I averaged 30-300Mb/s because of the constant stalling caused by head parking, now I see 700+MB/s average. So once again, thanks for the tutorial. Maybe someone else will see this thread.

Seagate has royally screwed up APM management in these hard drives. Next time I'm buying HGST even if they're more expensive. I don't have time to deal with Seagate shit. The new He 8TB HGST drives look pretty sweet. I just hope HGST comes out with 5400-5900RPM version since I do not want or need additional noise and power draw of 7200RPM models.

jean019
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Joined: Sun May 15, 2011 12:02 pm

Re: HOWTO: Disable Seagate DM001 APM Head Parking *Permanent

Post by jean019 » Thu May 05, 2016 6:40 am

hi, do you know if it works on the last seagate 7mm 2.5" 2TB : ST2000LM007 ?
thanks

timmyotule
Posts: 9
Joined: Thu Oct 23, 2008 6:53 am
Location: Seattle

Re: HOWTO: Disable Seagate DM001 APM Head Parking *Permanent

Post by timmyotule » Mon Dec 05, 2016 3:42 pm

Thank you for this FunkyRider!

This seems to have fixed the incredibly annoying chirp click spindown noises I was getting from my ST3000DM001 drives. The Device Configuration Overlay menu was locked and I couldn't change anything in there but it still seems to have saved the settings.

jean019 - did you ever try it on your drive? It would be worth a shot and I suspect it would work.

seang86s
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Joined: Tue Mar 07, 2017 11:23 am

Re: HOWTO: Disable Seagate DM001 APM Head Parking *Permanent

Post by seang86s » Tue Mar 07, 2017 11:39 am

FWIW, I was able to successfully set the APM parameter to disabled on four ST2000LM007 with firmware SBK2. Hopefully, they will now work on my LSI RAID controller (9260).

To save some time, you can download the Ultimate Boot CD which has HDAT2 under the HDD | Diagnostics menu. Either burn the ISO to CD and boot off there, or use Rufus to convert the ISO to a bootable USB drive. Google UBCD and Rufus to find both.

shtena
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Oct 27, 2017 6:50 am

Re: HOWTO: Disable Seagate DM001 APM Head Parking *Permanent

Post by shtena » Fri Oct 27, 2017 6:55 am

seang86s wrote:FWIW, I was able to successfully set the APM parameter to disabled on four ST2000LM007 with firmware SBK2. Hopefully, they will now work on my LSI RAID controller (9260).

To save some time, you can download the Ultimate Boot CD which has HDAT2 under the HDD | Diagnostics menu. Either burn the ISO to CD and boot off there, or use Rufus to convert the ISO to a bootable USB drive. Google UBCD and Rufus to find both.
What steps were taken with ST2000LM007?

- Is the Security Mode removed?
- Is the APM change permanent?

J. Sparrow
Posts: 414
Joined: Wed Jan 17, 2007 7:55 am
Location: EU

Re: HOWTO: Disable Seagate DM001 APM Head Parking *Permanent

Post by J. Sparrow » Tue Jan 30, 2018 5:40 am

Hello everybody, long time no see!

I've got a decent deal on a Seagate BarraCuda 3.5" ST4000DM004: ideally, this is going to be used as both boot and storage drive on a small, lightly used file server running Linux, which is currently using a WD Green where I had disabled the head parking feature, thanks to SPCR folks.

Is disabling head parking still possible and, most importantly, useful or desirable, for this usage case, on the ST4000DM004 ?

J. Sparrow
Posts: 414
Joined: Wed Jan 17, 2007 7:55 am
Location: EU

Re: HOWTO: Disable Seagate DM001 APM Head Parking *Permanent

Post by J. Sparrow » Fri Feb 02, 2018 6:40 pm

Looks like the guide may no longer apply to newer models: my DM004 has the APM Feature Set locked on Enabled, HDAT2 won't let me change it.

locarno
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Feb 17, 2018 7:06 am

Re: HOWTO: Disable Seagate DM001 APM Head Parking *Permanent

Post by locarno » Sat Feb 17, 2018 7:09 am

Hello I have a ST2000LM015
How I can set up spin down after 5 seconds inactivity ?

It is data drive. I don't use it. And it is noisy.

ceevee
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Feb 18, 2010 10:48 pm
Location: Earth

Re: HOWTO: Disable Seagate DM001 APM Head Parking *Permanent

Post by ceevee » Sun Jan 13, 2019 4:42 pm

Great thread! I was able to disable APM on a Seagate ST2000DM001. I had to actually connect to an older motherboard (for an LGA 775 processor) because I could not unfreeze DCO on my B360.

However, I ran into an issue with APM re-enabling after Windows 10 boots. After Windows 10 booted, I rechecked APM status in HDAT2 after warm reset (i.e. not turning off then on), and it was re-enabled. DCO was also refrozen. The Intel RST drivers (ver 16.x) were resetting my APM and DCO settings. Unfortunately, I did not have the option of removing the RST drivers because I am using Optane to accelerate the secondary Seagate drive. So I had to do the following:

Disable APM in Windows registry (see below).
Cold boot (i.e. turn off then on) into HDAT2 in order to unfreeze DCO.
Disable APM.
Save DCO.
Boot into Windows and APM should be disabled.
Verify APM is disabled by cold booting into HDAT2 and also after booting into Windows (warm boot into HDAT2).


You can disable APM in windows by using this registry setting:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStorAC\Parameters\Device]
"EnableAPM"=dword:00000000


Maybe all you need to do is run the registry edit, not sure. Anyways, thank you for this very helpful thread!

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