Hi,
i got a new hitachi HGST z5k500-500 2,5" SATA drive, 500 GB

The Advanced Power Management (APM) of the drive is set to 1 , thats the lowest value.(is was that way).

The drive Spins down right after a few seconds not accessing data, only to spin up again a few seconds later when Windows would access someting.

I can imagine the drive wont have a long life doin that all the time.

However it can be fixed with tools like Crystaldiskinfo until drive is powered off.

I tried Hitachi Feature tool which didnt work for this drive, it didnt give the possibility to even change APM value.
( i think the drive is too new, the latest feature tool from 2009 doesnt "know" it )

For an older hitachi drive however the feature tool worked just fine changing an keeping APM value . Test was done 5 Minutes Later in the exact same machine.

So are there any other tools that can change APM value for these drives permanently ?

what ATA command does the hitachi feature tool send to the drive and can this be duplicated by another tool like mhdd ?

HDDScan has an option to build command line where you can specify APM parameters and then save this command line into cmd file and add it to Windows startup folder. Every time you boot Windows HDDScan will apply APM parameters to your drive

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SAN, NAS, RAID, Server, and HDD Data Recovery.

Using win7?

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Kuwait Data Recovery - UNIX GTC
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. By: Albert Einstein

Yes and no.

The drive was in my new Asus laptop and I replaced it with SSD.

I want to use it in an USB case now.

I'm well aware there are scripts for like hdparm that sets APM on every boot to desired value.

However I need something permanent . The drive will spin down in the USB exclosure after a few seconds idling.

The drive had this behavior when it ran inside the laptop with windows too.

Before acquired by WD, hitachi had the great feature tool to set APM permanently.

Any way to do this with this new drive?

Can feature tool be "hacked" to bypass drive check so it will issue the command to this new hitachi drive?

Good luck

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SAN, NAS, RAID, Server, and HDD Data Recovery.