Seagate head parking, PS4

[blooprint]

I have recently bought a Seagate 2TB, STEA2000400, to upgrade my PS4's storage and as a lot of other people, I followed an article which suggested "Seagate Expansion 2TB USB 3.0 Portable 2.5 inch External Hard"

Now the drive is running smoothly without any issues, but later on I noticed that it makes a small sound every 30 seconds, in my case, which after some online investigating seems to be the head parking "cricket" sound when the drive goes to idle mode.

So the sound occurs twice per minute and when I am watching Netflix, using this as an example of when the drive would probably be going to idle state, it does become rather annoying and distracting.

I have tried disabling APM through CristalDiskInfo when I hooked the drive on my laptop through USB but it seems that when I hook it back to my PS4, whatever change I made gets reset.

Assumptions/Questions:
a) is the sound I am describing really due to the head parking?
b) if yes, is there a way to eliminate the sound by disabling APM or a workaround?
C) are the solutions discussed in several threads, only applicable to Windows/OSX?
d) I also read somewhere that in Windows/OSX the head parking feature doesn't get activated since it's always keeping the drive busy, would then the issue be on how PS4's OS is handling the drive?
e) essentially when I adjust the power settings through the CristalDiskInfo or Seagate Device Manager should these settings transfer to PS4?

In general what are applicable solutions for a PS4 environment?

 

[Nashemon]

Hate to be a Debbie Downer, but

a) Yes, it's head parking causing the sound.
b) It's supposed to be solvable with a firmware update on the hard drive itself, but I've never been able to get it any of my Seagate drives firmware to update without erroring.
c) The information on how to do it is Googleable and available straight from Seagate, but as far as I know, you'll likely need a computer of some kind to perform any sort of solution you'll find, short of swapping the hard drive for a different brand without the issue.
d) Pretty sure it's a Seagate issue. I've got 12 Seagate drives of varying capacities and years that all do it, even external ones. All of them have 10's of thousands more head parks than any of my even older drives from other manufacturers.
e) I'm not sure whether those programs change the settings on the hard drive or on the computer they are run on, sorry.

 

[blooprint]

Thank you for your reply, a) to d) was mainly to confirm but this

e) I'm not sure whether those programs change the settings on the hard drive or on the computer they are run on, sorry.

is what I can focus on resolving now that all the above is confirmed. I will try different solutions then, switch back and forth and come back if I find anything that worked for me, because I've seen a lot of people suffering from the same, from Amazon product reviews to youtube video comments. Thanks again.

In the meantime, any feedback from anyone who has more experience on whether the settings should change on the drive rather than the computer and if not, how to do it, would be appreciated.

 

[blooprint]

so I tried the following through CrystalDiskInfo
Disabling APM
Enabling APM: Max Performance
Enabling APM: 80h which according to
http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/manual-en/AamApm.html
it's supposed to be maximum performance without standby

None of them work.

As per another user's comment in http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=411232

"Changes are not permanent, they only last until the drive is powered down"
and only a firmware update could resolve the issue, which after I searched in Seagate's website with my SN, there isn't any available. I have however requested one through their support section

Until then, I am going to give a try at the HDAT2 solution.
http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=68760

since it turns out that although when I ordered the drive the description was saying that the model is STEA2000400, the drive's model actually is ST2000LM007

Edit: by the way Seagate Drive Settings utility tool doesn't even see the drive, when CrystalDiskInfo does