What's wrong with my HDD?

[Key West]

This is my HD.

I used to have this as secondary. Whenever I access files on it, the whole PC freezes for 3-5 seconds. You hear the wind-up of the HD, then all is well.

I figured since it was a secondary drive, it was sleeping to save power or something.

Now I have this drive as primary (Win7). All is well but same symptom occurs. When I'm starting games (Starcrat II or Warcraft), the same freeze happens with the wind-up. It's the same when I'm suddenly jumping to a file, etc.

What's causing this? It's driving me nuts. There are no settings in BIOS or device manager on the HD.

 

[mfenn]

I have a couple of 2TB Samsungs that do this. I think it is related to the power management built into the drive's firmware. You might be able to get a utility from Seagate that can turn off this "feature".

 

[lxskllr]

New Win7 install or old? If the install's new, it defaults to an aggressive power saving mode. Check the settings, and make it so the drive stays spinning, or has a very long shutdown time.

 

[WaitingForNehalem]

You might need to update the firmware. The 1.5TB 7200.11's had problems when they first came out.

 

[Key West]

New Win7 install or old? If the install's new, it defaults to an aggressive power saving mode. Check the settings, and make it so the drive stays spinning, or has a very long shutdown time.

The symptom persisted spanning different OS (WinXP & 7) and hardware (old PC to a new one).

 

[Key West]

You might need to update the firmware. The 1.5TB 7200.11's had problems when they first came out.

It says I already have latest firmware?

 

[mfenn]

Try using hdparm to disable APM and AAM and see if the problem persists. Note that changes make in hdparm are NOT persistent (i.e. it will reset when you reboot).

 

[deanx0r]

I posted the same question a few months ago and no one could figure out what was wrong with my system. I went SSD and the problem is now gone. But I finally got my answer.

 

[hiddensniper11]

The symptom persisted spanning different OS (WinXP & 7) and hardware (old PC to a new one).

Could be insufficient power supply to your system? Try disabling non essential components, optical drives etc and also the current secondary harddisk. Observe if this solves or lessen the problem, if yes then buy a new PSU.