High Start/Stop Count on WD Black SSHD

[bima1997]

Hi all,

I have a question regarding the APM and high start/stop count on my SSHD.
I use 2 drives on my laptop, 1 SSD for my OS, and 1 SSHD for my data.
Now, the SSHD start/stop count is rising quickly (now it's nearly 10000 count), and I can't disable the APM settings for this drive.

Untitled.jpg (522.34 KiB) Viewed 15193 times

Is this normal, or I just have a failed drive?

Regards,
Bima

[hdsentinel]

This is normal, absolutely not failing. As displayed on the image, health = 100%, so there is no problem with the hard disk drive itself.

Power management can very frequently tries reducing power use and yes, this causes high increase of start/stop count.

Yes, generally APM is a good way to disable it, as most of the time this may be independent from Windows Power Management settings.
But yes, newer drives may not support APM at all.

You may try to disable the hard disk spin down in Windows Power Management settings (or set a very high value for sleep, eg. 99999 minutes or so).

If this does not help, you may try the following:
Please open Configuration -> Disk control and in the "Do not allow spin down of disks" field, specify a
*

This would cause a periodic command to be transferred to the disk drive, which then will not enter to sleep mode, will not allow parking the drive heads. So the effect is generally same as the highest Advanced Power Management level setting: the hard disk will not enter to sleep mode, so the start/stop count will no longer increase (or will increase much slower).

[bima1997]

This is normal, absolutely not failing. As displayed on the image, health = 100%, so there is no problem with the hard disk drive itself.

Power management can very frequently tries reducing power use and yes, this causes high increase of start/stop count.

Yes, generally APM is a good way to disable it, as most of the time this may be independent from Windows Power Management settings.
But yes, newer drives may not support APM at all.

You may try to disable the hard disk spin down in Windows Power Management settings (or set a very high value for sleep, eg. 99999 minutes or so).

If this does not help, you may try the following:
Please open Configuration -> Disk control and in the "Do not allow spin down of disks" field, specify a
*

This would cause a periodic command to be transferred to the disk drive, which then will not enter to sleep mode, will not allow parking the drive heads. So the effect is generally same as the highest Advanced Power Management level setting: the hard disk will not enter to sleep mode, so the start/stop count will no longer increase (or will increase much slower).

Hi,
Thank you for your reply.

I've set 999999 minutes in Advanced Power Management settings, and apply the settings that you suggest in HD Sentinel. Should anything happened, I'll let you know. Thanks a lot!

Now I have another question, but it is out of my topic above.
A lot of my friends use Seagate FireCuda SSHD (ST1000LX015-1U7172) on their laptop, and when they want to check the condition of their disk, it shows that their disks is in bad condition, with 26% health. But, using HDTune Pro and CrystalDiskInfo, they show a different results. Both of the software states that the disk is in healthy condition at 100% health. Is it possible that this SSHD is not compatible with HD Sentinel?

Regards,
Bima

[hdsentinel]

> Now I have another question, but it is out of my topic above.
> A lot of my friends use Seagate FireCuda SSHD (ST1000LX015-1U7172) on their laptop,
> and when they want to check the condition of their disk, it shows that their disks is in bad condition, with 26% health.
> Is it possible that this SSHD is not compatible with HD Sentinel?

Without knowing the actual Hard Disk Sentinel version and the situation, hard to say anything.....

Not sure, but it is possible that their Seagate hard disks have special firmware which requires attention and counts/reports errors differently than expected - and this may cause confusion. This happened many times with Lenovo laptops, where the hard disks had special firmware - so the support of those drives already added in Hard Disk Sentinel many years ago.

Not sure if the situation is the same, but I'd be more than happy to examine. Please ask your friends to use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option by the LATEST Hard Disk Sentinel version, as then I can examine - and if required, correct the display.
Sorry for the possible troubles and confusion.

[bima1997]

> Now I have another question, but it is out of my topic above.
> A lot of my friends use Seagate FireCuda SSHD (ST1000LX015-1U7172) on their laptop,
> and when they want to check the condition of their disk, it shows that their disks is in bad condition, with 26% health.
> Is it possible that this SSHD is not compatible with HD Sentinel?

Without knowing the actual Hard Disk Sentinel version and the situation, hard to say anything.....

Not sure, but it is possible that their Seagate hard disks have special firmware which requires attention and counts/reports errors differently than expected - and this may cause confusion. This happened many times with Lenovo laptops, where the hard disks had special firmware - so the support of those drives already added in Hard Disk Sentinel many years ago.

Not sure if the situation is the same, but I'd be more than happy to examine. Please ask your friends to use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option by the LATEST Hard Disk Sentinel version, as then I can examine - and if required, correct the display.
Sorry for the possible troubles and confusion.

Hi, thanks for your reply.
As far as I know, they're using latest trial version (5.30), I've told them to send a report to you though.

Thanks for your support!

Regards,
Bima

[nightdream]

Hello,

I'd like ask something related to this topic:

Is it better for an external USB3.0 2.5'' HDD to spin constanly for 10hours a day or it's
better to let it sleep and wake it up about 60 times in those 10hours (every day) ?

What's the best for its durability ? Let's say we don't care about power saving at all.

Also please let me know the same thing for an external 2.5'' SSD.

Thank you.

[hdsentinel]

If we do not care about power saving then for a spinning hard disk drive it is better to keep it running all the time. It is better than spin down / spin up constantly when required.

Current hard disks tolerate high number of spin down / spin up cycles, but it is still better to minimise this value. This is also better and safer for the computer where the 2.5 USB hard disk is connected (as the spin up would require higher power).

For an external SSD, this is not really important as they do not require higher power for spin up.