WD10SPCX aggressive spindown

VLC player always skips and sometimes crashes if pausing >8 seconds during movie playback.

Is there any way to change this setting/behaviour permanently?

Wdidle3 doesn’t seem to have any effect, all settings /Sxxx /D (although appearing to be accepted) seem to be completely ignored by this hdd.

Disabling APM in Crystaldiskinfo seems to be able to stop the spindown (after approx. 8 sec. of inactivity), but this needs to be repeated after every powercycle.

Not handy with the drive in a usb3 enclosure.

Hello,

The issue might be related to the enclosure. Have you tried connecting the drive to the motherboard directly?

Take a look at this link:

Installing a WD SATA, SAS, or PATA drive in an external USB/NAS enclosure or Personal Video Recorder

Ok, After some more testing:

The hdd:

WD10SPCX

Date: 30 JUN 2013

DCM: HBVJBBO

DCX: DH08W54S7

MDL: WD10SPCX-22HWST0

The spindown (after approx. 8 sec. of inactivity) happens on all of the below controllers/chipset:

  • Genesys Logic GL3310 (usb3)

  • VIA Labs VL700-Q4 (usb3)

and also on:

  • Intel P35 mainboard Sata port (ASUS P5K, Win7)

Ok I finally found a way to stop this spindown on Windows 8.1.  It is not pretty or fun.  First you install hdparm from

http://disablehddapm.blogspot.com/

But this does not give you a transparent solution.  You then need to go to

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp

And delete the hdparm entry

Then make the program run as administrator as explained in:

http://disablehddapm.blogspot.com/p/1.html

Now the problem is you need to execute this at startup with administrative privileges. Go To

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/create-administrator-mode-shortcuts-without-uac-prompts-in-windows-vista/

 When you create the task in Action and in Program/script you need to put “C:\Program Files (x86)\hdparm\hdparm.exe”

in Add arguments put  -B 255 /dev/hda        if the disk is the 0 drive.  If it is the 1 drive you put

-B 255 /dev/hdb

After all of this put the icon that you made from the step above in

C:\Users_username_\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

And that will do it. If you email me I can send you complete instructions set up specifically for the WD drive.

I would also download

http://crystalmark.info/download/index-e.html

and install it.  under Function → Advanced Features → AAM / APM control you will see what is going on with the disk and can enable disapbl apm there.  The problem with this is that when you shutdown the WD disk goes back to original state.

Can you check what is the APM value?

CrystalDiskInfo program will give it to you.  Download it from 

http://crystalmark.info/download/index-e.html

and install it.  under Function → Advanced Features → AAM / APM control you will see what is going on with the disk and can enable disapbl apm there.  If you change the APM from here, it will reset to the default when you power cycle the computer.