HDD Powering Down

9006

New Member
Hi there.

I recently bought a new laptop because my old one was pretty dated, its an ASUS xF553MA which is pretty good for what I use it for.

However I've noticed that the hard drive is constantly powering down and then back up, literally every 20 - 30 seconds I hear it power back up which is annoying, especially when it's quiet.

I know what you're thinking - first thing I did was check the power options out only to find it's set to sleep after 10 minutes; 20 plugged in. Also it makes no difference if it's plugged in or not since it acts exactly the same regardless. The only way to stop it is to do something that would use more drive activity, like browsing the net or something, if I'm just coding or writing a document it drives me mental hearing it start up all the time, powering down is fine since it's a gradual process.

The drive itself is a 1TB SATA, 5400 but I'm not sure what brand or model. I'm guessing it's some 'economical' one that saves power at every opportunity but it's pretty annoying listening to it constantly power back up, I wouldn't mind if it wasn't so constant. I did update the BIOS not long after I got it since there were quite a few versions that had gone by.

Anybody know how to stop this?
 
I don't think the OS drive should be powering down. However, go into device manager and right click on the hard drive and click on properties. Is there a power management tab?
 
Something is wrong. It shouldn't go thru the power up and power down cycle like.

Have you try setting the power option to "never shut down"?

This is not good for the drive too. I think most of the wear and tear is when the drive starts up.
 
Are you moving the laptop when this happens? You could be tripping the free fall sensor.
 
I had a snoop around the properties but there doesn't seem to be any kind of power management. Mostly general information about the device.

I also thought their was something up with that at first but it only ever happens when I'm doing minimal things, if I'm downloading or browsing the net it doesn't power down (Although I just heard it do it since writing this). It doesn't seem to be relating to any kind of movement since it's mostly still when it happens.

I managed to discover that it's a Seagate ST1000LM024 but I can't see any information relating to any kind of powering down. Hmm...
 
Seagate has a 5-year warranty on their HDD. You may want to call them and see if they would swap it for you.
 
Thanks for your responses.

There's a lot of mixed reviews there.

It does seem like it has a two year warranty, but since this is a new laptop I'm guessing replacing the drive would void it. But to be honest I'm not that bothered about warranties it's sending it back and fourth is just extra hard work.

I think may upgrade to a more reliable drive once I get the dosh, and use this as some backup or something. It doesn't seem normal; I've never known a drive to do this so it's a bit suspicious to me. I just hope it's not about to fail lol.
 
Well regardless of 2 or 5 year warranty if it decides to completely die on me then a replacement drive would be of little comfort to loosing all my data lol

I think I may simply replace with a good reliable HDD.
 
And to be honest here, since this is an OEM machine and unless you paid for an extended warranty all parts only have a 1 year warranty no matter if the hard drive has a 2 or 5 year warranty.
 
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