To anyone running Bootcamp Windows XP/Vista on MB/MBP: I need your help!

OK, so I've mentioned this in other posts, but now I'm trying to find people who have the same issue and maybe don't realize. So here's my thesis:

I believe that OS X 10.5 Leopard (and perhaps 10.4 Tiger) actually kills hard drives because of its overly aggressive power-saving techniques that park the drive's heads more often that it should. The parking of heads manifests itself as a clunk (some people describe it as a marble hitting a rubber mat). This can be as little as once a minute, or 10 times a minute. For me, it greatly varies. If you play music or have fans running loudly, you may not hear it. For me this is not an issue when running Windows XP.

Now, many drives only allow this Unload Cycle about 300,000 times before failure is inevitable. I've had my new Hitachi 200GB 7200rpm drive in my computer about 5 days, not on 24/7, and I'm up to almost 10,000 cycles. I had the exact same issue with the Fujitsu 160GB the system came with, which was one of the reasons I swapped out the drive, hoping it would solve this issue.

If you can run Windows XP or Vista, there's a simple tool to tell you how many Load Cycles your hard drive has made. First download this file:

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/sm...n32-setup.exe?modtime=1166654103&big_mirror=0

Then go to Start, Programs, Smartmoontools, Examples, and run the file called Attributes. This will list a number of statistics about your hard drive, including the Load Cycle. I'm interested in what people's numbers are.

Please, if you could, take a second to try this so I can maybe bring more attention to this issue.

Thanks, everyone, for any help you can offer.

 

How would head parking be detremental to a drive? The drive will partk the head on its own when doing nothing anyways to reduce the risk of a head crash...

 

Parking heads 5 times in 10 seconds is actually detrimental to the drive, especially since if a drive has a 300,000 load cycle before failure, this means that at 30,000 cycles a month, my drive will only last about 10 months, in theory!

 

According to that program, in the approximately 7 weeks that I've owned my system, my load cycle count is 6020. If my math is correct, my drive should last almost 7 years if it maintains this pace.

Something has to be up with your system.

 

Perhaps, but with two hard drives doing the exact same thing in Leopard, and no such issue in Windows XP, I have to assume Leopard is the problem.

 

No offense WilliamG but I think Apple knows better than you. They wouldn't design the Mac or the OS to damage drives. I say, don't worry about it.

 

That's not helpful, really. I know what the manufacturers say is a safe load cycle for their drives, and if I'm at just about 10,000 cycles in under a week, something is definitely wrong here. That's 40,000 cycles a month, if not more. That means my drive may only last 7 or 8 months if it fails around the 300,000 mark. Let's not forget Apple is certainly NOT perfect, and have screwed up in the past.

 

The things Apple has screwed up on are things like faulty logic boards which had nothing to do with the OS damaging it. My reply to your post was in retrospect to your saying that the OS damages hard drives because of parking the drive. Maybe you are new to OS X but it's been design that way for years and there has been zero reporting of damaged drives.

In a way you are not being helpful to anyone by creating an issue that hasn't even surfaced. If you really feel like this is an issue you should take it up with Apple. I did mention no offense but you took offense to it anyway.

 

No, no offense taken then.

Just the noise drives me nuts, and based on the MTBF of these 2.5 drives, the number of load cycles leaves me wary.

 

Yeah, weird noises from my computer tend to scare me a bit. My PowerMac G5 dualie would click all the time because the hard disc was parking and I always hated the delay of waiting for the hard drive to start up again if I wanted to launch an app. This would still happen even though I unchecked the option to put the drive to sleep but no worries, I had it for 2+ years and it worked flawlessly.
My new iMac doesn't react like that.
Just make sure you have Applecare and if the hard drive ever goes weird you are covered.

 

Well not since I put this 200GB in myself

Anyway, a helpful guy on the Apple boards recompiled the Declunk program for me for Intel systems, and my system hasn't clunked once this evening. I'm sorted for now.

 

My load cycle is 8301 and its a hdd that ive used for about 2 months.. maby a little more..

 

Thanks for the info. So my 2 drives are definitely cycling more times than they should. My 5-day old Hitachi drive has cycled more than your 2-month drive!

 

I have Seagate 160 7200 RPM drive which is about 2 months old. My Load_Cycle_Count is listed at 13995.

 

Interesting.... Thanks for that. You on Leopard?

 

Yes, Leopard 10.5.1 also running Boot Camp with Windows Vista Ultimate.

 

Thanks for the reply. Leopard has an issue with certain drives, that's for sure. It had a problem with my stock Fujitsu 160GB, and it has a problem with my 200GB upgrade drive. Not a big deal since I run the Declunk app (recompiled for Intel systems), but it's still odd. No issues at all with parking heads in XP.

*sigh*

Oh well. Moving on with my life now.