Hard Drive Heads Parking

[Shirley Daugherty]

I have been using Windows XP since day one. I have never had this condition
using XP. I installed Vista over the weekend and when the system reboots for
driver installs ect. the hard drive heads return to the parked position. You
can hear it distinctly. It only happens when using Vista and not XP. I
installed Vista to get an idea of what hardware and software I would need to
replace in order to use Vista. The hardware was just about everything I had
and the software was also. I installed the latest Vista drivers from each
manufacturer. Keep in mind this is a homebuild system only one year old.
Opteron 175, 2gb OCZ Ram, Asus motherboard, Nvidia Video card, 3 Maxtor
drives, Plextor DVD burner. Dell 2407 WFP display. Performance Rating of 4.6
due to video card. Since I couldn't use Vista as I would have liked, I
reinstalled XP and the hard drive heads are not parking on reboot. Until I
get this resolved I cannot use Vista under any circumstances although I
would love to. Does anyone have any idea what is going on. Thanks

 

[Richard Urban]

The heads return to the park (safe) position when the drive is powered off.
I have never "heard" this action. I don't doubt that something is going on
but I doubt it is what you believe it is.

Are you sure the drives are just not spinning down. When they have done so,
they must spin back up prior to shutting down or rebooting the computer.

BTW, my drives spin down by themselves. There is no control over this
happening. I believe it is now an integral happening that is built into the
newer drives, and Vista takes advantage of it.

Perhaps if you could better explain the sound you are hearing...............

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

 

[Shirley Daugherty]

Thanks for your reply. What I hear is a sound that sounds like a clunk/clank
and not a drive spinning down. It is only one such sound for an instant but
very annoying. Since I have 3 drive, it is quite noticeable. It does not do
it in XP, only Vista. In XP, I hear this noise when I turn the system off
and only then. But with Vista, I hear it every time it reboots after
software installs or driver installs. It sounds exactly like the heads
parking. I was advised it was a feature of the Vista SATA drivers and
nothing to be concerned about.

 

[R. McCarty]

Feature of Vista ? - I'd be concerned anytime I hear a drive do a
reset like you describe. You may want to use some utility that can
display SMART data and check the drives. Which vendor drive is
in your machine ? SpeedFan 4.32 has the ability to display SMART
data.

 

[Shirley Daugherty]

Thanks for the reply. I have 2 SATA 160GB Maxtor drives in Raid0 and a 250GB
Maxtor IDE as a backup drive. This new sound that I have tried to describe
is certainly not normal. I recall sometime ago I dual booted with XP and
Vista RC1 for a while and I never heard this noise. The first time I heard
it was after a clean install of Vista with all the updated Vista drivers.
The sound is such that if it is the hard drives, they cannot last long with
this condition. That is why I went back to XP. I will research it a little
more. I am sure there is a solution or a reason not to be concerned. Thanks

 

[Don]

I have been using Windows XP since day one. I have never had this condition
using XP. I installed Vista over the weekend and when the system reboots for
driver installs ect. the hard drive heads return to the parked position. You
can hear it distinctly...

I could swear I read the same question in another newsgroup today. Am I
hallucinating? Someone (who knows more than I do) responded that the
head parking is a 'feature' of the new NVidia chipset drivers and is
done by design.

 

[Shirley Daugherty]

I read the same thing. My only problem is I don't have a Nvidia chipset. I
have an ATI R580 chipset. The board is a Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe.
Asus does not provide any Vista drivers for this board although it is only a
year old. I did notice that XP had installed Microsoft drivers although I
tried to install the Asus driver via F6 during the setup of XP. Makes no
sense. I will devote some time to this later. Thanks for all that replied.

 

[Tiberius]

its one of your drives that has a problem... that clunk clank is bad news..

I can assure you that this has nothing to do with the OS installed...

Why you had it with one OS and not with the other?
Here is why: data is stored now on the problematic area of the drive while
before data was not stored at this location.

I am sure that this is the reason.. since I have seen it many times.

hard drives have 3 year warranties.. find out which one is making the noise
and take it for replacment.

Of course backup your data NOW

 

[Tiberius]

There is no control over this happening. I believe it is now an integral

happening that is built into the newer drives, and Vista takes advantage of
it.

what kind of new urban myth is this?Gesh educating the vistaboys for one
more time:

Powerdown of hard drives existed in XP too but was not turned on by default
in the power options.
In Vista its turned on by default (and that is stupid). You can turn it on
or off from the power options
of vista...

Gesh vista boys are ignorant not only about everything else but about the
very OS they support like sheep.

 

[Tiberius]

its one of your drives that has a problem... that clunk clank is bad news..

I can assure you that this has nothing to do with the OS installed...

Why you had it with one OS and not with the other?
Here is why: data is stored now on the problematic area of the drive while
before data was not stored at this location.

I am sure that this is the reason.. since I have seen it many times.

hard drives have 3 year warranties.. find out which one is making the noise
and take it for replacment.

Of course backup your data NOW

 

[Tiberius]

Correction I wanted to say "some" hard drives have 3 years warranties..

I have one that had only 2 years...

 

[Shirley Daugherty]

I have since talked to my Grandson. He has a HP with Vista and he advises he
has the same sound as I have. He also advised he never had it when he used
XP. All my hard drives have Smart monitoring and I have tested them with the
Maxtor disk tools. All show good without problems. The monitor logs show no
problems. I find it very strange indeed that my system and other systems
running Vista display this sound while systems running XP do not. Situation
needs more investigation. I am trying my best to find a solution since I
really want to use Vista.

 

[mikeyhsd]

may I ask what the problem is if indeed the heads are parking during boot.
or os it just the noise that is bothersome.




(e-mail address removed)



I have since talked to my Grandson. He has a HP with Vista and he advises he
has the same sound as I have. He also advised he never had it when he used
XP. All my hard drives have Smart monitoring and I have tested them with the
Maxtor disk tools. All show good without problems. The monitor logs show no
problems. I find it very strange indeed that my system and other systems
running Vista display this sound while systems running XP do not. Situation
needs more investigation. I am trying my best to find a solution since I
really want to use Vista.

 

[Guest]

I was advised it was a feature of the Vista SATA drivers and

nothing to be concerned about.

Don't listen to this person ever again.

 

[Guest]

I read the same thing. My only problem is I don't have a Nvidia chipset. I
have an ATI R580 chipset.

The board is a Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe.

Asus does not provide any Vista drivers for this board although it is only a
year old.

that says it all
IT's your driver.
find your chipset and go to their site if asus doesn't have Vista driver.


I did notice that XP had installed Microsoft drivers although I

tried to install the Asus driver via F6 during the setup of XP. Makes no
sense. I will devote some time to this later. Thanks for all that replied.

Would have been a bad idea if they weren't for vista

 

[Guest]

I have since talked to my Grandson. He has a HP with Vista and he advises he
has the same sound as I have. He also advised he never had it when he used
XP. All my hard drives have Smart monitoring and I have tested them with the
Maxtor disk tools. All show good without problems. The monitor logs show no
problems. I find it very strange indeed that my system and other systems
running Vista display this sound while systems running XP do not. Situation
needs more investigation. I am trying my best to find a solution since I
really want to use Vista.

I find it strange that this problem runs in your family. ;-)
Did he install your Vista by any chance?

I'm betting you have some generic driver installed and it doesn't work 100%
with your controller.

 

[Guest]

its one of your drives that has a problem... that clunk clank is bad news..

I can assure you that this has nothing to do with the OS installed...

Or the one OS (xp) has the correct XP drivers and the Vista install doesn't
have Vista drivers from the manufacturer.

Driver
Driver
Driver
and don't be surprised if you don't find a Vista version either.

 

[Guest]

Shirley,

I just thought I'd give you some support here by confirming that I am
another sufferer of this problem. I have EXACTLY the same problem as you. My
XP installation was running faultlessly until I upgraded to Vista.

My PC can be OK for long periods and then the drive(s) will start clicking
every minute or two until I put the PC into sleep mode or reboot.

It's very annoying, but more than that I just worry that the constant
parking and/or spinning up and down can't be good for the drives (Western
Digital SATA) which are defintely NOT faulty (at the moment!)

Alan