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[MusicBringer]

I keep getting a popup error message.
Spinning Up Hard Drive

What's that all about then?
I happens after each and every track. It seems to cause the PC sit on hold while this happens.
It is most annoying.
Any ideas please.
thanks,

[Matt]

We show that wait message if the file isn't accessible right away.

I wonder why files would be really slow to open?

[MusicBringer]

"file not immediately accessible"
Hum, strange coz all music files are sitting on an Internal hard drive called M:\drive.
Win7 x64 OS and MC20 are on main SSD C:\drive.
MC is on all day and plays continuously from smartlist.

[Matt]

Do you have the drive set to spin down on a short timeout?  In other words, is it possible the wait message is correct?

[MusicBringer]

Do you have the drive set to spin down on a short timeout?

Umm, not knowingly. How would I verify this?

[CountryBumkin]

Do you have the drive set to spin down on a short timeout?

Umm, not knowingly. How would I verify this?

My method is to go to Windows Control Panel >Power Options, then open the plan your using (change Power Options) and click on "Change Advanced Power Options" and look at the setting for the Hard Drive

[Matt]

Here's a tutorial:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/140592-hard-drive-turn-off-hard-disk-after-idle-never.html

[MusicBringer]

Display set to 20 mins
Hard Drive set to Never
Those are settings I have used on various PCs over the years.

btw I also get a similar MC Pop Up Message saying a View is Updating.
My library has more than 120k files.

[mwillems]

You're not by chance using a Western Digital Green or Red drive made in 2013 or early 2014?  Those drives had a firmware issue when they shipped that caused them to spin down and load cycle after something like three or six seconds of idleness (leading to premature wearing out of the drives). 

WD ultimately made a firmware tool that fixed the issue, but you have to actively find and run it (it wouldn't have been fixed automatically through windows update, etc.).

[rudyrednose]

Those WD drives spindown after 8 seconds (a killer!).

The tool is called wdidle3.exe and the last time I needed it I found easily wdidle3_1_05.zip and much more seldomly WdIdle3-2.0.0.1-dos.zip, the latter (which I used without issues) seems unofficial.

[MusicBringer]

Umm, M:\Drive is Western Digital Caviar Green WDC WD20EARX-00PASB0 [Hard drive] (2000.40 GB) - cannot find purchase details. I would guess it was before the following Seagates.

My desktop also has 2 X Seagate Barracuda 3.5 inch 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB 6GB/S Internal SATA Drive - bought Oct 2012

[mwillems]

If the WD green is the drive that keeps spinning down, you should definitely check out whether that was one of the affected drives (based on the serial number).  2013- early 2014 is the main bulk, but I think the problem existed before then.

Here's an article with the affected models: http://wiki.nas4free.org/doku.php?id=faq:0148

[MusicBringer]

Google-ing I found this:
http://www.ngohq.com/news/19805-critical-design-flaw-found-in-wd-caviar-green-hdds.html

The suggested solution scares me. I have never been good with ISO images.
I think I'll move my data around the HDDs.
Like move my Doc Data to this offending WD Green which will free up one of my Seagates for the M:\drive music files.
Yes I have an ext HDD I can use for the transfer.
And to think I was gonna have a quiet day tomorrow. Ho hum.

Thanks for all the help. Esp mwillems who was first to suggest the offending WD Green.

[mwillems]

Google-ing I found this:
http://www.ngohq.com/news/19805-critical-design-flaw-found-in-wd-caviar-green-hdds.html

The suggested solution scares me. I have never been good with ISO images.
I think I'll move my data around the HDDs.
Like move my Doc Data to this offending WD Green which will free up one of my Seagates for the M:\drive music files.
Yes I have an ext HDD I can use for the transfer.
And to think I was gonna have a quiet day tomorrow. Ho hum.

Thanks for all the help. Esp mwillems who was first to suggest the offending WD Green.

Glad to help, hope it turns out to be the culprit.  I had a green myself that had the issue so I was speaking from experience.  I've been hyper-sensitive to harddrive issues since I had a Seagate Barracuda a few years back that would make a horrifying "sqwonk!" noise every time the heads parked. If it's not one thing it's another 

[CountryBumkin]

You're not by chance using a Western Digital Green or Red drive made in 2013 or early 2014?  Those drives had a firmware issue when they shipped that caused them to spin down and load cycle after something like three or six seconds of idleness (leading to premature wearing out of the drives). 

WD ultimately made a firmware tool that fixed the issue, but you have to actively find and run it (it wouldn't have been fixed automatically through windows update, etc.).

I use the WD Red drives (WD30EFRX), but I don't see anything in the links (in this thread) that say the Red drives have this problem (although it did mention the Black drives might have the same issue). Do you have a link identifying this issue also applies to the WD Red drives so I can see if I need to take any action?

[mwillems]

I use the WD Red drives (WD30EFRX), but I don't see anything in the links (in this thread) that say the Red drives have this problem (although it did mention the Black drives might have the same issue). Do you have a link identifying this issue also applies to the WD Red drives so I can see if I need to take any action?

I can't provide a clear news story on it, but I can tell you that one of the red drives I personally bought in late 2013 had this problem.  You can easily tell by looking at the SMART parameter "load cycle count."  On a normal drive after a few months of use it should have a low number (single or double digits).   Mine had a count in the multiple thousands.  The drives are only rated to 600,000 load cycle counts, so if your drive has 30K after a month or two, that's a problem.

If you check the negative Amazon reviews on the WD Reds, you'll find a few other folks that got Red drives with the issue.  It seems to be a smaller batch of the Reds that were effected than the Greens. I currently have four reds made between 2013 and 2014 and only one of them has the issue (the other three all have load cycle counts in the low teens after months of use).

Here's a link to WD's fixit utility for the Red drives as well: http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=619&sid=201&lang=en

[CountryBumkin]

Thanks for the follow up.