2019-09-18

Disabling HDD APM

APM (Advanced Power Management) feature is quite problematic for my 2.5" laptop disk - 500GB HGST HTS545050A7E680. Depending on disk activity it might unload heads way too often - every minute or so. This is annoying (clicking noise), increases mechanism wear and probably even increases power usage when it semi-randomly parks head just to activate again few seconds later. I have no idea why so short idle time was selected as default in firmware - just an error plus lack of testing or planned obsolescence.
CrystalDiskInfo can be used to disable APM (menu Function/Advanced Feature, AAM/APM Control), but it gets little tedious as this has to be repeated each time disk is powered on and requires few clicks each time.


Here is another tool - APMdisable.exe from https://www.codeproject.com/Tips/808412/Disable-APM-for-Hard-Drive-in-Windows. Changing disk parameters require administrator rights - set this in file properties.
To run APMdisable.exe each time disk is powered on I've used Task Scheduler, creating new task triggered by "On workstation unlock of any user" event - as described on https://superuser.com/questions/15596/automatically-run-a-script-when-i-log-on-to-windows:
 Important: "Run with highest privileges" - set this also in APMdisable.exe properties.
Add also second trigger: "At log on"/"At log on of any user" - apparently logging first time after restart does not count as "On workstation unlock".
 Command line arguments: "-dis"
Starting both when using battery and AC power.

Also: set "Require a password on wakeup" in Control panel -> "Power Options".

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