RST 13.1 - Excessive Head Parking?

bigdogchris

bigdogchris

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When I upgraded to RST 13.1 I noticed my hard drives head parking all the time. The audible chirp it makes gave it away, but checking SMART data I saw the Load/Unload count steadily rising throughout the day. I moved back to RST 12.9 and the chirping and Load/Unload counts stopped. I moved back to 13.1 and it started again.

Anyone else notice this?

*Update 10-15-15*

I just want to update this thread for those having the problem. Apparently, Intel is still releasing the RSTe driver; it's just hard to find.

Rather than installing the 14.5 RST branch on my z170 board I switched to RSTe 4.3 and no longer get chirps or excessive head parking. No longer are APM utilities required.

I'm not sure if the RSTe driver will work for those with 6/7/8/9 series though.

RSTe 4.3 Download
 
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13.1? I am using 13.0.1 and don't see any issues.
My main drive with 11K hours on it shows 154 [C1].

What board/drive?

I grabbed the RST off of Gigabyte's site for my board.

I suppose I don't have the latest, not having any issues though so I'll stick with it.
 
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ep0x73 said:
13.1? I am using 13.0.1 and don't see any issues.
My main drive with 11K hours on it shows 339 [C1].

What board/drive?

I grabbed the RST off of Gigabyte's site for my board.

I suppose I don't have the latest, not having any issues though so I'll stick with it.
Click to expand...
6 series board and 3TB Toshiba. Also, I have RAID mode enabled. Are you AHCI or RAID?
 
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Z87 series, 2TB hitachi, ahci...clicking more often than 12.9, I noticed the increase in clicks as soon I updated the drivers.

If the hard disk is a system disk I doubt you'll notice any parking click because the disk will be used almost all the time.

If the mechanical disk is a secondary disk, like for example when you use a ssd for the system, the mechanical hdd it's more likely to use head parking because of longer idle times....it's normal to use head parking sometimes, BUT with the 13.1 I hear much more clicks than before, so many I thought it was going to fail soon.

I have 2036 (decimal) C1 counts in 11000 hours, but in the latest 12-24hrs with 13.1 this number increased about 70 units. I think something is wrong.

EDIT: driver is the latest official WHQL, it's on intel site
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?DwnldID=24006

In the meanwhile I reverted to 12.9, unplugged the power, switched sata channel, and rebooted.
It's still on 2036 since the downgrade and no more clicks...but I did a mistake, I changed the sata cable of the dvd drive instead the hdd one XD...it worked anyway.
 
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Skryabin said:
If the hard disk is a system disk I doubt you'll notice any parking click because the disk will be used almost all the time.
Click to expand...
That's my scenario. I have an SSD and a drive used just for backups is what's clicking/chirping.
 
As I wrote on intel forum check the APM status of your drive

In my case I found APM staying disabled while was 12.9 installed, but gets enabled after updating to 13.1
Maybe it's the same for you

You can use Crystal disk info or AIDA for example.
This is how it looks while using 12.9 driver:
titaCDC.png


as you can see slider is all the way left and it says OFF
But after upgrading to 13.1 it turns ON with slider set in the middle.

and the same results with AIDA, 12.9 driver I see APM "disabled" but again, it gets "enabled" after upgrading the driver to 13.1
DMUvkaZ.png
 
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I have my Z87 set to raid but I also use crystaldiskinfo to turn off all special features for the 5 drives I have attached.

AAM and APM are all off.

Oddly I just checked and APM on my 2TB black was on when I had it turned off.
 
ep0x73 said:
Oddly I just checked and APM on my 2TB black was on when I had it turned off.
Click to expand...

:p

if you want to downgrade the rst from 13 to 12.9 I suggest you follow the procedure described before (unplug power, swap sata channels), just installing 12.9 won't fix anything

as explained before this rst13 driver seems to force apm on my drive, while 12.9 didn't use it at all
But I can't say which one is bugged XD

I don't understand which behaviour is correct: should the apm stay enabled by default or not? if yes, 12.9 was bugged, on the contrary 13.1 is bugged.
Isn't that written in the hard disk firmware and why a driver decide to enable/disable it on its own?
 
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The thing is the 13.0.3.1001 is on my Z87 and I have no issues, the 2TB black which was off then on I am using 10.8.0.1003 which is the last version which the 35 chipset supported.

With crystal did you check the auto AAM/APM adaption on? that should remember your settings when you reboot.
 
I've never used any tool to enable/disable apm manually, but I don't think crystal disk can make permanent changes as the specific disc tools can do (read "hitachi feature tool" for hitachi and similar for other brands)

The story here is that different driver versions manage default APM status differently:
12.9 at default keeps apm disabled
13.1 at default enables apm

on the same disk and without touching anything else.
 
Possible although I read through the doc of what is fixed and what is still not fixed for 13.1 and nothing was mentioned.

crystal will remember your settings if you set it to adaption, least it does with me.
 
ep0x73 said:
crystal will remember your settings if you set it to adaption, least it does with me.
Click to expand...

because with that option the apm setting will be set on every reboot, it's not permanent, it just reapply your desired settings each time windows starts

but that's a different story, let's focus on apm status at default with 12.9 and 13.1, at default I mean without using any tool to manually edit apm settings
I've discovered on my pc apm it was disabled with the old 12.9 driver and gets enabled with the newest 13.1, that explains the increased number of clicks because head parking is managed by apm
It's the same disk, same OS, just changing the rst driver...and that's strange on my opinion, because I thought apm was something ruled by the drive firmware (and that you need low level utilities to change default values)

Either the 12.9 or the 13.1 driver is misinterpreting the apm default settings on the disk firmware, what do you think?
 
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I confirmed what Skyabin is talking about. 13.1 enables APM for the drive that is head parking. 12.9 disables it.
 
I can't believe this is still an issue. I've been stuck using the RSTe 4.6 driver for a long time now. RSTe v5 or any version of RST 13.1 or newer has that damn chirping head parking that destroys HDD's. I've been testing the new v16 for a couple days now and it's still an issue. Back to 4.6.

My concern long term is that eventually the RSTe 4.6 driver won't work anymore with future motherboards, and I'll be stuck with this crap. I think next time I buy hard drives, they will have to be NAS or Enterprise level drives which should have APM disabled by default.
 
Intel has now released the RSTe 6 under their VROC series. The excessive unloading is now gone again. So v 4 RSTe there was no excessive unloading, with 5 there was, and now 6 there is no excessive unloading again. I have no idea what Intel is doing but at least I can run a driver with modern OS support again.
 
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