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ggBanks · ‎10-22-2012

Hi, what I did some time ago was to buy an SSD, put it in the original SATA III port and moved my HDD to the optical bay with an HDD caddy (Yes I have a G55 if you are still wondering or don't know). So the thing is that I usually watch my movies from the HDD, but recently I have noticed that from time to time I experience some frame and audio stuttering when watching a movie (it is not quite often but still). I think that could be because before I put the HDD in the optical bay the optical drive itself was using some kind of power saving mode which could be the cause of that. I have noticed that the HDD spins down after 1 or 2 minutes when there are no applications reading from it or writing to it. I have also disabled the "Turn off Hard Disks after..." in the advanced power options of my power plan, but, still the HDD spins down after some time, which should not be the case since I disabled that. This is very confusing and frustrating that my HDD has to spin up almost everytime I have to access my D:\ drive. This is also bad for the HDD itself because it has limited spin up/spin down cycles. What should I do to disable the potential optical drive power saver, and fix the stuttering?

rewben · ‎10-22-2012

maybe someone who has the similar setup will give you a better solution. i have the same setting but having ssd instead of hdd in the hdd caddy. no apparent issue.

ggBanks · ‎10-23-2012

Seriously guys, no one with a setup like this? 😞

Chino · ‎10-23-2012

Even though you have a HDD in the optical bay, Windows still think that there is an optical drive in there lol. I personally don't have the G55 but from personal experience as a tech, most laptops come with their own Energy Management Utility. The option you should be looking for is "Automatic Optical Drive Power Off" or something along those lines. Just disable that. 😛 Or If it didn't come with any utility, then the option should be under “System Settings” in the Power Options.

j0ntar · ‎10-23-2012

Get CrystalDiskInfo and see if you can edit the AAM and APM (Acoustic Management, and Adavanced Power Management. ) settings, you should be able to disable power management completely... I think. I havent had a spinny drive in some time and never used these tools with a spinny disk.

ggBanks · ‎10-24-2012

I tried power options and advanced power management already and there wasn't anything like that. I am using win 8 and the power 4 gear driver is still not available for it, maybe when it comes out in 3 days it can help me but I really doubt that it will have more options since it uses the windows integrated power management.

And one more thing is that since the Windows shows that HDD in the local disk drive section of windows explorer, it surely knows that this is an HDD. And the rules for HDD power management in the power options should apply to it. I just can't seem to figure this anomaly out 😞

This is an image from the CrystalDiskInfo for my HDD in the Optical bay:

I am a bit concerned about the Seek Error rate. Though I don't really know what it means but I think it is about the average error encounters during reading.

j0ntar · ‎10-24-2012

APM is enable I can see that,

Go to Function in the menu bar, then hover over Advanced Features, then AAM/APM Control.

ScreenShot:
click: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8399785/apps/aam.png
or

ggBanks · ‎10-24-2012

So what does this actually do? Does it prolong the timeout of the HDD? And since this program has the controls over it, the same controls must be available somewhere in windows itself right?

j0ntar · ‎10-25-2012

ggBanks wrote:
So what does this actually do? Does it prolong the timeout of the HDD? And since this program has the controls over it, the same controls must be available somewhere in windows itself right?

This will disable power management for drives completely. Tonight I will be installing the 500GB spinny that came with laptop into the optical bay with a caddy i bought off amazon. THis will be used for virtualmachine storage and some other storage. I will let you know the steps I take to remedy power management and they should apply to you also win win8.

I wont be upgrading to windows 8 for another month or two if at all in the near future. I need stability with all software packages and drivers as this is my personal work laptop.

rewben · ‎10-25-2012

can you try this and see how it goes?

HDD in optical bay problem