# HDD almost instant spindown/turn off



## Adam82 (Sep 10, 2013)

Dear Forum members,

I'm new to FreeBSD, and one of my problems is that my HDD almost instantly spins down after a few seconds of idle state. Then it spins up again (I don't touch anything), and then spins down/turns off again, cycle repeats. This can't be good, and keeps me from using the OS for now. Can you please provide me with a hint of where to look for a solution (on a newbie level)?

Thank you,
Adam


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## DutchDaemon (Sep 10, 2013)

Mentioning the type, make, and model of the HDD would help. Caviar Green? There's plenty of information about those here.


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## Beeblebrox (Sep 10, 2013)

Check your power supply unit. Testing voltage output may not work because power fluctuations can depend on the load being placed on the PSU. If you have a spare unit, of which you are reasonably sure it is healthy, use that for a while and see if the problem repeats.


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## Adam82 (Sep 11, 2013)

Thank you to both of you for the answers! I have made some research, and as it turns out, it is a WD Green HDD with the insane head parking feature I have never ever heard of before (4 sec). I had no luck disabling the feature (it got worse), but I could raise the idle limit to 5 minutes. Crazy, I have never heard of such extreme measures before... (had no hardware upgrade since 4 years).

Best Regards,
Adam


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