2010 MBP 13" hard drive never spins down... ever.

Question

Hi Folks,
I have searched - and even found others with a similar problem - but the threads died out without a solution, so....
I have a pretty new 2010 MBP 13" 2.4ghz with stock 250gb HDD (I think it's a Toshiba, IIRC). I noticed that the palm rests were vibrating constantly and there was noise that never went away, so I investigated. It is the hard drive under the right palm rest, which is constantly spinning. My hands feel like I just came in from mowing the lawn!
Now, I just came from ownership of a 2008 MB which also had the Core2Duo processor and which I used about the same. No new programs or new usage to speak of. Yet that hard drive was not spinning all the time; in fact, it was usually spun down and only spun up from time to time.
I do have the preference checked for "Put hard disk to sleep when possible" on both battery and AC. I downloaded iStat and I can't see any reason for it not to spin down. i.e. light use (or even with all programs closed), cool CPU, CPU 90% un-used, very few page outs (not sure which of this would affect HD though).
Still, it NEVER spins down.
It's not clicking or making any of the "I'm a hard drive about to die" type noises. It's just a constant spinning hum.
Can anyone help me with this? It's making me dislike what should be a nice upgrade from my MB and iBook. Of course I am still under warranty, but I'm 4 hours from the Apple store, and plus I just like to try to figure things out on my own if possible. Gaining understanding of how things work is a plus too
Thank you in advance for any help
Stixer
Message was edited by: Stixer

Answer 1

I don't know if anyone will click on this since I already marked it solved, but I will try it and then if not I'll start a new thread. Just don't want to clutter up the forum if I don't need to.
So anyway, it was stated earlier in this thread that it is not possible for the internal hard drive to spin down while the computer is turned on, and that the system pref for "put hard disk to sleep (i.e. spin down) when possible" check box could only really apply to external drives.
I'm no expert, so although I sure thought the drives in my previous Apple laptops were spun down most of the time (I'm a light user), I figured that okay, they must have just seemed like they were spinning down, and my new one must just be really noisy (even though the "noise" sounds just like my older drives did when they "spun up," but I guess they were just doing something else).
But okay, so this morning I was reading Anandtech's really great and thorough review of the new MBP's and in the maximum battery life test they did this:
+Light Web Browsing+
+Here we're simply listing to MP3s in iTunes on repeat while browsing through a series of webpages with no flash on them. Each page forwards on to the next in the series after 20 seconds.+
+The display is kept at 50% brightness, all screen savers are disabled, but *the hard drive is allowed to go to sleep if there's no disk activity*. The wireless connection is enabled and connected to a local access point less than 20 feet away. *This test represents the longest battery life you can achieve on the platform while doing minimal work. The results here are comparable to what you'd see typing a document in TextEdit or reading documents.*+
Doesn't this seem to indicate that my original understanding was correct, and that internal hard drives do have the ability to spin down under light use? It sounds like it to me. My typical usage is exactly what they are talking about above, and apparently their hard drive spins down during such use, unless I'm completely mis-understanding them. Mine also seemed to in my previous Apple laptops.
So now I'm feeling frustrated, as I hate having an issue that I can't get to the bottom of. Whether or how I can fix it or not is secondary, but I want to understand how it is supposed to work!
Thank you very much to anyone who reads through, and even more if you reply
Stixer