New HDD Load / Unload Cycle Count increasing extremely fast !

Question

Hi all
I just upgrade my Pavilion dv5 HDD. The new model is Hitachi Travelstar 7K500 (HTS725050A9A364). However, I found my new HDD's Load / Unload Cycle Count increasing extremely fast!
Until now the number of Load / Unload Cycle is 12,127. However, the new HDD only power on 137hours. (About 1 week of my use.)  The data below is my new HDD's SMART data (by EVEREST 5.50):
ID   
01    Raw Read Error Rate    62    100    100    0   
02    Throughput Performance    40    100    100    0   
03    Spinup Time    33    159    159    2  
04    Start/Stop Count    0    100    100    14   
05    Reallocated Sector Count    5    100    100    0  
07    Seek Error Rate    67    100    100    0  
08    Seek Time Performance    40    100    100    0  
09    Power-On Time Count    0    100    100    137  
0A    Spinup Retry Count    60    100    100    0   
0C    Power Cycle Count    0    100    100    14  
BF    Mechanical Shock    0    100    100    0   
C0    Power-Off Retract Count    0    100    100    1 
C1    Load/Unload Cycle Count    0    99    99    12127   
C2    Temperature    0    152    152    19, 36  
C4    Reallocation Event Count    0    100    100    0   
C5    Current Pending Sector Count    0    100    100    0  
C6    Offline Uncorrectable Sector Count    0    100    100    0  
C7    Ultra ATA CRC Error Rate    0    200    200    0  
DF    Load/Unload Retry Count    0    100    100    0   
I'm pretty sure that the data is correct, because I can hear the HDD's Load / Unload sound very frequently. The C1 row increase about 2,000 per day.  However my previous Hitachi 5K320 has no problem. The running operating system are both Windows 7.
I'm so worry about this. As you know, laptop HDD's L / UL Cycle is designed at 600,000. If my HDD continue increasing like this, it will reach this number in a very short time. Any one can help me?

Answer 1

It's a feature of modern 2.5" harddisks , the disk parks the head when its been inactive for a while, to avoid damage , uses less power , and reduces the heat etc gives the harddisk a better looking spec sheet , its meant to park its head after being inactive for a long time around an hour with proper management from the bios/os of the head parking feature, because there is nothing to manage this feature in hp's bios or os the disk parks the head about every minute for no reason then after 1 second the head goes back on the disk thats 1 load/unload cycle , it also effects performance as the head has to find its place back on the disk , load times will decrease by alot , videos will stutter the first few secs, i have the same problem but not as bad after 130 hours i had a count of around 1,250 load/unloads , different brands of disk have different idle timers plus i use utorrent which stops the harddisk from idling so much, there are a couple of solutions, you can find a tool to update/mod the harddisk firmware to increase the idle timer ( i decided against this as you can permently brake the harddrive and void the warrenty) , contact hp and request a bios update with proper management or the harddisk head parking feature i.e tell the harddisk it is idle after an hour, the temperary solutions are download hd tune and run it all the time this stops the harddisk from parking its head as it doesn't let it go idle , or the solution i am using at the moment download a programme called HDD scan , everytime you turn on/off  you have to run the prog go to tasks/features/ide features set the advance power management from its default value to 254 then press set, no more unnessary load/unloads, downside is the disk runs a couple of 0c hotter mine still never goes above 40c even under full load thanks to a active cooling pad, also its less well protected against shock.