[solved] Acer Aspire One 722 - Random HDD Spin Downs \ VOGONS

[solved] Acer Aspire One 722 - Random HDD Spin Downs

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First post, by Yasashii

Posted on 2014-09-22, 20:58

Yasashii Offline

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After almost 2 years of having the thing, I must admit the Acer Aspire One 722 is an utter piece of dudu. Aside from the fact that the performance is mediocre and the keyboard ungodly uncomfortable, the netbook has proven to be unreliable.

Around the same time last year I had to return it because the WiFi was malfunctioning and now that it's been replaced, another problem pops up: the hard drive spins down randomly and immediately spins up again, even if it's been used like a second ago. For example it has happened while loading a level in a game etc. I was just getting ready to return it again just before I noticed the warranty was only one year (no wonder, considering...)

I made absolutely sure that HDD shutdown is set to never both on AC and on battery in the power settings. To confirm 100% that the issue is not caused by any software, I also formatted the drive, and reinstalled Windows 7. I didn't install a single thing aside from the OS. Not even the drivers. The issue persists so it's not caused by software... or is it?

Funny enough, when I installed Ubuntu on it, I couldn't get the hard drive to spin down throughout the time I tested it. Either it was an amazing fluke or for some reason unknown to me, the problem is OS-related. So I'm thinking maybe there's a power-saving feature on it that's malfunctioning but it's not supported by Linux so the issue doesn't occur on it? I don't know. Also, while the spin downs do occur while several files are loaded one after another (when loading a level in a game, for example) but as far as I was able to observe, the HDD won't spin down while a single large file is being read/written.

I installed GSmartControl on Windows 7 on the netbook and ran the short self-test and the conveyance self-test. Both reported 0 errors.

There is no pattern to the spin downs. They occur completely randomly anywhere between about a minute and several minutes. Does anybody know whether the situation can be salvaged on the software level or should I just throw the bloody thing out the window and save myself some mental health?

EDIT: Check the fourth post for a solution.

Last edited by Yasashii on 2014-10-10, 13:37. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 1 of 3, by Anonymous Coward

Posted on 2014-09-23, 10:58

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Do you ever have a problem with the mouse driver crashing and losing the ability to perform advanced mouse functions? I have this happen on two totally different acer 11" laptops. One is Elan and the other Synaptics. Maybe it's a windows 7 problem?

I find it especially annoying as I use the mouse driver utilities to disable tapping, and after the driver crashes the system reverts to the standard Windows PS/2 mouse driver and re-enables tapping. The only way to fix it is to restart the OS.

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Reply 2 of 3, by DosFreak

Posted on 2014-09-23, 12:55

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Who's the manufacturer of the drive?

Mabye you can modify the spindown time on the firmware.

Any reason why you're not using a SSD?

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Reply 3 of 3, by Yasashii

Posted on 2014-09-23, 17:43

Yasashii Offline

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Do you ever have a problem with the mouse driver crashing and losing the ability to perform advanced mouse functions? I have this happen on two totally different acer 11" laptops. One is Elan and the other Synaptics. Maybe it's a windows 7 problem?

Actually, no. The touchpad is one of few things which work ok on the netbook (by ok I mean it feels heavy and I hate it but it works).

Who's the manufacturer of the drive?

Mabye you can modify the spindown time on the firmware.

Western Digital. As for the firmware, how do you actually access it? I've never had to. If you mean bios settings, then the only HDD-related settings in there are the mode (IDE and AHCI) and the booting order.

Any reason why you're not using a SSD?

Yes, there is a very good reason for that and it's because the netbook wasn't fitted with one 😀 I had a tight budget when choosing the netbook and I had spent it all on the Acer. Even if I did have some money left over, I still wouldn't have been able to replace the HDD with an SSD because that would require me to gut the thing out and therefore void the warranty.

Anyway, since I've started this thread I called the store in which I had bought the netbook and asked about the warranty, in an act of desperation. As it turns out, despite the fact that the warranty card in the box clearly stated: "1 year limited warranty", the store provides its own 2-year warranty. So I quickly packed it up and returned it. I'm now waiting for it to get fixed (and I will likely have to wait for around 2 weeks). The man said that if Acer refuses to fix it, they will figure something out. We shall see.

The only thing I'm afraid of is that the Acer technician will test it for a few minutes, conclude that there's nothing wrong with it (because the spin-downs are random and might not occur for a while, and also they are nearly silent), and promptly send the machine back with a giant "OK" sticker on the box and the store will say that if Acer can't see the problem, neither do they. We shall see, and until I get a call, I'm reluctant to mark this thread as "solved".

EDIT: I picked up the netbook from the store yesterday. Acer replaced the hard drive. To my amazement, the issue remained. Having decided that I will fix it no matter what, I went on to research and tinker. As it turns out, the solution was much simpler than I had imagined.

The hard drive was working correctly. The spin-downs are a result of WD's Intellipark feature, which parks the head after a specified amount of time, regardless of the setting in the OS.

When I first got the netbook, I installed Xubuntu on it and ran it like that for about a year. Turns out Linux doesn't give the HDD a chance of spinning down because it writes something on it almost all the time. That's why the "problem" didn't occur initially. It started occurring when I switched to Windows 7. The spin-downs appeared random due to the fact that Windows also writes stuff on the hard drive every few seconds but not as often as Linux, so sometimes it had enough time to spin down, sometimes it didn't, making it impossible to make out a pattern just by listening.

I read that you can turn off the moronic intellipark feature with a tool called WDIDLE3, which you can download here (FreeDOS bootable):

http://www.jzab.de/content/wdidle-bootcd

Proceed as shown here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0SYd9jQDMQ

I hope this helps anyone who also gets a nervous twitch in the eye whenever they hear the HDD spin up sound.

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