New motherboard, HDD is aggressively spinning up/down

[bdp]

I just installed a new motherboard (Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming 3), processor and RAM into an existing system and all is well after a reinstall of Windows, except for the one HDD in the system. It's an older WD Blue 250GB SATA drive and I hear it repeatedly spinning up, making a short burst of read/write noise, then immediately spinning down and making what I assume are head parking sounds. It will do this every few seconds when the system is on. I can access the drive fine from within Windows, so I don't think the drive is bad, and it didn't give me any issues like this with the old motherboard.

Does anyone know what would cause this? I just got the system set up yesterday and haven't had a lot of time to look into it yet, but I didn't see anything obviously wrong in the BIOS settings for the drives (1 HDD, 2 SSD, and 1 optical, all SATA). There is a system-wide option for selecting SATA mode (RAID or AHCI) but nothing to select per port.

And... I just came across the "Aggressive Link Power Management" option in the manual and that seems like it might be the culprit (default is ON) since it seems the HDD spins up every time it is accessed then spins down as soon as it is done. So I'll go ahead and post this even though I hope I've answered my own question, and I'll update after I get home and try it out.

 

[Hat Monster]

HDD power management isn't normally a BIOS thing. "Aggressive Link Power Management" reduces the performance of your PCIe slots and onboard PCIe devices when they're not busy. It shouldn't have anything to do with HDDs.

The HDD handles its own power states, and it does it under the direction of the OS. That's probably where you need to start looking, rather than twiddling PCI-Express settings which may or may not get along well with the rest of your hardware.

 

[bdp]

Strange, Aggressive Link Power Management was an option in the SATA settings. Anyway, I disabled it and the issue stopped, so yay!

 

[Hat Monster]

I've never seen that in with SATA, but if it's there, and it fixed your issue, that's something for future reference!

Glad you got it fixed!

 

[bdp]

From the BIOS section of the manual:

Peripherals
-SATA Configuration
--Aggressive LPM Support
---Enables or disables the power saving feature, ALPM (Aggressive Link Power Management), for the Chipset SATA controllers. (Default: Enabled)

 

[forky]

I know you fixed this, however, I think I saw this particular problem with WD Blue disks somewhere before on the Internet and the cause was firmware settings on the drive itself. I don’t now recall if there was even a solution, but the problem isn’t uncommon with WD Blue disks – see this for example.

 

[bdp]

I'll look into it more when I have some time later this week. I just assumed it wasn't a problem with the drive itself since I didn't see this issue in the previous 2 computers the HDD was installed in.

What software tools are best for checking a HDD for problems like this?

 

[kcisobderf]

I think it's more a problem with the power saving feature, instead of the disk. On my Asus z87(i7 4770) board, I have to leave it disabled or the computer doesn't boot at all.

 

[cf18]

Try turning off "PCI Express Link State Power Management" in advanced power management option in Windows. Apparently this option also turn off SATA drives, independent of the HDD sleep setting.

After I first build my i5 & Z170 system, I would have a problem in Fallout 4 where switching weapon may take many seconds for it to appear on screen. I couldn't believe it would perform worst than my old Core 2 with only 4G RAM until I found that option after some searching.

 

[Deathmonkey]

Hat Monster[/url]":1o532dgq]HDD power management isn't normally a BIOS thing. "Aggressive Link Power Management" reduces the performance of your PCIe slots and onboard PCIe devices when they're not busy. It shouldn't have anything to do with HDDs ...

Is there any chance this board is using an extra SATA controller linked over PCIe lanes? The Z170 chipset supports six SATA 6.0Gbps ports, which this board has, but then it also has 2x m.2 connectors and 3x SATA express connections.

 

[bdp]

Deathmonkey[/url]":xawmjm9i]

Hat Monster[/url]":xawmjm9i]HDD power management isn't normally a BIOS thing. "Aggressive Link Power Management" reduces the performance of your PCIe slots and onboard PCIe devices when they're not busy. It shouldn't have anything to do with HDDs ...

Is there any chance this board is using an extra SATA controller linked over PCIe lanes? The Z170 chipset supports six SATA 6.0Gbps ports, which this board has, but then it also has 2x m.2 connectors and 3x SATA express connections.

It's unclear to me exactly how the SATA ports and PCIe lanes are related on this board. From an owner review on Newegg:

"It turns out that if you have even one SATA drive installed (doesn't matter if it's HDD, SSD or optical), the speed of your very expensive M.2 PCIe x4 SSD is reduced to x2! If you have a SATA drive, your only hope of getting full x4 speed from your M.2 PCIe x4 SSD is to install it via a PCIe x4 to M.2 adapter. According to Gigabyte, that "should work." I haven't tried it yet, but be advised that if you have anything installed in the PCIe x1_3 slot, the speed of the PCIe x4 slot is reduced to x1 or less. Of course the PCIe x1_3 slot is the most accessible of the three x1 slots, which is why it currently holds my WiFi card. You don't want to use the x8 slot for the M.2 adapter because that will reduce the speed of your graphic card in the top x16 slot to x8."

The 6x SATA ports are incorporated into the 3x SATA express ports, they aren't physically separate ports. Does the Intel chipset support SATA express natively or did they end up using an extra SATA controller to implement SATA express?

I didn't really do my homework on these topics since my setup is pretty basic with just 2x SATA SSDs, 1x SATA HDD, 1x SATA ODD, and a single PCIe graphics card.

Edit: It looks like SATA express is a pointless feature since the advent of M.2. I don't see any SATA express drives available on Newegg, although the ports are on plenty of motherboards.

Edit2: Sweet jebus, this is from the Techreport review of the Gaming 7 mobo, which features an extra 2 SATA ports (without SATAe) that don't exist on my board http://techreport.com/review/29072/gigabyte-z170x-gaming-7-motherboard-reviewed/2:

"That said, not all of the storage connectivity can be used at once. The Z170 chipset shares its flexible PCIe lanes among different storage ports, which puts some constraints on which ports can be used at the same time. To help explain which ports are unusable in which scenarios, here's a graphical representation of the SATA ports with labels:

Here's how the sharing breaks down. A SATA-based SSD installed in the M2D M.2 slot will disable SATA port 3 and its accompanying SATA Express port, because they both share the same chipset link. Similarly, if you populate the M2H M.2 slot with a SATA-based SSD, SATA port 0 becomes unusable.

The situation becomes even more complicated with PCIe SSDs. A four-lane PCIe-based SSD installed in the M2D M.2 slot will disable all the SATA ports on the bottom row—ports 0 through 3. Enable RAID mode, and you'll lose SATA port 5 and its corresponding SATA Express port, as well. A two-lane PCIe SSD installed in the M2D M.2 slot will disable SATA ports 2 and 3 and the SATA Express port they're embedded in. Enable RAID mode, and you'll lose those two ports along with SATA port 5 and its corresponding SATA Express port.

Got that?

Since the M2H M.2 slot shares its PCIe lanes with the third PCIe x16 slot, installing a PCIe-based SSD in this slot while the controller is in normal mode doesn't cause you to lose any SATA ports. Like the M2D M.2 slot, though, setting the controller to RAID mode and installing a PCIe-based SSD in the bottom M.2 slot will disable SATA port 5 and its corresponding SATA Express port.

SATA ports 6 and 7 don't have to play by any of these sharing rules, because they're connected to the ASMedia SATA controller."

 

[bdp]

Double post