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Topic: foobar2000 vs HDD clicking (Hard Drive Head Parking every 8 seconds) (Read 5309 times) previous topic - next topic
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foobar2000 vs HDD clicking (Hard Drive Head Parking every 8 seconds)

Hello, when playing music through foobar2000, there is the problem of hard drive head parking during the transition between tracks, that are very well seen in the screenshot. This causes the characteristic clicks sound and delays (which is very annoying when manually switching tracks). There is, apparently, due to the buffering of each of the next track, and, this also applies to image albums (File+Cue). To solve this problem, you need to read from disk is not interrupted for more than 5 seconds, because parks the hard drive heads after 7-8 seconds of inactivity.

Modern capacious the HDD, very frequent auto-parking has become the standard of today, and millions of PCs. Not so long ago Piotr Pawlowski added a very useful option "Prevent hard disk sleep while playing", may be, possible to add the option against the auto-parking clicking, which does not allow to enjoy music. :'(

Thank you in advance for your attention to this matter!

p.s.
Sorry for my bad english.
p.p.s
wdidle3 & hdparm not working :(


http://i.imgur.com/wKO5sVr.png

Re: foobar2000 vs HDD clicking (Hard Drive Head Parking every 8 seconds)

Reply #1 –
Did you try to increase buffer length? File->Preferences->Playback->Output->Buffer length

Re: foobar2000 vs HDD clicking (Hard Drive Head Parking every 8 seconds)

Reply #2 –
Quote from: Rollin on
Did you try to increase buffer length? File->Preferences->Playback output->Buffer length
I use 0 kB, but i tried, it does not help. I use foo_ramdisk.dll, it works (Thank You Piotr!), but not very convenient.

Re: foobar2000 vs HDD clicking (Hard Drive Head Parking every 8 seconds)

Reply #3 –
Shut off power management for your drives? I don't understand how it's timing out and shutting the drives off during the mere milliseconds that it takes to close one track and open another.

Re: foobar2000 vs HDD clicking (Hard Drive Head Parking every 8 seconds)

Reply #4 –
Power management does not help, it is responsible for this hdd firmware. Search in Google: "wd green head parking problem" or "load unload cycle count seagate". Almost all modern capacious hdd have this.

https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/41ip2j/western_digital_caviar_blue_head_parking_pc_freeze/

Re: foobar2000 vs HDD clicking (Hard Drive Head Parking every 8 seconds)

Reply #5 –
Quote from: Zeletic on
I use 0 kB, but i tried, it does not help.
I was talking about File->Preferences->Playback->Output->Buffer length, not File->Preferences->Advanced->Playback->Full file buffering up to.

Re: foobar2000 vs HDD clicking (Hard Drive Head Parking every 8 seconds)

Reply #6 –
I'm sorry, i completely forgot about this option. Set 50 ms and i'll be testing more in detail. :)

Re: foobar2000 vs HDD clicking (Hard Drive Head Parking every 8 seconds)

Reply #8 –
I set 50 ms and watching in the task manager, on one album (File+Cue) was constant read speed 131KB / s and !!! no clicks !!! , but all the other albums (File+Cue) on the read speed of 524 KB / s, and the clicks are present. Set 30000 ms and clicks occur more often. :-\

Re: foobar2000 vs HDD clicking (Hard Drive Head Parking every 8 seconds)

Reply #9 –
Further evidence that spinning rust is no longer a trustworthy storage medium. From now on, I'll be expanding my storage entirely with 1TB or larger SSDs, as I need them.

This old WD Blue and pair of Reds will have to do for now, although I don't expect my storage needs to ever exceed this current capacity any time soon. I wasn't even halfway into the one 4TB I had, and I needed another 4TB to move the data off it so I could reformat it with a different partition format.

Re: foobar2000 vs HDD clicking (Hard Drive Head Parking every 8 seconds)

Reply #10 –
Quote from: kode54 on
Further evidence that spinning rust is no longer a trustworthy storage medium. From now on, I'll be expanding my storage entirely with 1TB or larger SSDs, as I need them.

This old WD Blue and pair of Reds will have to do for now, although I don't expect my storage needs to ever exceed this current capacity any time soon. I wasn't even halfway into the one 4TB I had, and I needed another 4TB to move the data off it so I could reformat it with a different partition format.

Until they decide to start pulling similar stuff with solid state media.  I swear they do this stuff intentionally to force people off one kind of media and on to another by making the other look more unreliable than it really is.  Even if the new media is more reliable than the old media there's money to be made.  Hard drives are not obsolete but many of them are also solid state manufacturers and would love to speed it's demise on something that probably won't be as profitable to them in the future then make the solid states fail after a certain timer that ticks down on newer solid states and fries up the chips intentionally when something else comes along or they're not making as much money as they used to.  Think about the limited write cycles solid state media has.  They love to have some big money from filmmakers that tons of editing that's for sure by forcing them on to it.

Planned obsolescence.

Re: foobar2000 vs HDD clicking (Hard Drive Head Parking every 8 seconds)

Reply #11 –
Quote from: kode54 on
Further evidence that spinning rust is no longer a trustworthy storage medium.
But ssd is fantastically expensive and erases the information if they do not use for a long time. Hdd more reliable for music storages or backups, but clicking sound each switching songs can be very annoying. ::)

Frequent auto-parking, it's not only planned obsolescence, this is very useful for laptops, but not for desktops (exceptions are seismic dangerous places).

Re: foobar2000 vs HDD clicking (Hard Drive Head Parking every 8 seconds)

Reply #12 –
Quote from: Zeletic on
But ssd is fantastically expensive and erases the information if they do not use for a long time. Hdd more reliable for music storages or backups, but clicking sound each switching songs can be very annoying. ::)
How long exactly?  Heat does have an effect on that.  It's usually more worn out drives that do it, too.  Having a back up of a back up is not a bad idea either and most things do eventually come down in price (cost of manufacturing).  Although some things actually go up in price (supply and demand).  I'm still using optical media for back up.  :)  They certainly don't make optical media like they used to.

Quote from: Zeletic on
(exceptions are seismic dangerous places).

The Pacific ring of fire comes to mine actually.  Californians most love their solid states if they can afford them and I'm sure the Japanese have done away completely with hard drives.  :P

Re: foobar2000 vs HDD clicking (Hard Drive Head Parking every 8 seconds)

Reply #13 –
Quote from: Chibisteven on
How long exactly?  Heat does have an effect on that.  It's usually more worn out drives that do it, too.  Having a back up of a back up is not a bad idea either and most things do eventually come down in price (cost of manufacturing).  Although some things actually go up in price (supply and demand).  I'm still using optical media for back up.  :)  They certainly don't make optical media like they used to.
Refer to the table, it all depends on the recording conditions and the storage conditions. But preferably not more than six months without electricity. Over time, the transistor is discharged and the information is lost.

Optical media is a good thing, one 3TB HDD = 580 DVDs. :)
Quote from: Chibisteven on
The Pacific ring of fire comes to mine actually.  Californians most love their solid states if they can afford them and I'm sure the Japanese have done away completely with hard drives.  :P
We must ask the Japanese. :)


http://i.imgur.com/VmIZBI9.png

Re: foobar2000 vs HDD clicking (Hard Drive Head Parking every 8 seconds)

Reply #14 –
Turn up the volume, problem solved.

Serious solutions would be streaming from a server/NAS in another room or solid state drives as already suggested.

Re: foobar2000 vs HDD clicking (Hard Drive Head Parking every 8 seconds)

Reply #15 –
Quote from: marc2003 on
Turn up the volume, problem solved.
it does not help much when listening Chopin. :) (youtu.be/ef-4Bv5Ng0w)
Quote from: marc2003 on
Serious solutions would be streaming from a server/NAS in another room or solid state drives as already suggested.
It is too expensive for me. ::) In addition to store music on a SSD is very unreliable.

Re: foobar2000 vs HDD clicking (Hard Drive Head Parking every 8 seconds)

Reply #16 –
Maybe replace the drive with a different brand and use Mr click-a-lot as a external backup drive?

Quote
But ssd is fantastically expensive and erases the information if they do not use for a long time. Hdd more reliable for music storages or backups, but clicking sound each switching songs can be very annoying.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2925173/debunked-your-ssd-wont-lose-data-if-left-unplugged-after-all.html

That table you reference only applies to SSDs that reach EoL.
Who are you and how did you get in here ?
I'm a locksmith, I'm a locksmith.

Re: foobar2000 vs HDD clicking (Hard Drive Head Parking every 8 seconds)

Reply #17 –
You could try to change the enclosure with another one , to isolate the noise.

Or you could use a script , only when foobar2000 runs , to read or write some file to disk every 5secs to block/avoid parking.
  
By all means always clone (sync) a hd drive with another hd drive (backup) , because one day it WILL FAIL.
Just pray they don't fail at the same time.

Re: foobar2000 vs HDD clicking (Hard Drive Head Parking every 8 seconds)

Reply #18 –
A_Man_Eating_Duck
Quote from: A_Man_Eating_Duck on
Maybe replace the drive with a different brand and use Mr click-a-lot as a external backup drive?
WD, Hitachi, Seagate they all have this. And i have 5 Mr. click-a-lot. :)
Quote from: A_Man_Eating_Duck on
That table you reference only applies to SSDs that reach EoL.
But transistors is discharged and hard drive discs can store data for up to 10-20 years. :o

zeremy
Quote from: zeremy on
You could try to change the enclosure with another one , to isolate the noise.
I tried, but nothing happened.
Quote from: zeremy on
Or you could use a script , only when foobar2000 runs , to read or write some file to disk every 5secs to block/avoid parking.
I don't know how to program, :( and I would love to have this functionality in the foobar2000 as the same option "Prevent hard disk sleep while playing".

Re: foobar2000 vs HDD clicking (Hard Drive Head Parking every 8 seconds)

Reply #19 –
So you would only listen to music once every 6 months? Also Mechanical drives do fail when they want as well. 10-20 years is a bit of a reach though, I'm sure the interface alone would be render the drive obsolete well before 20 years.

I don't think the drive is at fault, it's the external enclosure.
Who are you and how did you get in here ?
I'm a locksmith, I'm a locksmith.

Re: foobar2000 vs HDD clicking (Hard Drive Head Parking every 8 seconds)

Reply #20 –
Put your music files on an SSD, with backups on a mechanical drive. If the SSD fails, copy your backup files to a new one.

Mind you, you'll have to write an enormous amount of data to the SSD before it goes kaput. Like petabyte enormous. But you'll rest easier knowing your files are backed up to HD.

Re: foobar2000 vs HDD clicking (Hard Drive Head Parking every 8 seconds)

Reply #21 –
Quote from: Zeletic on
Quote from: zeremy on
Or you could use a script , only when foobar2000 runs , to read or write some file to disk every 5secs to block/avoid parking.
I don't know how to program, :( and I would love to have this functionality in the foobar2000 as the same option "Prevent hard disk sleep while playing".

Can you try this simple batch file to see if there is any difference.
Replace C:\antipark.txt with the drive letter you want to  e.g E:\antipark.txt ( edit the attached file with notepad)
Run the batch file first ( it will open in a cmd window) and play something in foobar from the drive.

Code: [Select]
@echo off
:loop
echo %date% %time% >> C:\antipark.txt
timeout /t 5
goto loop

Re: foobar2000 vs HDD clicking (Hard Drive Head Parking every 8 seconds)

Reply #22 –
lol, "spinning rust" :)  never looked at it that way haha.

Wild thought. Use your preferred defragger? to keep the drive busy while playing music?