Hacking Guide: WD Passport Spindown Fix

[Spaztikdude]

If you haven't purchased it yet, maybe you're better off getting a Seagate FreeAgent Go instead. It about the same price and the rumor is you can kill the shutdown from USB using a utility.

Yes, you *can* kill the power saving on the FreeAgent Go's with a utility.
The only problem is that the little SATA to Mini-USB board that the thing uses seems to be as fragile as heck.
Mine is only a week old and it's dead. The drive inside however, is fine.
Whether it's just bad luck or a dodgy batch, other people are reporting the same problems on their forums.

Just something to think about. If you buy a Freeagent Go, treat it like the crown jewels. Or it'll break

 

[xbman]

I got the 250GB passport on Thursday. I forget the serial number off hand (but it is the one with the usb part of the drive / CB - of course I opened the drive before even thinking about checking it). Anyway, the drive I have is the one that you can not hook up via sata - but I did test mario kart and left i paused for about 30 minutes. It did freeze for about a second after finishing the race but never crashed. I also have played through a few ranks of No More Heroes and have not had any problems.

I can't say the latest 250GB passports are fine, but so far have not seen any problems. Any other games to test to verify if it works or not? I have about 20 games dumped to it and just did little testing (i.e. making sure they boot, etc) and haven't seen an issue. Some games people reported issues with like No More Heroes and Geometry Wars thus far work just fine.

In case it matters, all dumps the the USB drive were done through the Wii (USB Loader 1.1), from originals and to a new drive, not partitioned, only formatted to WSFB. Only hooked up to a PC to rename some of the games.

 

[twig123]

Another thread (http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=146211&st=0) suggested using -S 0 (which is supposed to disable standby, but didn't on mine) or -B 255 (which failed to even change the setting on my drive)

My drive is a Internal WD 80GB IDE (WD800JB) that I placed in an aftermarked enclosure.
I just tested using the -S 251 as you suggested and here are my results:

Tested with Mario Kart, played till just before the finish on 3rd lap.
I paused for 30min (previously had issues after 25min, so I left it longer to make sure)
I finished race and was able to continue with no problems!!!!!!!!!!!

(It would be logical that I would have to power-cycle the if it was left on overnight... but that is a test for another time)

Crap... this stopped working again.
Galaxy Wars randomly crashed after ~5min
Animal Crossing crashes right after getting after getting off the bus
Neighborhood Games crashed after ~15min

The drive still seems to be spinning though. I powered off the Wii and the hard drive... came back today and was having a heck of a time getting the Wii to even see the drive again (code dumps in USB Loader). After about 10 tries of powering the wii & drive on and off... it came up and and said the drive didn't have a WBFS partition. I was like WTF, and reset the Wii. I then got the crash dumps. I took the drive and connected it to my computer, loaded up the WBFS utility and it read it no problems. I took it back to the wii... then it started reading it as well. WTH?!

It is still freezing on me randomly :S
the hdparm -S 0 setting appeared to have gone through, but appeared to still spin down
the hdparm -S 251 setting appeared to have gone through, and the drive does not appear to spin down... but still having issues.
the hdparm -B 255 setting failed "HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(keepsettings) failed: Input/output error"
the hdparm -K 1 setting failed "HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(keepsettings) failed: Input/output error"

I know this isn't a WD Passport as the topic is about, but anyone have any ideas?

I think my external enclosure is toast... hooked my drive to a different IDE to USB... and just played the Worms game for the past 5hrs...

 

[Nagaroth]

I've translated this guide to Spanish here (giving the link to this thread as the source, ofc).

I hope you don't mind it

 

[Moquedami]

I succeded with the mario kart test wth no problems on my WD passport 160gb. But now I'm having the stupid dancing mutant error in Overkill.
I tried patching ios249 but it didnt fix it.
Whats wierd is that the problem only happens in Uncut mode.
Anyone else having this problem? I don't have sata in my mobo so i can't try ths solution. Isn't there any othr way via USB?

 

[SonyUSA]

I've translated this guide to Spanish here (giving the link to this thread as the source, ofc).

I hope you don't mind it

I don't mind at all! If you get input/output error on the -K command, it just means the drive doesn't need it set. Is the guide working for them?

Also, anyone still having random crashes after this, make sure you use USBLoader 1.4 ! This so far has stopped ALL my random crashes in Cate West and SSBB and a couple other games that were giving me non-spindown related problems

 

[KTroopA]

just to chime in with my feedback. have tested mario kart extensively, leaving on 3rd lap pause for 15, 30, 45mins and works fine. the game unpauses and then hangs for like 5 secs before proceeding to run as normal. so i guess the spin down is not a big issue for my drive. i hope

Western Digital My Passport Essential 250GB USB Portable Hard Drive -Intense Blue

 

[hughthehand]

I have this problem with a Seagate 80gb 3.5"

>hdparm -K 1 hdb

hdb:
setting drive keep features to 1 (on)
HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(keepsettings) failed: Input/output error

With a Maxtor 120 gb 3.5" I used this fix, and now works correctly, but the Seagate stills freezing randomly. Any suggestion?

 

[Quixotic]

Has anyone tried (or needed rather) to do this fix for a WD Passport 120GB Portable Hard Drive? Model #WD1200U017-000
I won't have the opportunity to try until next week.

 

[necasus]

Hey I just thought I'd point this tool out right here:

http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2006.01.22-HDDScan/

Excerpt from the site:

HDDScan is a freeware program for low-level HDD diagnostics.

HDDScan supports IDE/SATA/SCSI hard disk drives, RAID arrays, external USB/Firewire hard disks, flash cards.

The program can scan the surface, view SMART attributes, adjust AAM, APM (Power Management), etc.

Just found it today and it's nice! It's also a windows program so...double nice! Also, there is a handful of other tools on the same site (all free I believe):

http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/

 

[manias]

I have this problem with a Seagate 80gb 3.5"

>hdparm -K 1 hdb

hdb:
setting drive keep features to 1 (on)
HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(keepsettings) failed: Input/output error

With a Maxtor 120 gb 3.5" I used this fix, and now works correctly, but the Seagate stills freezing randomly. Any suggestion?

?? use seagate software
seagate is the only one who has it's own software to adjust HD properties even while in a (seagate) usb holder

 

[KyleA]

FYI - I just received a WD My Passport Essential 320GB (B7B) from newegg.com and I was able to use HDDScan to disable APM on the drive through USB!!! (no need to remove drive from the case). I then ran the Mario Kart test and left it running for 30mins and it resumed perfectly! I'm very happy as it works perfectly and I didn't need to void my warranty.

Also please note that I never tried it without disabling APM through HDDScan so I'm not sure if it would have worked without changing this setting: however, since it was easy to change through USB and HDDScan everyone should do it just incase as it takes no effort.

 

[KyleA]

After further review it looks like with HDDScan it does not save the APM settings after removing (powering off) the drive

After I plug it back in it is at its default at 128 in APM. However the test was still successful so either way it still works for me.

 

[Bladexdsl]

i think the usb ultimate has a built in fix that keeps your hard drive active

 

[PuddingSenator]

Tried using HDDScan to set Idle Timer to 330min on my WD 500GB MyBook. Went in and played HotD: Overkill and I'm still getting the dancin' mutants so I'm guessing those settings won't stick. Is there any other way to access these settings via USB? I tried popping open the MyBook but there doesn't seem to be any way to access the power/sata ports without disassembling the entire case, which I'm loathe to do.

Anybody else with a MyBook that can help me out with some tips on how they got their drive out of the case?

 

[KyleA]

Bladexdsl: Do you have a link that validates that claim? I couldn't find any info on it...

 

[Golfje]

Hey Guys,

I want to buy a Western Digital Elemens Desktop 640gb, have somebody tested this drive if it had also this freezing thing...

 

[SonyUSA]

There's all sorts of take-apart guides on youtube, just find one you like!

 

[Bladexdsl]

Bladexdsl: Do you have a link that validates that claim? I couldn't find any info on it...

it says it has something called LoPsT Mod
(HDD Timeout)

 

[PuddingSenator]

There's all sorts of take-apart guides on youtube, just find one you like!

Thanks for the tip, I managed to find one that helped me get my drive open and I was able to plug it into the computer. This is the message I'm getting when trying to run the command from the OP.

C:\Program Files\hdparm>hdparm -S251 hdf

hdf:
setting standby to 251 (5 hours + 30 minutes)
HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(setidle1) failed: Function not implemented

I'm sure I'm selecting the right drive: I checked the model number and serial number against those printed on the drive and they match. Am I doing something wrong?