Romex Software Forum

Hi Dev.

It's been a long time since i am testing your great products from time to time days your made the awesome fancycache until the latest alpha 4 build. the problem that i see which starting from primocache is that my PCs hard drives are clicking so bad every seconds when i enable Defer write feature, and that's thing prevent me from buying your product. Fancycache doesn't have this bug btw. is there any solution or workaround for this? thanks in advanced.

P.S I tried a lot of tools to manage my HDs APM but all are failed.

Normally you'd only see a HDD "click" when it is parking the heads, or when the heads are resetting (i.e. in the event of a SMART failure of some type). Have you fully diagnosed the clicking drives to see if they report SMART errors, or have an unusual sleep period set on them (like ~5 seconds of inactivity)?

Your defer write time may be too long also, allowing the drives to park their heads, then waking them up to write, over an over. Try a shorter defer write time (~5-10 seconds) to see if it helps.

Support may have additional thoughts - normally when a HDD clicks for me, I know it's just about time (or past time) to replace it.

Thanks for the reply Jaga

The Hard Disks are not defective, no SMART errors at all. and as I mentioned in my 1st post the clicking is starting only when I activate Defer-Write, without it enabled no clicking 0% ..

I tried to change the time and even @ 1 sec i can hear the clicking .. I just tested it on 2 of our shop laptops and they are almost new and i hear the clicking on both computers ..

@Az7, which version of PrimoCache are you using?

support wrote: ↑Thu Jul 09, 2020 7:24 am @Az7, which version of PrimoCache are you using?

I am testing PrimoCache v4.0.0 Alpha build now, and it is clicking HD heads so bad, Also this weird clicking started since PrimoCache v2, with FancyCache & PrimoCache 1.0.1 no clicking with Defer-Write enabled.

Could you tell me your HDD brand and model?

support wrote: ↑Fri Jul 10, 2020 3:03 am Could you tell me your HDD brand and model?

This one on a laptop I use usually for testing :

Brand : TOSHIBA
Model : MQ01ABD100
Firmware : AX0R5J
Features : S.M.A.R.T., APM, 48bit LBA, NCQ ATA8-ACS SATA/600

@Az7, I'm sorry for the late reply. We have analyzed this problem and have known what may cause this problem. Now we are waiting for the same model of the drive to verify our guesswork and find a solution for this problem. I will update the thread here when we have any news.

PS. We think the problem is related to APM. Did you try the CrystalDiskInfo tool to set APM?

support wrote: ↑Mon Jul 20, 2020 4:10 am @Az7, I'm sorry for the late reply. We have analyzed this problem and have known what may cause this problem. Now we are waiting for the same model of the drive to verify our guesswork and find a solution for this problem. I will update the thread here when we have any news.

PS. We think the problem is related to APM. Did you try the CrystalDiskInfo tool to set APM?

Thanks @support

Yes I changed APM settings via CrystalDiskInfo, I set APM value to FEh but the problem still exist . Also I double checked & i installed FancyCache disk & volume and PrimoCache 1.0.1 with defer write on 60+ sec. without any problems, When I return to v2,3,4 clicking back .

Could you try setting APM to 0?