Scared about clicking of my WD 500GB Scorpio Blue clicks...

I installed the hdapm utility, as some advised around the net, and so far it seems the clicks went away. I don't know if this is bringing more "stress" to the hard drive, shortening its life span...

Have you had any, good or bad, experience with hdapm?

Never heard of it. The level of APM is a temporary adjustment in the firmware of the hard drive, this adjustment is lost when the disk is powered down and it is thus necessary to redo this at each for each start up.

To install hdapm so it is launched at each start-up, it is necessary to copy hdapm to the hard drive (/usr/local/bin is advised) and to copy the file hdapm.plist in /Library/LaunchDaemons.

It will be can be necessary to you to edit hdapm.plist with the desired parameters; the default settings are: the repertory where hdapm is /usr/local/bin, the hard drive is regulated on the first (disk0) and the level of APM is the maximum.

You can simply copy the file hdapm into /usr/local/bin file if you want to avoid modifying Plist.

Simplest way to reach these files is to use the Go/go to the file and to copy/paste this address before validating.

Yeah, I also created a crontab script to make sure that at each rebook hdapm starts up. I just noted that using hdapm, the battery drains quicker, so I look around for extra info about the issue.

Apparently the power management on Western Digital drives, but also on others, clashes with the one installed on many laptops. This happens also on Windows and WD was aware of it so they developed a utility called Wdidle3, but it's a DOS utility so I don't know ho to run it.

Apparently Wdidle3 fixed the issue and maybe it acts at a different (deeper? Better?) level than hdapm. Wonder if anybody in the Mac community managed to test it.

I am still using hdapm and clicks/hard drive's head parking is almost none now. Unfortunately battery doesn't last long because the hd spins the whole time. I've read that disabling the Sudden Motion Sensor on the MacBook Pro might be a solution. I know how to do it, but can it be a real solution?

Or, eventually, the real solution is to pass to a Fujitsu? :)

I just had the same wd drive die on my wife's Lenovo. The HDD make repeated clicking/chattering noises and for all intents and purposes was dead. I put the drive into the second sata bay of my Clevo laptop and windows disk manager showed it was reconogized as a drive but could not register or access any volumes. This told me it most likely wasnt the HDD's circuit board.

Im pretty gifted at fixing things so with nothing to lose I removed the HDD's cover which revealed the platters. I noticed the head was parked in the middle of the platter. Very carefully I swung the head assembly back to its power off position. I buttoned everything back up, powered it on and to my suprise it was working!!! I scanned the disk for errors and none were found. Even thoigh I had an incredible stroke of luck Im taking no chances, Im making recovery discs and will probably install a SSD.