Rem0o
V221 portable version making constant access to storage
I've installed the portable version of FanControl on a mechanical HDD in my system. When I upgraded to V221 today I started noticing my HDD repeatedly making a small noise at regular interval - it's the sort of noise the HDD makes when it is being accessed. As soon as I exited FanControl the HDD noise stopped. When I reverted back to V220 there was also no noise (the expected behaviour on my system).
The current behaviour on V221 is not desirable from my perspective since the frequency of access to the HDD is such that would prompt me to worry about additional wear on my HDD. The noise itself is also audible enough to be somewhat irritating.
I vaguely remember there was also a similar issue in a previous version of FanControl, but that was quite a while ago and I can no longer remember which version it was.
This is a LHM issue(-ish). See LHM PR #1645 for more detail.
In short, for some HDDs, SMART attr reading request triggers that clicking sound.
I'm discussing this with the LHM author. In the mean time, you may replace LibreHardwareMonitorLib.dll with the one in the v220 package to "almost" eliminate (1 click per min rather than 1 click per sec) the issue.
@hsyhsw Thanks for your reply. Much appreciated. So according to your reply the "click" was also there in V220, but that it's just at a much slower frequency? I mean, I'm actually very happy with V220. So if the click was already there in V220 I certainly didn't notice it. If I replace the LibreHardwareMonitorLib.dll like you suggested it's the same as going back to the old behaviour?
Yeah. It was there but with much less frequency so usually just unnoticeable. You can also test with other tools like crystaldiskinfo. Refreshing smart attrs for affected hdd makes that drive immediately clicks.
Also, yes, if you were good with v220, replace the dll with the old one.
So I downloaded the archive for V220 and replaced the dll in my V221 folder with the one from the archive and it spitted out some errors (something about the sensors not refreshing or something like that).
Luckily I do have a backup of the portable version of V219 and I replaced the dll with the one in my V219 backup and it worked.
I checked the version number of the dll in my V219 backup and the one in the V220 archive and they seemed to be the same? Not sure why the one from the V220 archive didn't work. Oh well, at least it seems to be back to its old ways now.
My god I was losing my mind over this until I found it's FanControl doing it.
Thing is, in my case, it's not doing this all the time. Usually it only starts clicking my archive HDD when system is idle for some time and then it's ticking every second. It wasn't doing this after system restarts and neither it's doing now after FanControl restart. There's something broken in it that it starts doing that in such crazy low intervals over period of time as system is idle or something.
Oh man, that clicking noise every second my HDD causes when Fan control is running is making me crazy. it hought my drive is going to explode. I searched everywhere what app is causing this, but noting reported disk activity. Can we somehow disable a specifc sensor from being read? I only found the option to completely disable all Storage sensors
Downgrading the LHM dll worked for now. I can live with it clicking once every minute, but not with it ticking every second like a clock.
HWInfo dev also suspects some HDD firmware is dealing the monitoring command weirdly. Technically, this is not a fancontrol, nor LHM issue. I've opened a discussion #3129 with detailed explanation and possible resolutions for this. Please let me know what you think.
HWInfo dev also suspects some HDD firmware is dealing the monitoring command weirdly. Technically, this is not a fancontrol, nor LHM issue. I've opened a discussion #3129 with detailed explanation and possible resolutions for this. Please let me know what you think.
Considering this wasn't happening before and HDD's don't get firmware updates the way SSD's do, it's hard to claim "it's not out fault" when issue suddenly happens through software updates and not anything related to hardware itself.
It's especially stupid because I use FanControl to control the fan speed on my SSD which is noisy at higher RPM, but I have the curve set for it to ramp up only when temperature is higher, which means other fans are also ramped up meaning I don't hear the SSD fan anyway. Now I can't use that anymore because I had to disable monitoring of temperature of disks in FanControl because clicking was driving me nuts. So I have fan forced to 50% to be silent and it's not cooling as good as it would with auto RPM.
it's hard to claim "it's not out fault" when issue suddenly happens
No I'm not. Unexpected behavior unfortunately showed up and we are finding the solution. Also, there are some workarounds suggested in this thread. Chill mate!
I hope "app defined interval" will only affect the sensor you've selected in FanControl. Because I only use my NVMe SSD sensor to control active cooling fan on it and it was triggering my HDD which I wasn't even monitoring by FanControl in ANY way. None of this would even be a problem if FanControl was doing that by default, only triggering sensor of a drive you're actually monitoring by FanControl. Instead it was triggering ALL sensors of ALL drives regardless if I was even using them or not in any way inside FanControl.
V222 has spinning hard disk back at the 1 minute interval.
Thanks for update, though as I asked before, why does FanControl need to pull data from sensors that you don't even use? I don't use ANY of HDD sensor data for ANYTHING in FanControl yet it keeps pinging those sensors. Why? I want FanControl to only ping sensor of my SSD that I do have in use inside FanControl because it has active fan cooling and I'm controlling it using FanControl.
If FanControl only polled sensors that I actually use I'd not even have this problem in the first place.
If FanControl only polled sensors that I actually use I'd not even have this problem in the first place.
They know that. Stuff was just initially designed like that. And as they told in another issue https://github.com/Rem0o/FanControl.Releases/discussions/3129, it is a LOT of work to change that now. Possible: very likely (I don't know the code); feasible as a long therm goal: maybe; as a quick fix: no
If FanControl only polled sensors that I actually use I'd not even have this problem in the first place.
They know that. Stuff was just initially designed like that. And as they told in another issue #3129, it is a LOT of work to change that now. Possible: very likely (I don't know the code); feasible as a long therm goal: maybe; as a quick fix: no
Maybe not as quick fix, but pinging 45 sensors in the system all at once just because they are available and existing surely isn't cheap in long term and is in fact damaging to hardware. My HDD is meant for cold storage. I don't use it for anything but storing bulk, everything operational is on SSDs. I basically only wake it up if I copy something to it. Pinging its SMART sensor data in intervals means it's waking it up and spinning it up CONSTANTLY for absolutely no damn reason other than me using SSD sensor and it's for some reason also pinging ALL the other drives in my system. That's pretty stupid and wasteful design.
If you really need it bad why don't you open a nice polite discussion here as the first step to a good conversation? You can do it without f**ing people, really.
If you really need it bad why don't you open a nice polite discussion here as the first step to a good conversation? You can do it without f**ing people, really.
Because apparently telling it as it is is apparently "being an asshole". Sure buddy. Sure.
Hi,
Latest version basically reverted back the old behavior of 1 poll per minute for spinning hard disks. This is a "quick fix" meant to buy time to think and design a better solution in the software. "Per sensor" updates would be tricky because sometimes sensor data all comes from a same "update package", but "per physical hardware component" is very doable and would indeed be a nice performance optimization. I will look into it.
"per physical hardware component" is very doable and would indeed be a nice performance optimization. I will look into it.
Thank you. I'm also affected by this in a similar way, I have a SSD I need to monitor for temperature (under the GPU...), but the HDD used for archive absolutely does not need to be polled. At least the constant clicking is reduced now and I can run FanControl again.
