Bill_S wrote:
I’m sorry, I never said that the WDIDLE3 would turn off autopark. But it’s plain that this drive is not right for you, since you cannot turn of autopark. I’d recommend looking for something else.
I’m sorry, supra, I was referring to you in this post.
Bill_S wrote:
Bill_S wrote:
…But it’s plain that this drive is not right for you, _ since you cannot turn of autopark _.
I’m sorry, supra, I was referring to you in this post.
OK.
So you’re confirming that WD Caviar Green drives can NOT have “intelli-park” turned off?
supra wrote:
OK.
So you’re confirming that WD Caviar Green drives can NOT have “intelli-park” turned off?
Correct.
But in an earlier post in this forum you say that GP drives ARE in fact supported in WDidle 3, which you now are denying.
_ Sorry, but our agent didn’t know that this policy was just changed. Current WDIDLE3 works with the RE and GP drives listed below. _
_ RE Drives - WD1000FYPS-01ZKB0, WD7500AYPS-01ZKB0, WD7501AYPS-01ZKB0 _
_ GP Drives - WD20EADS, WD20EARS, WD15EADS, WD15EARS, WD10EADS, WD10EARS, WD8000AARS, WD7500AADS, WD7500AARS, WD6400AADS, WD6400AARS, WD5000AADS, WD5000AARS _
I have used the WDIDLE3 ver 1.05 utility successfully on a WD5000AADS drive. I used the " /d " switch to disable parking of the head. The drive now only parks the head after being powered off. I have noticed no problems and the drive is working fine.
I have used the WDIDLE3 utility on a WD10EADS Caviar Green 1TB to change the timeout to 300 (5 minutes).
I created a bootable USB flash drive using these instructions which means that MAC users etc could also use this method.
If it counts: I can confirm that setting parking time to 5 minutes almost stops LCC increase on WD20EARS drives.
It wasn’t a big figure - around 350 in 3 days of working - but after that it increase with maximum 10 in one week.
I got an WD elements 1.5TB just 5 days ago, and the LCC count has gone beyond 7000 !!!
I tried to run the program with cmd in windows 7 but /r command show nothing while /s command make the cmd crash.
I use AHCI mode so my Hiren usb can’t detect any of my drive.
Can you tell me how to fix this LCC things ? I would like to do this in windows environment if possible
edit: I tried it with my laptop in DOS, and unfortunately, the external drive can’t be recognize by wdidle3.
I recently ordered six WD20EARS for my Synology NAS (5 plus a spare). A version of the drive was listed on the hardware compatibility list, but I received a newer version (00mvwb0) of the drive that wasn’t on the list. Since I read about the LCC problem, I checked it after I got things up and running, and, sure enough, I was seeing 2 - 3 load cycles per minute while in idle.
I tried calling WD support to ask if WDIDLE3 would work with the new version of the WD20EARS drive (I didn’t find this thread before I called), but they were less than useless. I downloaded the WDIDLE3 v. 1.05 utility on a FREEDOS ISO and tried to set the idle3 timer to 300 s. I didn’t have any luck. I was getting ready to request a return for all six drives before I tried one last time. Although I had read somewhere that the tool should be run when in IDE mode (I used IDE compatibility mode), it finally worked for me while in ACHI mode.
I have not seen any increase in the LCC values in several hours of idle operation since I reset the timer in my drives, and the drives appear to be working properly. I am hopeful that this issue is resolved with no longer-term negative effects.
I am frustrated that WD will not give its customers a straightforward response to a serious issue like this.
As per Bill_S’s suggestions, I read Knowledge base articles, downloaded widle3, applied it via bootable USB stick.
I elected to disable the the IDLE3 timer - i.e, “wdidle3 /D”. It reported that the timeout (for all of my array drives) was set to something like 62.7 minutes.
I rebooted into Linux, and checked the count with smartctl -a.
I noticed that each time I now run smartctl, the Load Cycle Count increments +1 (but so far, does not seem to increment otherwise).
Questions:
Is this all normal? Is the “disable” function just setting things to a maximal timeout, such that it shouldn’t cause issues for the expected operational lifespan of the drive? And will this change persist indefinitely?
I’m not sure what normal is expected to be. Obviously, someone thought that parking the heads more regularly should be the norm.
I would assume that there is a maximum timeout.
I wouldn’t know whether it will cause issues for the operational lifespan of the drive. If head parking could be a potential issue (as you’re assuming) in wear and tear on the drive, then I would expect that what you did would help. However, if because the heads aren’t parked, the computer gets bumped or moved, then it’s entirely possible that you could have head contact with the platter. That would be disastrous to the drive and your data. So I would make sure that you have your data backed up regularly, no matter what.
The change should continue indefinitely.
Some more information for you regarding the use of wdidle3 w/ drive model WD8000AARS-00Y5B1:
Using wdidle3 /D had an unacceptable side effect. It caused the drives to slow down very dramatically, perhaps by a factor of 25x or so. In other words, the four drives that I’m using in a soft raid5 array went from an aggregate transfer rate of 40-50MB/sec to about 2MB/sec.
Using wdidle3 /S300 did not have such a side effect; this was a suggested value I found via Google for a major NAS technology provider.
WD may want to update the applicable online documentation.
Bill_S wrote:
I’m not sure what normal is expected to be. Obviously, someone thought that parking the heads more regularly should be the norm.
I would assume that there is a maximum timeout.
I wouldn’t know whether it will cause issues for the operational lifespan of the drive. If head parking could be a potential issue (as you’re assuming) in wear and tear on the drive, then I would expect that what you did would help. However, if because the heads aren’t parked, the computer gets bumped or moved, then it’s entirely possible that you could have head contact with the platter. That would be disastrous to the drive and your data. So I would make sure that you have your data backed up regularly, no matter what.
The change should continue indefinitely.
It looks like the LCC increases whenever my NAS goes into hibernate mode, which I am assuming corresponds to the heads parking. But instead of seeing 4320 load cycles per day, I now see only 5 - 10 cycles per day. At the previous rate of LCC increase, I would have reached 1.5 million load cycles in a year. I read that the designed number of load cycles is one million (the spec is only 300,000 cycles). At the rate my LCC was increasing with the default idle timer of 8 seconds, three years would correspond to over a factor of four greater load cycles than the design number of cycles. It doesn’t seem reasonable to expect that the drives would last the three year warranty period.
In any case, Bill S., I appreciate your feedback.
I’ve been using 5 WD20EARS-00M drives in a recently purchased Synology 1010+ nas, and my LCC is upwards of 157000+ on all of the drives.
A friend of mine just pointed me at this forum since he heard about an issue with this. The drives are running in a raid5 configuration on the nas, and with a MTB lcc rating of 300,000, i’m wondering, are these going to start throwing errors soon? I will admit, i’m not that familiar with hardware at this level to know what to expect, but and advice is welcome. In the meantime, I did turn off disk hibernation, with the hope that this decreases the LCC count.
thanks,
dw.
edit - here’s output from smartctl -a on my drives, looking at the LCC
terra> for device in a b c d e; do smartctl -a /dev/sd$device | grep Load_Cycle; done
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 148 148 000 Old_age Always - 157763
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 148 148 000 Old_age Always - 157712
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 148 148 000 Old_age Always - 158040
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 148 148 000 Old_age Always - 158080
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 148 148 000 Old_age Always - 157939
terra>
edit - august 30, 2010 -------
I shut my array down this past weekend, and booted freedos from a usb disk (with wdidle3 on it), and proceeded to -disable- the head parking feature on the drives. It let me do this with no problems, and my load cycle count has stopped increasing.
Prior to the switch, each drive was going up anywhere from 2-3 parks every 10 minutes, to sometimes around 30.
Mon Aug 23 18:04:15 ADT 2010
sda 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 148 148 000 Old_age Always - 157788
Mon Aug 23 18:14:16 ADT 2010
sda 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 148 148 000 Old_age Always - 157789
Mon Aug 23 18:24:19 ADT 2010
sda 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 148 148 000 Old_age Always - 157790
Mon Aug 23 18:34:20 ADT 2010
sda 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 148 148 000 Old_age Always - 157798
Mon Aug 23 18:44:21 ADT 2010
sda 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 148 148 000 Old_age Always - 157827
Mon Aug 23 18:54:22 ADT 2010
sda 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 148 148 000 Old_age Always - 157857
Mon Aug 23 19:04:24 ADT 2010
sda 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 148 148 000 Old_age Always - 157885
Mon Aug 23 19:14:25 ADT 2010
sda 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 148 148 000 Old_age Always - 157913
but after disabling it, they seem to have stopped competely
Mon Aug 30 09:29:27 ADT 2010
sda 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 144 144 000 Old_age Always - 169894
Mon Aug 30 09:29:41 ADT 2010
sda 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 144 144 000 Old_age Always - 169894
Mon Aug 30 09:39:42 ADT 2010
sda 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 144 144 000 Old_age Always - 169894
terra>
Thanks guys for pointers on getting this disabled, very much appreciated. I’ll post again after a month with an update.
Hi,
Like what seems to be many other Green users, after looking at my LCC for one of my drives, I am now a little concerned.
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 095 095 000 Old_age Always - 4118
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 001 001 000 Old_age Always - 598022
I have an WD5000AADS
Looking at http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=5357
"Affected Models:
WD20EADS, WD20EARS, WD15EADS, WD15EARS, WD10EADS, WD10EARS, WD8000AARS, WD7500AADS, WD7500AARS, WD6400AADS, WD6400AARS, WD5000AADS, WD5000AARS
…
The following article contains the download location: Answer ID 3263: The S.M.A.R.T Attribute 193 Load/Unload counter continue to increase for the WD RE2-GP SATA II hard drives="
Folling that link to http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=3263&p_sid=T5UuUY8k&p_lva=5357
" Affected Models:
WD1000FYPS-01ZKB0, WD7500AYPS-01ZKB0, WD7501AYPS-01ZKB0
…
Please click on this link, RE2GP Idle Mode Update Utility, to download the utility"
That link goes to http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=609&sid=113&lang=en
"This firmware modifies the behavior of the drive to wait longer before positioning the heads in their park position and turning off unnecessary electronics. This utility is designed to upgrade the firmware of the following hard drives: WD1000FYPS-01ZKB0, WD7500AYPS-01ZKB0, WD7501AYPS-01ZKB0.
CAUTION: Do not attempt to run this software on any hard drives other than what is listed above."
So my questions are
http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-701229.pdf says
"Reliability/Data Integrity
Load/unload cycles (3) 300,000
(3) Controlled unload at ambient condition"
It’s nearly at double the rated 300k and am counting multiple cycles per minute. Not long now till it actually hits 600k.
http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=5357 also says
“(drive has been validated to 1 million load/unload cycles without issue)”
If I leave the drive as is, it will reach 1 million cycles within 12 months of it’s life
The drive is running between 33 and 40 deg C. Although this is well below the opperating temperature of 60 deg C (as per the pdf), it does say 300K cycles at ambient conditions. What are those amibent conditions? Is the cycle count less than 300K when the drive is run at 35 or 40 deg C?
The download page states “This utility is designed to upgrade the firmware of the following hard drives: WD1000FYPS-01ZKB0, WD7500AYPS-01ZKB0, WD7501AYPS-01ZKB0. CAUTION: Do not attempt to run this software on any hard drives other than what is listed above”
The drive is less than 6 months old and runs 24/7. Im worried that this drive will not last the full 3 years the warranty offers due to it’s high cycle count, but the warranty will be invalidated if I use wdidle
Can you please advise?
In answer to your questions:
1) No. There is no solid statistic of failure after 300,000. However, I would always keep a backup of your data, just in case I’m full of ■■■■.
2) No. It will not affect your warranty. That, I’m confident about.
Howdy all
Guys I know may be this is irrelevant question but I don’t have somewhere else to go so please bear with me.
My question is how I can get trained by WD professionals “how to repair HD?”
I am computer guy; working as an assistant IT Manager in big company. My habit is to learn all the time very keen to gain more knowledge all the time.
I hope some one should help me in this. After all you all are professionals.
Thanks in advance.
Best regards
Xaroom :wink:
“Tariq Zarrar”
oh, here’s my part of this sad, pathethic story:
my MB is GA-MA78G-DS3H (revision 1.001, bios F9d), UPS is APC Back-UPS ES 525.
i have^Whad 5 WD drives:
WD15EARS-00Z5B1, 80.00A80 (about 0.5-0.75 year old, system is here) 3742 Power_On_Hours, 105319 Load_Cycle_Count
WD3000JS-00PDB0, 21.00M21 (~4-6 years old **bleep**) 28623 Power_On_Hours, no LCC counter, 1 realocation (event) of 20 sectors some years ago
WD10EADS-65L5B1, 01.01A01 (~1.5 year old) 9963 Power_On_Hours, 421 Load_Cycle_Count, 1 uncorrectable, 1 pending
WD10EADS-00M2B0, 01.00A01 (~1 year old) 7316 Power_On_Hours, 54863 Load_Cycle_Count, 2 pending
and 3 year old WD2500AAJS-00VTA0 (i know, it doesn’t have that “feature”. it was used extensively all 3 years with no rest 24/7 in contrary to other ones which just sit there with occasional read), which decided to die few days ago in same fashion as next candidate for garbage bin.
i will tell now about this candidate and the rest but for now - try and guess which of those drives is also on edge of dying.
which one says:
[699.152271] XFS mounting filesystem sdb1[701.903832] ata2.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x9 SErr 0x80000 action 0x0[701.903836] ata2.00: irq_stat 0x40000008[701.903838] ata2: SError: { 10B8B }[701.903842] ata2.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED[701.903847] ata2.00: cmd 60/00:18:8a:46:38/04:00:3a:00:00/40 tag 3 ncq 524288 in[701.903848] res 41/40:00:ec:47:38/00:00:3a:00:00/40 Emask 0x409 (media error) <F>[701.903851] ata2.00: status: { DRDY ERR }[701.903853] ata2.00: error: { UNC }[701.903860] ata2: hard resetting link[702.361027] ata2: softreset failed (device not ready)[702.361031] ata2: applying SB600 PMP SRST workaround and retrying[702.514037] ata2: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)[702.526095] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133[702.526107] ata2: EH complete[705.151245] ata2.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x1 SErr 0x0 action 0x0[705.151248] ata2.00: irq_stat 0x40000008[705.151252] ata2.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED[705.151258] ata2.00: cmd 60/00:00:8a:46:38/04:00:3a:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 524288 in[705.151259] res 41/40:00:ec:47:38/00:00:3a:00:00/40 Emask 0x409 (media error) <F>[705.151261] ata2.00: status: { DRDY ERR }[705.151263] ata2.00: error: { UNC }[705.155871] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133[705.155880] ata2: EH complete[707.766908] ata2.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x1 SErr 0x0 action 0x0[707.766911] ata2.00: irq_stat 0x40000008[707.766915] ata2.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED[707.766921] ata2.00: cmd 60/00:00:8a:46:38/04:00:3a:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 524288 in[707.766922] res 41/40:00:ec:47:38/00:00:3a:00:00/40 Emask 0x409 (media error) <F>[707.766924] ata2.00: status: { DRDY ERR }[707.766926] ata2.00: error: { UNC }[707.771945] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133[707.771958] ata2: EH complete[710.382561] ata2.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x1 SErr 0x0 action 0x0[710.382564] ata2.00: irq_stat 0x40000008[710.382568] ata2.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED[710.382574] ata2.00: cmd 60/00:00:8a:46:38/04:00:3a:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 524288 in[710.382575] res 41/40:00:ec:47:38/00:00:3a:00:00/40 Emask 0x409 (media error) <F>[710.382577] ata2.00: status: { DRDY ERR }[710.382579] ata2.00: error: { UNC }[710.387019] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133[710.387027] ata2: EH complete[712.998224] ata2.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x1 SErr 0x0 action 0x0[712.998228] ata2.00: irq_stat 0x40000008[712.998231] ata2.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED[712.998237] ata2.00: cmd 60/00:00:8a:46:38/04:00:3a:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 524288 in[712.998238] res 41/40:00:ec:47:38/00:00:3a:00:00/40 Emask 0x409 (media error) <F>[712.998241] ata2.00: status: { DRDY ERR }[712.998242] ata2.00: error: { UNC }[713.003094] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133[713.003102] ata2: EH complete[715.613926] ata2.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x1 SErr 0x0 action 0x0[715.613930] ata2.00: irq_stat 0x40000008[715.613933] ata2.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED[715.613939] ata2.00: cmd 60/00:00:8a:46:38/04:00:3a:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 524288 in[715.613941] res 41/40:00:ec:47:38/00:00:3a:00:00/40 Emask 0x409 (media error) <F>[715.613943] ata2.00: status: { DRDY ERR }[715.613945] ata2.00: error: { UNC }[715.619139] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133[715.619153] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled sense code[715.619155] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=0x00 driverbyte=0x08[715.619158] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense Key : 0x3 [current] [descriptor][715.619162] Descriptor sense data with sense descriptors (in hex):[715.619163] 72 03 11 04 00 00 00 0c 00 0a 80 00 00 00 00 00[715.619169] 3a 38 47 ec[715.619172] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] ASC=0x11 ASCQ=0x4[715.619175] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: cdb[0]=0x28: 28 00 3a 38 46 8a 00 04 00 00[715.619181] end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 976766956[715.619206] I/O error in filesystem ("sdb1") meta-data dev sdb1 block 0x3a383a4b ("xlog_bread") error 5 buf count 209715
?
~5 years old WD3000, you think ? WRONG !
~1.5 year old WD10EADS ? wrong again.
it’s ~1 year old WD10EADS with magnificent “advanced extended power saving feature” bull**bleep**.
saw LCC difference on same model ? or is it almost “same” ?
actually, some time ago those two were “falling out” synchronly, sometimes brought back by drive auto hard reset via kernel or something, sometimes don’t. after playing with wdidle 2 month ago (which was a bummer to find, as you may know) they (two 10EADSs) stopped to “fall out”… until today when WD10EADS-00M2B0 even stopped being detected by BIOS from time to time :\
i don’t know if it will “calm down” again nor i have space to back up data, nor i have shop’s 10 month warranty anymore (which would not helped since i don’t have space). thank you, WD’s “engineers”-creators of such wonderfull feature.
no doubt the next will be other 10EADS, then 15EARS, and only then - the oldest son of the b^Hfactory…
as always - you going with the lowest bidder and this is what you get. even if hardware itself is ok at first.
by the way - after playing with wdidle, LCC stopped rising on them at any time other than per each power cycle.
what sould i do now ?
“shoot” them out of their missery and drop them in a garbage bin ? beg for indulgence of local WD representation and ask them for replacement of both 10EADS, forgetting about data, and hoping that new ones will not fail same way ?
i believe its about ~100km from my place and drive there (twice at least) will cost 1/3 of new drive (a pun !) and i was collecting that data for long [delete] time 
not cool, WD, not cool at all.
PS: i also “evaluated” and “appreciated” other WD15EARS (which was not “falling out” yet) feature - LYING about its physical sector size. oh, guys, i cannot express with words even in my native language how it was “enjoyable” to manually correctly allign 4 partitions on it and to calculate all this ■■■■. finding tools with option to ignore DOS resctrictions was just a beggining… and all in a sake of even more alienated WinXP users. but it’s a different story.
PPS: it would be a good idea to fix your forum’s “spoiler” tag not to fail with “Your post has been changed because invalid HTML was found in the message body. The invalid HTML has been removed.” obscure message.
it also ugly and hurts eyes, every letter written here is painfull, litteraly, not counting cut open finger (while detaching drive’s cords, so drive would not injure itself further). so much pain… for my own money >:{
Great SCOTT,
This situation has gotten out of hand, at least for WD20EARS owners! Look I’ve done over two weeks of research prior to updating my hard drive with “Wdidle3”. I actually bought my 2TB hard drive knowing that the LCC problem existed… Call me a risk taker… Actually smarter than you think, I bought the drive, formatted, partitioned, threw some data on it to see if it worked quick, and put the thing away until I found a solid solution. So as I mentioned before I did some serious research and found a simple yet effective way of fixing the 8 second idle time, to 5 mins which could potentially expand the life of your hard drive.
Here are my findings with absolute instructions on how you can create a USB DOS bootable stick, with “Wdidle3” on it. It’s fairly simple with pictures and all. I’ve read many way’s on how to create a DOS cd, USB DOS stick, etc. But they were all too complicated, and contained links to expired pages. My method is by far the EASIEST you will ever encounter. 5 mins idle time is recommended by Synology, and also the max idle time on the “Wdidle3” 30-300 second setting info. I wouldn’t disable head parking indefinitely because head parking can STILL protect the drive. For those of you wondering the data I had on the hard drive did survive after the “Wdidle3” update [hehehe of course it would, it’s just a firmware update]. In any case here’s a link to my well thought out instructions:
HOW TO CREATE A DOS BOOTABLE USB STICK CONTAINING WDIDLE3
[What's The Optimal Time In Seconds For Hard Drives To Park Heads? - Hardware, Components and Peripherals](What's The Optimal Time In Seconds For Hard Drives To Park Heads? - Hardware, Components and Peripherals view findpost p 1896472)
I’m an 11 year computer technician with A+ Certification knowledge…
P.s.
WD you totally ■■■■ for this, sure I bought my massive 2TB WD20EARS for $109. But at the cost of two weeks research… & for Pete’s sake update your “Wdidle3” download page with information about other supported hard drives. From my experience the drive is quiet, fast in my Nexstar MX USB hdd enclosure, and really heavy! Oh did I forget to mention the fact that I also had to REALIGN the darn thing after formatting/partitioning the hard drive when I first purchased it for use under Win XP? Geez…
hehehe of course it would, it’s just a firmware update
its not even a firmware upgrade, just a tweak/patch which sets the idle 3 parameter to an user-defined value.
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