Do I need to use SMART load/Unload utility on my 6TB WD Red?

WD Internal Drives Desktop & Mobile Drives
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Could someone please simplify what that utility does?

Is it still relevant (it’s version is from 2013)?

I’ve bought a new WD Red 6tb for my Synology NAS. I want it as a drive on which I install packages that are running in background every N minutes 24/7, so it’s not just an idle media storage. It’s also not a part of some RAID, just a separate independent volume. I also would prefer to leave performance intact because some packages might need it. I’m swapping my current WD 4tb Gold, which is noisy as hell, so it’s preferable so that noise wasn’t worsened by some utility either. Power consumption is a lower priority for me vs speed and noise.

What criteria does that utility impact? Speed/performance, noise, or is it just to normalize SMART counters and decrease HDD’s wearing out process?

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That looks like the WDIDLE3 utility. WD drives like to park their heads every 8 seconds by default, which can wear the drive out very quickly if it is busy all the time. There are several programs that claim to be able to adjust those settings, with varying success. Increasing the park delay should improve drive life and give a small performance boost. YMMV.

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Thanks for the info! Yep, it looks like a rebranded WDIDLE3 utility after all. Sadly I weren’t able to use it, cause I don’t have a desktop right now, and on the laptop this program doesn’t see my HDD via the USB adapter. But I will try to run a similar-purposed utility integrated in my Synology.

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