I have on WD20EARS drive for a couple of weeks now and have been using it in self-built NAS. However, I noticed that the drive never stops spinning? I changed the idle time using wdidle3, but this does not seem to make any difference.
Is this normal behaviour for this drive?
I don’t mind the drive spinning all the time, if this is normal, but I do not like the noise it keeps making. I have an older IDE drive, which behaves like I would like a drive in a sometimes used NAS to behave: it spins up when accessed, but after a period of no use, it stops spinning and is 100% quiet.
WDIDLE3 won’t do anything for the drive’s spin down time, especially since it’s in an enclosure. If signal is continuously being sent to the drive, then the drive probably won’t spin down. The NAS box should have a user interface. See, if you can set some sort of sleep time for the drive.
Also, make sure the drive is securely fasten inside the case, or take the drive out the case, connect it internally to your pc and see if it’s still making that noise.
Yes, WDIDLE3 only changes the automatic head unload, not spin down, and does not work with external usb enclosures. If you want the drive to spin down, your OS has to tell it to do so, which again, does not work with external usb enclosures.
