I can confirm that using idle3-tools stopped dramatic Load_Cycle_Count increasing.
Be aware that installing it voids your NAS drive warranty as WD seems to not like anything users install on their own.
So consider it carefully especially if you not familiar with Linux.
Personally I don’t care about that, becouse I did so much modifications already on drive and using it for much more than WD planned 
If you want to do this here is how I did it on my MyBook Live 2TB (WD20EARS drive inside)
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Go to http://idle3-tools.sourceforge.net/ and read whole thing to understand what it is.
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Log in to your MyBookLive drive using root account.
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Download idle3-tools from this URL using wget.
wget http://ignum.dl.sourceforge.net/project/idle3-tools/idle3-tools-0.9.tgz
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tar zxvf idle3-tools-0.9.tgz
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cd idle3-tools-0.9
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nano Makefile
This step opens Makefile in text editor, find 2 following lines and change them like this:
CC = gcc
STRIP = strip
Save changed Makefile with same name (overwriting existing).
- make
If it displays that make not found, you need to install it using apt-get install make
Probably in this case gcc is missing too. You can also install that with apt-get install gcc
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Run make again and it should compile idle3-tools.
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Run ./idle3ctl -h
It will display you this:
MyBookLive:~/idle3-tools-0.9# ./idle3ctl -h
idle3ctl v0.9 - Read, Set or disable the idle3 timer of Western Digital drives
Copyright (C) 2011 Christophe Bothamy
Usage: idle3ctl [options] device
Options:
-h : displat help
-V : show version and exit immediately
-v : version
--force : force even if no Western Digital HDD are detected
-g : get raw idle3 timer value
-g100 : get idle3 timer value as wdidle3 v1.00 value
-g103 : get idle3 timer value as wdidle3 v1.03 value
-d : disable idle3 timer
-s<value> : set idle3 timer raw value
MyBookLive:~/idle3-tools-0.9#
10) Run ./idle3ctl -g /dev/sda
It will show your current setting, which means head parking every 8seconds (we want to change that).
MyBookLive:/shares/Public/idle3-tools-0.9# ./idle3ctl -g /dev/sda
Idle3 timer set to 80 (0x50)
Value 80 means 8 seconds.
11) Now take a look on table of bottom section of webpage http://idle3-tools.sourceforge.net/
As you can see , maximum value is 255 or you can completely disable head parking using this:
./idle3ctl -d /dev/sda
BUT I really don’t know if it is good idea to disable it completely!!! It might screw up your stand-by mode setting
(which you can change from 10mins to more time in WD Webinterface for Live drive) and add more heat to drive and
more $ to power bill.
My drive uses 10minute stand-by time, so I think that head parking timer should be set in this case less than
10minutes, so I changed it like this:
./idle3ctl -s 145 /dev/sda
Which results in 510second (8.5min) timer.
- To make new setting work, you need to power-cycle your NAS drive.
I used this command to do this:
poweroff && exit
After that, you need to power-off and power-on plug from socket becouse there is no Powerbutton on Live drive.
Then wait after drive boots, and voila ! No more dramatic counter increasing every 8secs.
You can test that by executing this:
smartctl -A /dev/sda|grep Load_Cycle_Count
After minute, run that command again and you will see that Load Count stays the same.
FINALLY !!!
)
