The EARS are KNOWN for this. They’re a bit odd in NAS boxes that wake the drive up a lot.
Don’t know if that’ll actually translate into actual lifespan or not… It’s not like it’ll self-destruct when it reaches 300K… But, WD does need to address this by changing the IDLE timer on the drive…
This is known issue and potencial problem for WD MyBooks… and WD does NOT DO ANYTHING about it… they just ignore this potencial problem… Fact is that WD EARS drives park their head every 8secs (CRAZY VALUE !) and for servers like WD MyBook this value is way too short… Normally you could change it using ‘hdparm’ command which is built-in your NAS, but WD disabled or limited it’s funcionality for unknown reasons (c’mon WD… that’s just stupid).
Basicly, to change that 8sec value you sadly have only 1 option… take HDD out of NAS (in such way breaking warranty), connecting it to windows PC and using some utility from WD (how ironicly?) for Windows file system to change (increase of course) or disable that head parking.
Here is my current load cycle count on WD My Book, which can be viewed using following command from root account: smartctl -a -q noserial -d sat /dev/sda
Thanks for the info. I have spent some time searching the net about idle3 timer and WD green drives. Hmm…
WD - can you release a Linux version or the source code for the WDIDLE3 program? Or/and include an option in the web-interface on the My Book Live to set the idle3 timer?
I did a test myself setting the idle3 timer to a higher value - just one bye guess. I does solve the Load Cycle count problem. But it requiers that one opens the box and has a PC with a sata-connector to do the setting. I used the FreeDos/Balder on an USB stick including the wdidle3.exe program. I have tried changing from 8 to 60 seconds. The results are as following:
This might not be the optimal value (too high) and it will give a (small) extra power consumption and heat. As can be seen from the results the LCC now has dropped from around 12 to 1 pr hour.
BTW - cooling the device more might be an issue. The room temperature is 21 deg celsius.
“Thanks WD” for not fixing this…