WD10EARX Clicking voice when idle, Intellipark problem

Hello!

I recently bought the ReadyNAS Ultra 4 and loaded it up with 4x1TB Western Digital WD10EARX Green. I run the disks in X-raid2 (Raid 5 on 4 disks) and the performance is great.

Now, the “problem” I have encountered is the same as many others have with the Western Digital Green-series. The drives make a clicking sound when they are idle which apparently is caused by the power saving feature Intellipark. (See link)

http://community.wdc.com/t5/Desktop/WD10EARS-makes-quot-clicking-quot-noise-when-idle/td-p/172162

Now, there is a solution, which is to either disable Intellipark or extend the time period before it is activated. Default value is at an aggressive 8 seconds (!).

http://www.ngohq.com/news/19805-critical-design-flaw-found-in-wd-caviar-green-hdds.html

My question now though is how I apply this fix to the disks without tearing down the raid array? Have anyone managed to solve this with the disks still in the ReadyNAS?

Thank you kindly!

Hi well you should have read the pdf file for the green drives, those green drives are not ment for raid and will drop.

WD Caviar Green Hard Drives are not recommended for and are not warranted for use in RAID environments utilizing Enterprise HBAs and/or expanders and in multi-bay chassis, as they are not designed for, nor tested in, these specific types of RAID applications. For all Business Critical RAID applications, please consider WD’s Enterprise Hard Drives. As for the intellipark feature the drives where designed to do that and will run normally. I would suggest a none green drive to get rid of the clicking.

Hello. Thanks for your answer. However, I dont understand your recommendation. “Everyone” is using and recommending western green in home NAS applications. I have never heard that it’s not recommended.

I have now solved this problem with wdidle3.exe disabling the intellipark timer completley. I did however do it the hard way by removing the disks from the NAS, mounting them one at the time in a computer, booting DOS and run wdidle3.exe /D

GREAT JOB MATE

if you are lucky they will work great now :slight_smile: