Hardware question (WD20EARX HD)

[Tunes]

Thanks for the clear explanation Ron. I had no idea what the issue was, and you have illuminated what's a problem, and what's not.

Your posts are always to-the-point.

[Ron Olsen]

While the WD30EZRS drives in my new VBA did not exhibit the Load Cycle Count problem, the WD20EADS drive in my old VBA did have the problem.

On the old VBA,

smartctl -a /dev/sda | egrep "Power.On|Load"

showed

  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   072   072   000    Old_age   Always       -       20471
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   125   125   000    Old_age   Always       -       227585

Thus the Load Cycle rate was 227585/20471 = 11.1/hr = 1 Load Cycle every 5.4 minutes.

So I decided to do the wdidle3 fix as described in http://www.ngohq.com/news/19805-crit...reen-hdds.html.

I downloaded the wdidle3.iso, burned it to a CD, and rebooted the old VBA from the CD. This boots into FreeDOS, and then asks if you want to change the date or time (they were OK). I then entered

wdidle3 /r

to check the current Idle3 Timeout, and got the following:

WDIDLE3 Version 1.05
Copyright (c) 2005-2009 Western Digital Corp.
Configure Idle3.
Model: WDC WD20EADS-0052B0
Serial: WD-WCAVY0975718
Idle3 Timer is enabled and set to 12.800 seconds.

I then entered

wdidle3 /s300

and got

...
Idle3 Timer is enabled and set to 300 seconds (5.0 minutes).

I again entered

wdidle3 /r

to verify that the Idle3 Timer was indeed set to 300 seconds.

I then removed the CD from the optical drive and rebooted the VBA.

After the reboot, I logged in and entered

smartctl -a /dev/sda | egrep "Power.On|Load"

and got

  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   072   072   000    Old_age   Always       -       20473
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   125   125   000    Old_age   Always       -       227606

Redoing this command 14 hours later gave

  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   072   072   000    Old_age   Always       -       20487
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   125   125   000    Old_age   Always       -       227606

showing that the Load Cycle Count had not changed in the last 14 hours. So the problem is fixed. The Load Cycle Count is not increasing, whereas before the fix it was increasing at the rate of 11.1 Load Cycles/hr.

I was not having any problems with this drive prior to the fix, but perhaps this fix will reduce the chance of drive failure by not doing excessive Load Cycles. I suggest that users with Western Digital drives use the above smartctl command to see what's happening with the drive, and apply the wdidle3 fix if the Load Cycle rate shows multiple load cycles per hour.

[waltonb]

Cool... thanks Ron!

My HP microserver has 4 x WD20EARS 2tb drives. All of them were set
to an 8.0 second idle timer.

Followed your directions, all works. I didn't know I had this issue.
Using a single WDIDLE command updated idle timer for all 4 drives.

Only caveat is that running the WDIDLE3.EXE seemed to crash FREEDOS on
my machine. Every incantation wedged up the machine, so between each
WD operation I needed to reboot the CD.

-bruce.

[Ron Olsen]

Cool... thanks Ron!

My HP microserver has 4 x WD20EARS 2tb drives. All of them were set
to an 8.0 second idle timer.

Followed your directions, all works. I didn't know I had this issue.
Using a single WDIDLE command updated idle timer for all 4 drives.

Only caveat is that running the WDIDLE3.EXE seemed to crash FREEDOS on
my machine. Every incantation wedged up the machine, so between each
WD operation I needed to reboot the CD.

-bruce.

Thanks for the info, Bruce. I also noticed problems entering multiple commands in FreeDOS, and had to reboot the CD several times to get through the process. I thought it was a local problem on my VBA, but apparently it is not.

I wonder if there is another ISO somewhere that contains wdidle3.exe that does not exhibit this problem. I've also seen instructions for creating your own ISO with wdidle3.exe, so that may be another alternative to the wdidle3.iso I downloaded from http://www.ngohq.com/news/19805-crit...reen-hdds.html

[Roger]

I have a 2TB VBA supplied by Small Green Computer.

When I checked the load cycle, I got:

Power on - 5167 h (~215 days)
Load Count - 123,082

This gives about 24 load cycles/h.

I followed Ron Olsen's instructions to increase the wait time for parking the heads to 300 sec, and that seems to have stopped the load count increasing.

According to Western Digital the WD20EARS drive is rated for 300,000 cycles, so the drive has reached almost 50% of its design life in less than a year of operation. From what I can find on the web, it seems this issue has been known since early 2009, so I'm a bit dissapointed that SGC had not addressed it before selling me the VBA in 2011.

Thanks to the OP for raising the issue, and to Ron, as usual, for his clear instructions on how to fix the problem.

[Jim]

I have a 1TB VBA from SGC and the numbers show
Power on 7947
Load Count 605883

That is 76 per hour is that possible?

I will be doing the WDIDLE fix, but that involves pulling the VBA out of the closet and hooking up the monitor and keyboard - annoying. I also assume if those numbers are correct my hard drive has lead a hard life already in just a year of use.

Love Vortexbox, love the VBA but if this drive has a short life due to this issue I am very disappointed with SGC.

[dougmon]

Since I started this thread, I thought I'd report my findings. I installed a new 2TB WD Caviar Green drive in my machine. It took me a few tries to get VB installed; don't remember what went wrong, though. By the time everything was up I had something like this:

9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 6
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 19

I ran wdidle3 on the drive, and this is what I have now:

9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 40
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 21

Seems pretty amazing that the load/unload would be that small now, but it also seems great. I do get the occasional clicking noise on the drive, but until I see some real symptoms of poor performance, I'm not going to worry. I _am_ going to get another 2TB drive for replacement, though. Better safe...

[Ron Olsen]

Thanks for the report, dougmon. Do you remember what "wdidle3 /r" showed for the Idle3 timeout before you ran "wdidle3 /s300" ? I'd be interested to see the Western Digital factory setting for the Idle3 timeout on WD20EARX drives.

[dougmon]

Thanks for the report, dougmon. Do you remember what "wdidle3 /r" showed for the Idle3 timeout before you ran "wdidle3 /s300" ? I'd be interested to see the Western Digital factory setting for the Idle3 timeout on WD20EARX drives.

The report was 8 seconds for the idle three timeout. This seemed a bit too much for me; the 500 seconds seems much better.

And just as a point of reference:

smartctl -a /dev/sda | egrep "Power.On|Load"
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 55
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 21

Also, I have to say I appreciate you being so involved here; thanks!

[firedog]

What size is the wididle3 iso download?

I'm apparently having problems downloading the actual file. Something called widdle3.iso, size 1835008 k, is downloading. But when I burn an ISO disc from it, the VB doesn't boot, and my PC says the CD is blank, but can't be used again, as it is already written on.

Is there another place other than the page mentioned here t download the file (http://www.ngohq.com/news/19805-crit...reen-hdds.html)?

Thanks