WD GreenPower & Load_Cycle_Count

WD GreenPower & Load_Cycle_Count

[Matt Garman]

A while ago I stumbled on a thread on the Linux kernel mailing list
titled "Western Digital GreenPower drives and Linux".  It's easy to
find via google, or use this link[1].

The gist is that if you look at the SMART attributes on these
drives, chances are you'll see a really high Load_Cycle_Count.  I do
for my WD GP drives.

I posted[2] on the ars technica forums a while back with the same
topic.  The suggestion in the last post was to use hdparm's
spindown_time (-S) parameter to change the drive's behavior.  I
tried this, and it does in seem to keep that Load_Cycle_Count
variable from increasing so quickly.

But the original thread on LKML made it sound like the only way to
solve the problem was with Western Digital's Windows-only
"wdidle3.exe" utility.

Another question is this: does that Load_Cycle_Count SMART attribute
really correspond to the number of head parks that have a specified
ceiling (300k for consumer drives, 600k for enterprise/RE2)?  Some
of the threads I've read suggest that the SMART attribute talks
about "soft" head parks (moving the head away from the platters),
and WD's spec is for "hard" parks (where the head actually comes to
rest, as in power down).

Here's another interesting thread on the topic on silentpcreview[3].

Anyway, I haven't been able to find a conclusive answer to this on
the web.  Just wondering if anyone on the list has any more info.

Thanks,
Matt

[1] http://groups.google.com/group/linux.kernel/browse_thread/thread/505ccf760023d132/7e4f4e996f911efd

[2] http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/24609792/m/481009715931?r=481009715931

[3] http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=51401

Re: WD GreenPower & Load_Cycle_Count

[Mikael Abrahamsson]

On Tue, 23 Dec 2008, Matt Garman wrote:

> Anyway, I haven't been able to find a conclusive answer to this on the 
> web.  Just wondering if anyone on the list has any more info.

I bought a couple of drives ~8 months ago. They started racking up 
Load_Cycle_Counts, so I used wdidle3.exe to shut it off (I think they were 
up to 8k load cycle counts in the first couple of days).

I then purchased two new drives 1-2 months ago. Didn't do anything to 
them, but they seem to have different factory settings:

$ sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdb | egrep 'Power_On|Load_Cycle'
   9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   099   099   000    Old_age   Always       -       1031
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   197   197   000    Old_age   Always       -       11184
$ sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdc | egrep 'Power_On|Load_Cycle'
   9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   093   093   000    Old_age   Always       -       5329
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   188   188   000    Old_age   Always       -       38070

sdb is one of the newer drives, sdc is one of the older ones.

So wdidle3.exe seems to shut off the mechanism that causes 
Load_Cycle_Count to rise quickly, more agressively than the new factory 
defaults, but the new factory defaults at least mean the drive gets an 
estimated life time of 3 years before they reach 300k Load_Cycle_Counts, 
in my environment.

Both drives show same firmware and model numbers.

-- 
Mikael Abrahamsson    email: swmike@swm.pp.se

Re: WD GreenPower & Load_Cycle_Count

[David Rees]

On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 6:53 AM, Matt Garman <matthew.garman@gmail.com> wrote:
> The gist is that if you look at the SMART attributes on these
> drives, chances are you'll see a really high Load_Cycle_Count.  I do
> for my WD GP drives.

FWIW, the two WD5000AACS drives I just bought don't exhibit this
behavior. After 20 days of operation, they are only showing 9-10 load
cycles.

-Dave

Re: WD GreenPower & Load_Cycle_Count

[Greg Freemyer]

Google for storage-fixup.

Iirc, tejun heo has a webpage dedicated to the problem.


On 12/23/08, David Rees <drees76@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 6:53 AM, Matt Garman <matthew.garman@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> The gist is that if you look at the SMART attributes on these
>> drives, chances are you'll see a really high Load_Cycle_Count.  I do
>> for my WD GP drives.
>
> FWIW, the two WD5000AACS drives I just bought don't exhibit this
> behavior. After 20 days of operation, they are only showing 9-10 load
> cycles.
>
> -Dave
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Re: WD GreenPower & Load_Cycle_Count

[Redeeman]

On Tue, 2008-12-23 at 08:53 -0600, Matt Garman wrote:
> A while ago I stumbled on a thread on the Linux kernel mailing list
> titled "Western Digital GreenPower drives and Linux".  It's easy to
> find via google, or use this link[1].
> 
> The gist is that if you look at the SMART attributes on these
> drives, chances are you'll see a really high Load_Cycle_Count.  I do
> for my WD GP drives.
> 
> I posted[2] on the ars technica forums a while back with the same
> topic.  The suggestion in the last post was to use hdparm's
> spindown_time (-S) parameter to change the drive's behavior.  I
> tried this, and it does in seem to keep that Load_Cycle_Count
> variable from increasing so quickly.
> 
> But the original thread on LKML made it sound like the only way to
> solve the problem was with Western Digital's Windows-only
> "wdidle3.exe" utility.

It has also been suggested that on the RE2-GP drives there is a jumper
setting which stops it from happening. As to whether that actually works
or not, I do not know.

> 
> Another question is this: does that Load_Cycle_Count SMART attribute
> really correspond to the number of head parks that have a specified
> ceiling (300k for consumer drives, 600k for enterprise/RE2)?  Some
> of the threads I've read suggest that the SMART attribute talks
> about "soft" head parks (moving the head away from the platters),
> and WD's spec is for "hard" parks (where the head actually comes to
> rest, as in power down).
> 
> Here's another interesting thread on the topic on silentpcreview[3].
> 
> Anyway, I haven't been able to find a conclusive answer to this on
> the web.  Just wondering if anyone on the list has any more info.
> 
> Thanks,
> Matt
> 
> [1] http://groups.google.com/group/linux.kernel/browse_thread/thread/505ccf760023d132/7e4f4e996f911efd
> 
> [2] http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/24609792/m/481009715931?r=481009715931
> 
> [3] http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=51401
> 
> 
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html