From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Mikael Abrahamsson Subject: Re: WD GreenPower & Load_Cycle_Count Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2008 16:49:04 +0100 (CET) Message-ID: References: <20081223145334.GA17496@sewage.raw-sewage.fake> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Return-path: In-Reply-To: <20081223145334.GA17496@sewage.raw-sewage.fake> Sender: linux-raid-owner@vger.kernel.org To: Matt Garman Cc: linux-raid@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-raid.ids 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