June 1, 201313 yr So I have heard about, western digital drives and High LCC.. So after about 4 years I decided to checkout smart data... WD20EARS - SDA - Parity Drive WD20EADS - SDF - Drive that is used/on the most "Tv Shows" I have never used wdidle, all I did was a simple preclear and jumper on pin 7-8 To me this look fine? am I mistaken? SDA.txt SDF.txt
June 1, 201313 yr They look fine -- no reallocated sectors and none pending on either drive. The jumpers are no longer needed for any new drives, but don't remove the ones you've already got installed. No real need to run wdidle (you'll get some argument here, but the simple fact is the drives work fine as delivered).
June 1, 201313 yr For 4 years old those load cycle count numbers aren't bad. It's when you see the number get in the high tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands after only months of use that you'll want to use wdidle3.
June 1, 201313 yr For 4 years old those load cycle count numbers aren't bad. It's when you see the number get in the high tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands after only months of use that you'll want to use wdidle3. Agree ... modern drives have load cycle specs of several hundred thousand cycles. And the parking that folks think they need to eliminate with wdidle simply isn't an issue in real life => the theoretical big numbers you could get if it was accessed almost immediately after every park cycle simply is not realistic. For example, the WD Reds load cycle spec is 600,000 cycles
June 1, 201313 yr For 4 years old those load cycle count numbers aren't bad. It's when you see the number get in the high tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands after only months of use that you'll want to use wdidle3. Agree ... modern drives have load cycle specs of several hundred thousand cycles. And the parking that folks think they need to eliminate with wdidle simply isn't an issue in real life => the theoretical big numbers you could get if it was accessed almost immediately after every park cycle simply is not realistic. For example, the WD Reds load cycle spec is 600,000 cycles I had a 3TB Green in my unraid server hit 100,000 LCCs in 3 months so I wouldn't say it's not an issue in real life. At that rate the drive could be dead in 9 months because if I remember correctly Green drives are only rated at 300,000 cycles. I used the wdidle3 tool to change the settings and it resolved the problem. If you look through some of the threads you will see there are plenty of people that have a real issue with it. However, I have another 3TB Green that I didn't have an issue with. I just looked at my remaining 3TB Green and at 4765 power on hours it has a LCC count of 3048. I used the wdidle3 tool on it too, but the LCCs were only increasing at the normal pace before I did. I actually used it on all my WD Green drives as I'd rather take the higher power consumption and not worry about the drive failing prematurely from head parking. My 3TB Green that I recently RMA'd was actually the one I had the issue with the high LCC count.
June 1, 201313 yr Author My question is why though? Why are my drives fine, while others are having high LCC count? Just check all drives WD20EARS - SDA - LCC 5112 - Power On 2.23 Years WD20EARS - SDB - LCC 2434 - Power On 1.96 Years WD20EARS - SDC - LCC 2600 - Power On 1.79 Years WD20EARS - SDD - LCC 2378 - Power On 1.93 Years WD20EADS - SDE - LCC 22342 - Power On 2.69 Years WD20EADS - SDF - LCC 22769 - Power On 2.97 Years Interesting EARS Drives, seem to be running excellent.. while EADS are running higher... but still nothing to be concerned about?
June 1, 201313 yr My question is why though? Why are my drives fine, while others are having high LCC count? I think the real question is why folks gets such high LCC counts. These drive automatically park the heads after a certain amount of idle time ... that's what wdidle lets you change (or even turn off). By default the parking time is 8 seconds. This SOUNDS bad ... i.e. the heads parking every 8 seconds; then loading again as you access the drive; then parking again 8 seconds later; then loading again ... HOWEVER ... in actual use that scenario is VERY unlikely. If you're using the drive -- writing a file; streaming a video; etc. it's not going to be idle for 8 seconds during this use. So in a typical UnRAID scenario the heads will likely park once after each set of files you copy to it; or once after each movie that you stream; etc. If your drive did 100 cycles every day, it would be 6,000 days (over 16 years) before you'd hit the LCC rating of a modern drive like the WD Reds (about half that time for a Green). As your SMART data shows, you're only averaging ~ 1300 load cycles/year (about 4/day). This is not unusual for the usage pattern a typical UnRAID system "sees". I'd be much more concerned about what's going on that might cause a drive to hit 100,000 load cycles in 3 months !! That's over 1,000 cycles/day ... almost one cycle every minute !! Something was clearly not right. If the drive was actively being used, it should have never parked the heads; if not, it shouldn't have had anywhere near that many cycles. In any event, if it makes you feel better, go ahead and run wdidle => just be sure that (a) your drive is on the list of supported drives; and (b) you follow the directions EXACTLY. You can easily "brick" (destroy) a drive if it's done incorrectly. Personally, I think the risk is absolutely NOT worth the "reward" ... and your LCC count clearly confirms that you don't have any need to do that.
June 1, 201313 yr Author Check out my update.. listed all drives Just to see count... SDF LCC Last Night - 22765 LCC This Morning - 22769 Unraid "Reads" on that drive 5450 and garycase I'm not worried about it, I actually was more worried about it, before checking smart data, because of reading all the information about High LCC.. but now i'm not.... and as for the jumpers, I needed them at the time "was running 4.7" All I do with the unraid server is 1. Load Movies/TV Shows 2. Watch Movies - Keep Good/Delete Bad 3. Watch TV Shows than Delete
June 1, 201313 yr I set my WD 2TB Drives to wdidle3 /300 after i noticed the LLC rising for some reason, now I debating using wdidle3 /d on them no as the LLC are still rising. The 2TB EARX drives are the newest of the 2TB drives i had and the 3TB EZRX is the newest drive in the system. Would i benefit from wdidle3 /d on the drives?
June 1, 201313 yr Author Question for you.. what do you use your server for? Backup? Streaming? Etc...
June 1, 201313 yr Question for you.. what do you use your server for? Backup? Streaming? Etc... All my downloads go to my main machine then i move them to the server, I also stream to my htpc and the kids stream audio books / music to there tablets. Basically its a file server also and backups get sent to it also form my main box.
June 1, 201313 yr My question is why though? Why are my drives fine, while others are having high LCC count? I think the real question is why folks gets such high LCC counts. These drive automatically park the heads after a certain amount of idle time ... that's what wdidle lets you change (or even turn off). By default the parking time is 8 seconds. This SOUNDS bad ... i.e. the heads parking every 8 seconds; then loading again as you access the drive; then parking again 8 seconds later; then loading again ... HOWEVER ... in actual use that scenario is VERY unlikely. If you're using the drive -- writing a file; streaming a video; etc. it's not going to be idle for 8 seconds during this use. So in a typical UnRAID scenario the heads will likely park once after each set of files you copy to it; or once after each movie that you stream; etc. If your drive did 100 cycles every day, it would be 6,000 days (over 16 years) before you'd hit the LCC rating of a modern drive like the WD Reds (about half that time for a Green). As your SMART data shows, you're only averaging ~ 1300 load cycles/year (about 4/day). This is not unusual for the usage pattern a typical UnRAID system "sees". I'd be much more concerned about what's going on that might cause a drive to hit 100,000 load cycles in 3 months !! That's over 1,000 cycles/day ... almost one cycle every minute !! Something was clearly not right. If the drive was actively being used, it should have never parked the heads; if not, it shouldn't have had anywhere near that many cycles. In any event, if it makes you feel better, go ahead and run wdidle => just be sure that (a) your drive is on the list of supported drives; and (b) you follow the directions EXACTLY. You can easily "brick" (destroy) a drive if it's done incorrectly. Personally, I think the risk is absolutely NOT worth the "reward" ... and your LCC count clearly confirms that you don't have any need to do that. From what I read in the other threads is this issue is related to Linux and it's driver for hard disks. Apparently the firmware in the disk relies on the operating system to help determine when to park the heads and with Linux (and therefore probably Mac OS X as well) it has issues, causing it to try to park the heads even when there is disk activity. Disks with quickly escalating LCCs installed in a Windows machine didn't have the problem anymore.
June 11, 201313 yr Hi Well I've been measuring my LCC's for about 6 months now and have the results in the attached screen shot. What's surprising to me is that the 2x WD20EARX drives over the last 3 months seem to be hitting 5000 LCC's plus a month. All the WD drives have WDIDEL3 /300 set on them, is it worth disabling the timer with /D on the 2x WD20EARX drives?
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