I recently bought 10 1.5TB Western Digital Greens, and I have now learned of a load cycle issue these hard drives have, especially under linux. Basically these drives spin down every 8 seconds, but the linux kernel keeps trying to access the drive causing large load cycles, lowering the hard drives life drastically. Theres a DOS program that can disable this feature, but I don't really want to mess around in that unless absolutely needed. Many people use green hard drives in unRAID, so i'd like to know what theyve experienced before I put these in.

 

I'm wondering:

1) Is this a problem in unRAID?

2) Should I use the "widdle" program to disable or extend the 8 seconds?

3) Should I just stop worrying?

 

Thanks.

I started a year ago using WD 1TB green drives (5 at that time) and now i'm up to 10.  I have my system set to spin down my drives after 2 hours.  I've never had any issues with any of my drives to date.

 

I'm wondering:

1) Is this a problem in unRAID?

2) Should I use the "widdle" program to disable or extend the 8 seconds?

3) Should I just stop worrying?

 

 

I run all WD GP drives in my unRAID system - 11 of them to be exact:

 

1.  No, there is no problem with these drives with unRAID.  I used to have them running on a RAID card and the load cycle count jumped very quickly (50,000 in 6 months) as I'm sure you've read about.  Once I put them in unRAID, the counts have climbed very very slowly as I suspect they would in a normal system.

 

2.  No need to use the "widdle" program, leave them as they are.  Are you sure it is widdle and not wdtler?  WD has disabled wdlter functionality on the most recent GP drives making them useless in a normal RAID configuration.

 

3.  Yes, stop worrying.  You can always check the SMART statistics through unRAID to prove to yourself that the counts are not going up quickly.

 

1) Is this a problem in unRAID?

 

No. I have six 2TB WD Green EADS in unRAID, and never had that problem.

 

 

Thanks everyone, i'll just put them in then.

What models are they?  I have 2 WD10EACS and it is a problem in unraid.  Here's the stats on all my drives and you can see how the WD10EACS have terrible LCC counts:

 

Device Model:    WDC WD20EADS-00S2B0

  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032  099  099  000    Old_age  Always      -      781

193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032  199  199  000    Old_age  Always      -      5453

Device Model:    SAMSUNG HD103UJ

  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032  099  099  000    Old_age  Always      -      3201

Device Model:    WDC WD10EACS-00C7B0

  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032  084  084  000    Old_age  Always      -      12301

193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032  001  001  000    Old_age  Always      -      1007846

Device Model:    WDC WD20EADS-00S2B0

  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032  098  098  000    Old_age  Always      -      1656

193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032  191  191  000    Old_age  Always      -      27021

Device Model:    WDC WD10EADS-00L5B1

  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032  093  093  000    Old_age  Always      -      5158

193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032  200  200  000    Old_age  Always      -      811

Device Model:    WDC WD10EACS-00ZJB0

  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032  077  077  000    Old_age  Always      -      16931

193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032  001  001  000    Old_age  Always      -      931063

 

So far there are no SMART errors reported on these EACS drives even though they are WAY over the 300,000 recommended max counts from WD.  If you google it you'll find that all of the WD EACS four platter drives have this issue.

There's another thread around here where I posted my WD EADS reports showing no problem with LCC.

personally i disable intellepark on all my wd drives. it adds delay and wear to your disk. its primary purpose is to reduce power usage while idle. when youre idle in unraid youre going to be spun down anyway.

personally i disable intellepark on all my wd drives. it adds delay and wear to your disk. its primary purpose is to reduce power usage while idle. when youre idle in unraid youre going to be spun down anyway.

 

What is the easiest way to disable intellipark with drives already in an array?

Well just checked my EADS drives and they all average about 30 Load cycles a day. My drives are not set to sleep but at that rate they wont hit the 300k rated cycles for 9-10 years so I supposed I don't need to worry all that much.