I have three WD60EZRZ drives manufactured September 1st 2016.  The head parking is set to 8 seconds and I can't turn it off. 

 

I have tried all versions of wdidle3 (1.0, 1.3, 1.5, 2.0.0.1), and all but version 2.0.0.1 give me the error "VSCSendKey CMD Error 51 04 10 4F 00 00 B0."  wdidle3 2.0.0.1 simply gives the error that "This drive is not compatible," or something like that and reports that the idle timer is set to 8 seconds.  I have also tried idle3ctl which gives the error, "sg16(VSC_SENDKEY) failed: Input/output error."  I even tried idle3ctl with the --force argument, but no joy.

 

I can adjust the park time on all my WD GREEN drives (3TB, 4TB, 5TB) without any difficulty.  It seems that WD has taken the ability to regulate the head parking time away from us.

 

I even tried running the wd5741 too, designed for the older RED's that were incorrectly set to park at 8 seconds, but that simply gives the output that the drive does not need updating.

 

Unless someone has a magic bullet, these new BLUE drives are getting returned.  It's a shame that we have seemed to have lost the BLUE drives as a viable option.

 

Any suggestions or other methods to adjust the head park time?

 

Best regards,

craigr

It always worked for me, but it's been a few months since I bought a new Blue, were they connected on the onboard controller or HBA? I always use the onboard.

I know this isn't the cheapest method, but I have an old Synology DS215j that I stick the drives in to.  Synology do some sort of magic that kills the idle timer.  Once run through the Synology, the drives behave correctly forever.

Well, I've tried all wdidle3 and idle3ctl on three different on board SATA controllers on two different motherboards (one with old school BIOS and one with UEIF).  I have also tried idle3ctl on my sas cards.  In ALL cases I could adjust the timers on any of my other drives (I have a loose 3TB GREEN that I can change the idle timer on any setup I tried, but not on any of the BLUE drives.

 

This sucks :-(

 

craigr

I know this isn't the cheapest method, but I have an old Synology DS215j that I stick the drives in to.  Synology do some sort of magic that kills the idle timer.  Once run through the Synology, the drives behave correctly forever.

Yeah, I have a feeling that your Synology won't work on the new drives either.  I am pretty sure it's just using a version of idle3ctl.  I'd love to know for sure.

 

The value is modifiable on the RED drives at least to some degree I think, so it still seems possible, but WD may have locked the idle3 setting on the drives.

 

craigr

I posted about this on the WD forum and they asked me to open a support case.  We'll see where that goes, but I don't have high hopes.  Here is what I wrote them:

 

I have three WD60EZRZ-00GZ5B1 drives manufactured September 1st 2016. I was planning to buy six more, but the head parking is set to 8 seconds and I can't turn it off.

 

I have tried all versions of wdidle3 (1.0, 1.3, 1.5, and 2.0.0.1).  All but version 2.0.0.1 give me error "VSCSendKey CMD Error 51 04 10 4F 00 00 B0." wdidle3 2.0.0.1 can /R report that the idle timer is set to 8 seconds, but if I try and set /S300 or /D the timer, I get an error that "This drive is not supported," or something like that. I have also tried idle3ctl in Linux which gives the error, "sg16(VSC_SENDKEY) failed: Input/output error." I even tried idle3ctl with the --force argument, but no joy.  I've tried all wdidle3 and idle3ctl on three different on board SATA controllers on two different motherboards (one with old school BIOS and one with UEIF).  I have also tried idle3ctl on my SAS cards.  In ALL cases I could adjust the timers on any of my other drives.  I have also tried both AHCI and IDE modes.

 

I can adjust the park time on all my WD GREEN drives including many 2TB, six 3TB, six 4TB, and three 5TB without any difficulty. I can also adjust the parking time on my BLACK drives.  It seems that WD has taken the ability to regulate the head parking time away from us.

 

I even tried running the utility wd5741 designed for the older RED's that were incorrectly set to park at 8 seconds, but that simply gives the output that the drive does not need updating.

 

I exclusively use WD drives, but unless there is a way to adjust the parking time these new BLUE drives are getting returned and I will start using another brand. It's a shame that we have seemed to have lost the BLUE drives as a viable option.

 

Any suggestions or other methods to adjust the head park time?

 

Best regards,

Craig

 

craigr

This is WD's quick response.  While it's not wdidle3, it might work but I am having trouble on my TOWER with hdpram...

 

Modify OS power management timers in control panel

Disable Advanced power management using standard ATA command (Uses more power as turns off all low power modes but results in no load/unload cycles)

Linux users add following (hdparm -B 255 /dev/sdX where X is your hard drive device). ATA users can disable APM usually controlled via BIOS and/or OS.

Set Idle3 to max time (effectively turns off load/unload power saving feature thus will use more power) per below link.

Most of our customers do not disable the advanced power savings features.

 

This is my issue:

 

root@Tower:~# hdparm -B 255 /dev/sdq

/dev/sdq:
setting Advanced Power Management level to disabled
HDIO_DRIVE_CMD failed: Input/output error
APM_level      = not supported

Does anyone know why I get this error?

 

Best,

craigr

Well doing more googling reveals that hdparm -B 255 /dev/sdX does not work on WD drives unless you set wdidle3 to disabled.  So now I am in a loop.  The wdidle3 utility does not work so hdpram will not do what I need it to do.

 

This is so frustrating.

 

craigr

WD5741 isn't a utility for setting the Idle3 timer. It's a firmware update for a batch of Red drives that left the factory with the Idle3 timer incorrectly set.

 

WD5741 isn't a utility for setting the Idle3 timer. It's a firmware update for a batch of Red drives that left the factory with the Idle3 timer incorrectly set.

Well, it's no more a firmware update than wdidle3... What it does is set the idle timer from the bad batch of RED drives from 8 seconds to 300 seconds.  It's doing the same thing as wdidle3 but runs in Windows 64/32 and does not have any arguments.  So you just run it on those RED drives and it changes the timer to 300 seconds.

 

craigr

That differs from what WD says here.

 

Running wdidle3 is also considered a firmware update by WD.

 

No matter, I have returned the drives.  These are no good for a server.

 

craigr