So in short, is this a concern or not?

should i do something or not?

 

 

Take no preemptive action in this regard. You should observe the SMART values on your drives. If a value seems abnormal or excessive then take action. You can always post your questions in this forum.

So in short, is this a concern or not?

should i do something or not?

 

 

Take no preemptive action in this regard. You should observe the SMART values on your drives. If a value seems abnormal or excessive then take action. You can always post your questions in this forum.

 

so i should wait first and see...

So in short, is this a concern or not?

should i do something or not?

 

 

Take no preemptive action in this regard. You should observe the SMART values on your drives. If a value seems abnormal or excessive then take action. You can always post your questions in this forum.

so i should wait first and see...

Yes.

ok will report once installed

I have three EARS drives (1-1TB, 2-2TB) and my load_cycle_count is increasing rapidly on all of them.

 

 

WDC WD20EARS - load_cycle_count=19789  - Power on Hrs:2929

WDC WD10EARS - load_cycle_count=105000 - Power on Hrs:7490

WDC WD20EARS - load_cycle_count=44840  - Power on Hrs:2933

 

Should I do something about this?

I don't know if a high count is a bad thing or not but just to eliminate any possibility I disabled head parking on all of my WD green drives by using the wdidle3 application.  It makes them use a little more power when spinning but since unRAID spins down disks when thay are not being used the impact is small.  My recommendation would be to just disable head parking (or increase the timer value significantly) and then you won't have to worry about it.

Is wdidle3 a windows only app ?

If so is there any danger in pulling the drives and attaching them to a windows machine?

 

Can anyone confirm if the hdparm -S0 setting will slow this down.

 

Is wdidle3 a windows only app ?

It runs in a DOS environment.  All you need to do is create a DOS-bootable USB drive and place the wdidle3 application on it (google wdidle3 for more info).  Then power down your unraid server and disconnect all non WD drives and any WD drive that you do not want to disable head parking on.  Replace your unRAID USB drive with the DOS-bootable drive that you created.  Disable the idle3 timer and confirm (use -R command) that it was disabled (again use google).  Power down, reconnect HDDs that you disconnected, replace unRAID USB drive and reboot into unRAID.  I did exactly this on all 3 of my EARS drives (1x1TB ans 2x2TB) and they all worked fine.  It doesn't matter if you have already used them in the unRAID server.

If so is there any danger in pulling the drives and attaching them to a windows machine?

I don't think so but there is no need to do that if you do as I recommended above.

Thanks for the detailed answer wsume.

I'm in the middle of pre-clearing and adding some new drives so I will wait a little while before I do this.

 

Cheers,

Kent

It runs in a DOS environment.  All you need to do is create a DOS-bootable USB drive and place the wdidle3 application on it (google wdidle3 for more info).  Then power down your unraid server and disconnect all non WD drives and any WD drive that you do not want to disable head parking on.  Replace your unRAID USB drive with the DOS-bootable drive that you created.  Disable the idle3 timer and confirm (use -R command) that it was disabled (again use google).  Power down, reconnect HDDs that you disconnected, replace unRAID USB drive and reboot into unRAID.  I did exactly this on all 3 of my EARS drives (1x1TB ans 2x2TB) and they all worked fine.  It doesn't matter if you have already used them in the unRAID server.

 

Can I disable all the drives that I don't want to change in the BIOS (assuming I have that option) and not physically disconnect them?

 

I don't know - I've never tried that.  I just pulled off the SATA cable and then reconnected it after I was done.

I have just added a new disk - it is on a rosewell rc-18 pci-e sata card - it is a WD20EARX  drive and as you can see it has » load_cycle_count=1570 

I searched and found this solution hdparm -B 255 /dev/sdX  - however the responce was :

Tower login: root

Password:

Linux 2.6.32.9-unRAID.

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

 

/dev/sda:

setting Advanced Power Management level to disabled

HDIO_DRIVE_CMD failed: Input/output error

APM_level      = not supported

root@Tower:~#

according to my device list sda is the problem child here -  I could not find where this solutions should not work for this drive

 

this seems a little more elegant and less hassle than having to open the box - remove all drive connections other than the problem one and run a dos utility on it. can anyone assist ?

 

also I saw a previous post mention putting the command in the go script - I assume this would make it permanet and mean that I dont have to reenter the command every time the box is booted right ?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

 

That would run the command at startup. But it does not look like the command works based on its output.