[gentoo-user] Winchester Digital HD: Advanced Format

[gentoo-user] Winchester Digital HD: Advanced Format

[meino.cramer]

Hi,

b
the Winchester Digital WD10EARS S-ATA II 300MB/s GreenPower WD Caviar Green
1TByte Harddiscs offers something which WD calls "Advanced Format"
which turns out to be sectors of 4096 bytes size instead of 512 bytes.

To use it, one needs a tool made by WD which only runs under windows.

Or?

Is this "new sector size" is something, which I can activate
be using fdisk/mkfs or something included in the linux kernel
since stone age and is only new to the guys at Microsoft/Winchester
Digital?

Can I take any advantage of that?

Thank you very much for any help and advice in advance!
Have a nice sunday!
mcc



-- 
Please don't send me any Word- or Powerpoint-Attachments
unless it's absolutely neccessary. - Send simply Text.
See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
In a world without fences and walls nobody needs gates and windows.

Re: [gentoo-user] Winchester Digital HD: Advanced Format

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Sonntag 18 April 2010, meino.cramer@gmx.de wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> b
> the Winchester Digital WD10EARS S-ATA II 300MB/s GreenPower WD Caviar Green
> 1TByte Harddiscs offers something which WD calls "Advanced Format"
> which turns out to be sectors of 4096 bytes size instead of 512 bytes.
> 
> To use it, one needs a tool made by WD which only runs under windows.
> 
> Or?
> 
> Is this "new sector size" is something, which I can activate
> be using fdisk/mkfs or something included in the linux kernel
> since stone age and is only new to the guys at Microsoft/Winchester
> Digital?
> 
> Can I take any advantage of that?
> 
> Thank you very much for any help and advice in advance!
> Have a nice sunday!
> mcc

search the mailing list archive.

Re: [gentoo-user] Winchester Digital HD: Advanced Format

[meino.cramer]

Volker Armin Hemmann <volkerarmin@googlemail.com> [10-04-18 16:12]:
> On Sonntag 18 April 2010, meino.cramer@gmx.de wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > b
> > the Winchester Digital WD10EARS S-ATA II 300MB/s GreenPower WD Caviar Green
> > 1TByte Harddiscs offers something which WD calls "Advanced Format"
> > which turns out to be sectors of 4096 bytes size instead of 512 bytes.
> > 
> > To use it, one needs a tool made by WD which only runs under windows.
> > 
> > Or?
> > 
> > Is this "new sector size" is something, which I can activate
> > be using fdisk/mkfs or something included in the linux kernel
> > since stone age and is only new to the guys at Microsoft/Winchester
> > Digital?
> > 
> > Can I take any advantage of that?
> > 
> > Thank you very much for any help and advice in advance!
> > Have a nice sunday!
> > mcc
> 
> search the mailing list archive.
> 

any hint for a keyword other than "advanced" and "format" ???



-- 
Please don't send me any Word- or Powerpoint-Attachments
unless it's absolutely neccessary. - Send simply Text.
See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
In a world without fences and walls nobody needs gates and windows.

Re: [gentoo-user] Winchester Digital HD: Advanced Format

[Neil Bothwick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 214 bytes --]

On Sun, 18 Apr 2010 16:16:55 +0200, meino.cramer@gmx.de wrote:

> any hint for a keyword other than "advanced" and "format" ???

"4K blocks"


-- 
Neil Bothwick

When there's a will, I want to be in it.

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 198 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] Winchester Digital HD: Advanced Format

[Mark Knecht]

On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 4:16 AM,  <meino.cramer@gmx.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> b
> the Winchester Digital WD10EARS S-ATA II 300MB/s GreenPower WD Caviar Green
> 1TByte Harddiscs offers something which WD calls "Advanced Format"
> which turns out to be sectors of 4096 bytes size instead of 512 bytes.
>
> To use it, one needs a tool made by WD which only runs under windows.
>
> Or?
>
> Is this "new sector size" is something, which I can activate
> be using fdisk/mkfs or something included in the linux kernel
> since stone age and is only new to the guys at Microsoft/Winchester
> Digital?
>
> Can I take any advantage of that?
>
> Thank you very much for any help and advice in advance!
> Have a nice sunday!
> mcc

Sort of none of the above.

4K sectors are 4K sectors. It isn't something you activate. It's the
way the drive is made. However the drive responds to 512 byte sector
addresses. You can use it as you would any other drive, however...

1) If you put your partitions on 4K boundaries the drive will be fast

2) If you put your sectors on 512 byte boundaries the drive will work
but be very slow

Either way it will work. I think #1 is better, but that's up to you.

Simple answer about what to do? Make sure the starting address of all
partitions is divisible by 8, or for simplicity have every partition
starting address end with 3 zeros which is what some of the  newer
Windows setup tools are doing. I know the 3 zero thing sounds like
you're wasting space, and you would be, but it's very small compared
to the size of the drive so it's what I did.

Now, if you have NOT already purchased the drive, my suggestion is
that you do not, or if you insist on buying some get in touch with me.
I have 6 sitting right here at home that I'll happily sell to you at
reduced prices.  ;-)

These drives are saving power by parking the heads very quickly and my
experience over the last few months is that they are likely going to
wear out in about 18 months according to WD's spec of 300K park
cycles. (Check SMART data yourself) Additionally they are completely
unusable for any sort of RAID environment as WD removed all the TLER
functions from the firmware. Linux is racking up 1 cycles every 2
minutes. (41476/1588) As best I can tell the drive will be out of spec
in about 14 months if your machine is powered on 24/7.

gandalf ~ # smartctl -i /dev/sda
smartctl 5.39.1 2010-01-28 r3054 [x86_64-pc-linux-gnu] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model:     WDC WD10EARS-00Y5B1
Serial Number:    WD-WCAV55464493
Firmware Version: 80.00A80
User Capacity:    1,000,204,886,016 bytes
Device is:        Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is:   8
ATA Standard is:  Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is:    Sun Apr 18 08:36:44 2010 PDT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

gandalf ~ #
gandalf ~ # !smart
smartctl -A /dev/sda
smartctl 5.39.1 2010-01-28 r3054 [x86_64-pc-linux-gnu] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE
UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   200   200   051    Pre-fail
Always       -       0
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   129   128   021    Pre-fail
Always       -       6525
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age
Always       -       21
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail
Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x002e   200   200   000    Old_age
Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   098   098   000    Old_age
Always       -       1588
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0032   100   253   000    Old_age
Always       -       0
 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032   100   253   000    Old_age
Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age
Always       -       20
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age
Always       -       5
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   187   187   000    Old_age
Always       -       41476
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   121   116   000    Old_age
Always       -       26
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age
Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age
Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   200   200   000    Old_age
Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age
Always       -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0008   200   200   000    Old_age
Offline      -       0

gandalf ~ #


- Mark

Re: [gentoo-user] Winchester Digital HD: Advanced Format

[meino.cramer]

Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> [10-04-18 17:44]:
> On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 4:16 AM,  <meino.cramer@gmx.de> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > b
> > the Winchester Digital WD10EARS S-ATA II 300MB/s GreenPower WD Caviar Green
> > 1TByte Harddiscs offers something which WD calls "Advanced Format"
> > which turns out to be sectors of 4096 bytes size instead of 512 bytes.
> >
> > To use it, one needs a tool made by WD which only runs under windows.
> >
> > Or?
> >
> > Is this "new sector size" is something, which I can activate
> > be using fdisk/mkfs or something included in the linux kernel
> > since stone age and is only new to the guys at Microsoft/Winchester
> > Digital?
> >
> > Can I take any advantage of that?
> >
> > Thank you very much for any help and advice in advance!
> > Have a nice sunday!
> > mcc
> 
> Sort of none of the above.
> 
> 4K sectors are 4K sectors. It isn't something you activate. It's the
> way the drive is made. However the drive responds to 512 byte sector
> addresses. You can use it as you would any other drive, however...
> 
> 1) If you put your partitions on 4K boundaries the drive will be fast
> 
> 2) If you put your sectors on 512 byte boundaries the drive will work
> but be very slow
> 
> Either way it will work. I think #1 is better, but that's up to you.
> 
> Simple answer about what to do? Make sure the starting address of all
> partitions is divisible by 8, or for simplicity have every partition
> starting address end with 3 zeros which is what some of the  newer
> Windows setup tools are doing. I know the 3 zero thing sounds like
> you're wasting space, and you would be, but it's very small compared
> to the size of the drive so it's what I did.
> 
> Now, if you have NOT already purchased the drive, my suggestion is
> that you do not, or if you insist on buying some get in touch with me.
> I have 6 sitting right here at home that I'll happily sell to you at
> reduced prices.  ;-)
> 
> These drives are saving power by parking the heads very quickly and my
> experience over the last few months is that they are likely going to
> wear out in about 18 months according to WD's spec of 300K park
> cycles. (Check SMART data yourself) Additionally they are completely
> unusable for any sort of RAID environment as WD removed all the TLER
> functions from the firmware. Linux is racking up 1 cycles every 2
> minutes. (41476/1588) As best I can tell the drive will be out of spec
> in about 14 months if your machine is powered on 24/7.
> 
> gandalf ~ # smartctl -i /dev/sda
> smartctl 5.39.1 2010-01-28 r3054 [x86_64-pc-linux-gnu] (local build)
> Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net
> 
> === START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
> Device Model:     WDC WD10EARS-00Y5B1
> Serial Number:    WD-WCAV55464493
> Firmware Version: 80.00A80
> User Capacity:    1,000,204,886,016 bytes
> Device is:        Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
> ATA Version is:   8
> ATA Standard is:  Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
> Local Time is:    Sun Apr 18 08:36:44 2010 PDT
> SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
> SMART support is: Enabled
> 
> gandalf ~ #
> gandalf ~ # !smart
> smartctl -A /dev/sda
> smartctl 5.39.1 2010-01-28 r3054 [x86_64-pc-linux-gnu] (local build)
> Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net
> 
> === START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
> SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
> Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
> ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE
> UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
>   1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   200   200   051    Pre-fail
> Always       -       0
>   3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   129   128   021    Pre-fail
> Always       -       6525
>   4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age
> Always       -       21
>   5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail
> Always       -       0
>   7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x002e   200   200   000    Old_age
> Always       -       0
>   9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   098   098   000    Old_age
> Always       -       1588
>  10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0032   100   253   000    Old_age
> Always       -       0
>  11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032   100   253   000    Old_age
> Always       -       0
>  12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age
> Always       -       20
> 192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age
> Always       -       5
> 193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   187   187   000    Old_age
> Always       -       41476
> 194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   121   116   000    Old_age
> Always       -       26
> 196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age
> Always       -       0
> 197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age
> Always       -       0
> 198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   200   200   000    Old_age
> Offline      -       0
> 199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age
> Always       -       0
> 200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0008   200   200   000    Old_age
> Offline      -       0
> 
> gandalf ~ #
> 
> 
> - Mark
> 

Hi Gandalf,

thanks a lot for your extensive explanations!!!
Unfortunately, I already bought two of those drives...according
to your explanation about the expected lifetime of those I think
I have done the complete wrong decision...
But what could be the reason for building a drive with THAT setup...
it literally kills itsself...

May be itz is possible to "tune" the drive to not to save such great
amount of energy (read: Do not park heads that fast) via hdparm???

Best regards,
mcc

-- 
Please don't send me any Word- or Powerpoint-Attachments
unless it's absolutely neccessary. - Send simply Text.
See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
In a world without fences and walls nobody needs gates and windows.

Re: [gentoo-user] Winchester Digital HD: Advanced Format

[Mark Knecht]

On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 9:11 AM,  <meino.cramer@gmx.de> wrote:
<SNIP>
>
> Hi Gandalf,
>
> thanks a lot for your extensive explanations!!!
> Unfortunately, I already bought two of those drives...according
> to your explanation about the expected lifetime of those I think
> I have done the complete wrong decision...
> But what could be the reason for building a drive with THAT setup...
> it literally kills itsself...
>
> May be itz is possible to "tune" the drive to not to save such great
> amount of energy (read: Do not park heads that fast) via hdparm???
>
> Best regards,
> mcc

I have no data but I don't think the drive isn't killing itself. I
have one in a Windows box and I'm not seeing this problem. My
suspicion is that Linux is doing something that wakes the drive up
once every two minutes and then lets the drive go back to sleep. That
amounts to 30  load cycles an hour which hits the 300K spec in 13-14
months. I don't know that the drive will die when it gets to 300K. All
I know is that's the spec WD gives, not only for these Green-series
drives, but also for their Blue, Black and RAID Edition drives. The
thing is I have RAID Edition drives in similar systems and they aren't
racking up this count value so they presumably will last longer.

I have NO data as to why this is happening. It just is. I figure I've
got 6 months to find a solution, and then without a solution 6 more
months to swap the drives out if I get too worried.

- Mark

Re: [gentoo-user] Winchester Digital HD: Advanced Format

[Mark Knecht]

On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 10:42 AM, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 9:11 AM,  <meino.cramer@gmx.de> wrote:
> <SNIP>
>>
>> Hi Gandalf,
>>
>> thanks a lot for your extensive explanations!!!
>> Unfortunately, I already bought two of those drives...according
>> to your explanation about the expected lifetime of those I think
>> I have done the complete wrong decision...
>> But what could be the reason for building a drive with THAT setup...
>> it literally kills itsself...
>>
>> May be itz is possible to "tune" the drive to not to save such great
>> amount of energy (read: Do not park heads that fast) via hdparm???
>>
>> Best regards,
>> mcc
>

Sorry!! Bad writing. I meant to say "I have no data but I don't think
the drive is killing itself."

Sorry!


> I have no data but I don't think the drive isn't killing itself. I
> have one in a Windows box and I'm not seeing this problem. My
> suspicion is that Linux is doing something that wakes the drive up
> once every two minutes and then lets the drive go back to sleep. That
> amounts to 30  load cycles an hour which hits the 300K spec in 13-14
> months. I don't know that the drive will die when it gets to 300K. All
> I know is that's the spec WD gives, not only for these Green-series
> drives, but also for their Blue, Black and RAID Edition drives. The
> thing is I have RAID Edition drives in similar systems and they aren't
> racking up this count value so they presumably will last longer.
>
> I have NO data as to why this is happening. It just is. I figure I've
> got 6 months to find a solution, and then without a solution 6 more
> months to swap the drives out if I get too worried.
>
> - Mark
>

Re: [gentoo-user] Winchester Digital HD: Advanced Format

[pk]

On 2010-04-18 19:43, Mark Knecht wrote:

>> suspicion is that Linux is doing something that wakes the drive up
>> once every two minutes and then lets the drive go back to sleep. That

Sounds a bit like:
http://lwn.net/Articles/257426/

Although it may be different in your case...

Best regards

Peter K

Re: [gentoo-user] Winchester Digital HD: Advanced Format

[Mark Knecht]

On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 3:19 PM, pk <peterk2@coolmail.se> wrote:
> On 2010-04-18 19:43, Mark Knecht wrote:
>
>>> suspicion is that Linux is doing something that wakes the drive up
>>> once every two minutes and then lets the drive go back to sleep. That
>
> Sounds a bit like:
> http://lwn.net/Articles/257426/
>
> Although it may be different in your case...
>
> Best regards
>
> Peter K

Yeah, does sound very similar. A few others have mentioned this in the
past but I've not yet discovered what Gentoo or specifically my kernel
config might have done to set it off.

gandalf linux # date && smartctl -A /dev/sda | grep Load_Cycle_Count
Sun Apr 18 16:08:16 PDT 2010
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   187   187   000    Old_age
Always       -       41929
gandalf linux #

I'd experiment with the hdparm command but it doesn't work. Maybe
there's somethign else I need to do first or something:

gandalf linux # hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
 setting Advanced Power Management level to 0xfe (254)
 HDIO_DRIVE_CMD failed: Input/output error
 HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(identify) failed: Input/output error
gandalf linux #

hdparm does work though:

gandalf linux # hdparm -tT /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
 Timing cached reads:   11552 MB in  2.00 seconds = 5779.10 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  314 MB in  3.00 seconds = 104.50 MB/sec
gandalf linux #

Thanks,
Mark

Re: [gentoo-user] Winchester Digital HD: Advanced Format

[Mark Knecht]

On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 4:10 PM, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 3:19 PM, pk <peterk2@coolmail.se> wrote:
>> On 2010-04-18 19:43, Mark Knecht wrote:
>>
>>>> suspicion is that Linux is doing something that wakes the drive up
>>>> once every two minutes and then lets the drive go back to sleep. That
>>
>> Sounds a bit like:
>> http://lwn.net/Articles/257426/
>>
>> Although it may be different in your case...
>>
>> Best regards
>>
>> Peter K
>
> Yeah, does sound very similar. A few others have mentioned this in the
> past but I've not yet discovered what Gentoo or specifically my kernel
> config might have done to set it off.
>
> gandalf linux # date && smartctl -A /dev/sda | grep Load_Cycle_Count
> Sun Apr 18 16:08:16 PDT 2010
> 193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   187   187   000    Old_age
> Always       -       41929
> gandalf linux #
>
> I'd experiment with the hdparm command but it doesn't work. Maybe
> there's somethign else I need to do first or something:
>
> gandalf linux # hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda
>
> /dev/sda:
>  setting Advanced Power Management level to 0xfe (254)
>  HDIO_DRIVE_CMD failed: Input/output error
>  HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(identify) failed: Input/output error
> gandalf linux #
>
> hdparm does work though:
>
> gandalf linux # hdparm -tT /dev/sda
>
> /dev/sda:
>  Timing cached reads:   11552 MB in  2.00 seconds = 5779.10 MB/sec
>  Timing buffered disk reads:  314 MB in  3.00 seconds = 104.50 MB/sec
> gandalf linux #
>
> Thanks,
> Mark
>

It seems that this possibly doesn't APM...

gandalf linux # hdparm -i /dev/sda

/dev/sda:

 Model=WDC WD10EARS-00Y5B1, FwRev=80.00A80, SerialNo=WD-WCAV55464493
 Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec SpinMotCtl Fixed DTR>5Mbs FmtGapReq }
 RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=50
 BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=unknown, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16
 CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=1953525168
 IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
 PIO modes:  pio0 pio3 pio4
 DMA modes:  mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
 UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6
 AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=enabled
 Drive conforms to: Unspecified:  ATA/ATAPI-1,2,3,4,5,6,7

 * signifies the current active mode

gandalf linux #