Re: [gentoo-user] Are those "green" drives any good?

[Mick <michaelkintzios@gmail.com>]

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On Thursday 10 May 2012 19:51:14 Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 11:13 AM, Norman Invasion
> 
> <invasivenorman@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 10 May 2012 14:01, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 9:20 AM, Norman Invasion
> >> 
> >> <invasivenorman@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> On 9 May 2012 04:47, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>> Hi,
> >>>> 
> >>>> As some know, I'm planning to buy me a LARGE hard drive to put all my
> >>>> videos on, eventually.  The prices are coming down now.  I keep seeing
> >>>> these "green" drives that are made by just about every company
> >>>> nowadays. When comparing them to a non "green" drive, do they hold up
> >>>> as good? Are they as dependable as a plain drive?  I guess they are
> >>>> more efficient and I get that but do they break quicker, more often
> >>>> or no difference?
> >>>> 
> >>>> I have noticed that they tend to spin slower and are cheaper.  That
> >>>> much I have figured out.  Other than that, I can't see any other
> >>>> difference. Data speeds seem to be about the same.
> >>> 
> >>> They have an ugly tendency to nod off at 6 second intervals.
> >>> This runs up "193 Load_Cycle_Count" unacceptably: as many
> >>> as a few hundred thousand in a year & a million cycles is
> >>> getting close to the lifetime limit on most hard drives.  I end
> >>> up running some iteration of
> >>> # hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda
> >>> every boot.
> >> 
> >> Very true about the 193 count. Here's a drive in a system that was
> >> built in Jan., 2010 so it's a bit over 2 years old at this point. It's
> >> on 24/7 and not rebooted except for more major updates, etc. My tests
> >> say the drive spins down and starts back up every 2 minutes and has
> >> been doing so for about 28 months. IIRC the 193 spec on this drive was
> >> something like 300000 max with the drive currently clocking in at
> >> 700488. I don't see any evidence that it's going to fail but I am
> >> trying to make sure it's backed up often. Being that it's gone >2x at
> >> this point I will swap the drive out in the early summer no matter
> >> what. This week I'll be visiting where the machine is so I'm going to
> >> put a backup drive in the box to get ready.
> > 
> > Yes, I just learned about this problem in 2009 or so, &
> > checked on my FreeBSD laptop, which turned out to be
> > at >400000.  It only made it another month or so before
> > having unrecoverable errors.
> > 
> > Now, I can't conclusively demonstrate that the 193
> > Load_Cycle_Count was somehow causitive, but I
> > gots my suspicions.  Many of 'em highly suspectable.
> 
> It's part of the 'Wear Out Failure' part of the Bathtub Curve posted
> in the last few days. That said, some Toyotas go 100K miles, and
> others go 500K miles. Same car, same spec, same production line,
> different owners, different roads, different climates, etc.
> 
> It's not possible to absolutely know when any drive will fail. I
> suspect that the 300K spec is just that, a spec. They'd replace the
> drive if it failed at 299,999 and wouldn't replace it at 300,001. That
> said, they don't want to spec thing too tightly, and I doubt many
> people make a purchasing decision on a spec like this, so for the vast
> majority of drives most likely they'd do far more than 300K.
> 
> At 2 minutes per count on that specific WD Green Drive, if a home
> machine is turned on for instance 5 hours a day (6PM to 11PM) then
> 300K count equates to around 6 years. To me that seems pretty generous
> for a low cost home machine. However for a 24/7 production server it's
> a pretty fast replacement schedule.
> 
> Here's data for my 500GB WD RAID Edition drives in my compute server
> here. It's powered down almost every night but doesn't suffer from the
> same firmware issues. The machine was built in April, 2010, so it's a
> bit of 2 years old.  Note that it's been powered on less than 1/2 the
> number of hours but only has a 193 count of 907 vs > 700000!
> 
> Cheers,
> Mark
> 
> 
> c2stable ~ # smartctl -a /dev/sda
> smartctl 5.42 2011-10-20 r3458 [x86_64-linux-3.2.12-gentoo] (local build)
> Copyright (C) 2002-11 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net
> 
> === START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
> Model Family:     Western Digital RE3 Serial ATA
> Device Model:     WDC WD5002ABYS-02B1B0
> Serial Number:    WD-WCASYA846988
> LU WWN Device Id: 5 0014ee 2042c3477
> Firmware Version: 02.03B03
> User Capacity:    500,107,862,016 bytes [500 GB]
> Sector Size:      512 bytes logical/physical
> Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
> ATA Version is:   8
> ATA Standard is:  Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
> Local Time is:    Thu May 10 11:45:45 2012 PDT
> SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
> SMART support is: Enabled
> 
> === START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
> SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
> 
> General SMART Values:
> Offline data collection status:  (0x84) Offline data collection activity
>                                         was suspended by an
> interrupting command from host.
>                                         Auto Offline Data Collection:
> Enabled. Self-test execution status:      (   0) The previous self-test
> routine completed without error or no self-test has ever been run.
> Total time to complete Offline
> data collection:                ( 9480) seconds.
> Offline data collection
> capabilities:                    (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
>                                         Auto Offline data collection
> on/off support.
>                                         Suspend Offline collection upon new
>                                         command.
>                                         Offline surface scan supported.
>                                         Self-test supported.
>                                         Conveyance Self-test
> supported.
>                                         Selective Self-test supported.
> SMART capabilities:            (0x0003) Saves SMART data before
> entering
>                                         power-saving mode.
>                                         Supports SMART auto save
> timer.
> Error logging capability:        (0x01) Error logging supported.
>                                         General Purpose Logging
> supported.
> Short self-test routine
> recommended polling time:        (   2) minutes.
> Extended self-test routine
> recommended polling time:        ( 112) minutes.
> Conveyance self-test routine
> recommended polling time:        (   5) minutes.
> SCT capabilities:              (0x303f) SCT Status supported.
>                                         SCT Error Recovery Control
> supported.
>                                         SCT Feature Control supported.
>                                         SCT Data Table supported.
> 
> 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   239   235   021    Pre-fail
> Always       -       1050
>   4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age
> Always       -       935
>   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   091   091   000    Old_age
> Always       -       7281
>  10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age
> Always       -       0
>  11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age
> Always       -       0
>  12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age
> Always       -       933
> 192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age
> Always       -       27
> 193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age
> Always       -       907
> 194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   106   086   000    Old_age
> Always       -       41
> 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

Is this 193 Load_Cycle_Count an issue only on the green drives?

I have a very old Compaq laptop here that shows:

# smartctl -A /dev/sda | egrep "Power_On|Load_Cycle"
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0012   055   055   000    Old_age   Always       
-       19830
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0012   001   001   000    Old_age   Always       
-       1739734

Admittedly, there are some 60 errors on it (having been used extensively on 
bouncy trains, buses, aeroplanes, etc) but it is still refusing to die ...  
O_O

It is a Hitachi 20G 

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Hitachi Travelstar 80GN
Device Model:     IC25N020ATMR04-0
Serial Number:    MRX107K1DS623H
Firmware Version: MO1OAD5A
User Capacity:    20,003,880,960 bytes [20.0 GB]
Sector Size:      512 bytes logical/physical
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   6
ATA Standard is:  ATA/ATAPI-6 T13 1410D revision 3a
Local Time is:    Sat May 12 10:30:13 2012 BST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===

-- 
Regards,
Mick

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