[gentoo-user] hdparm + Western Digital Green "idle3"

[gentoo-user] hdparm + Western Digital Green "idle3"

[Florian Philipp]

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I've just checked out the man page for hdparm. There I noticed the
new -J switch. It reads:

> Get/set  the  Western  Digital (WD) Green Drive's "idle3" timeout
> value.  This timeout controls how often the drive parks its heads and
> enters a low power consumption state.  The factory default is eight
> (8) seconds, which is a very poor choice for use with Linux.  Leaving
> it at the default will result  in  hundreds of  thousands  of  head
> load/unload cycles in a very short period of time.  The drive
> mechanism is only rated for 300,000 to 1,000,000 cycles, so leaving
> it at the default could result in premature failure, not to mention
> the performance impact of the drive often having to wake-up before
> doing routine I/O.
> 
> WD supply a WDIDLE3.EXE DOS utility for tweaking this setting, and
> you should use that program instead of hdparm if at all  possible.
> The  reverse-engineered implementation  in hdparm is not as complete
> as the original official program, even though it does seem to work on
> at a least a few drives. [...]
> 
> A setting of 30 seconds is recommended for Linux use. [...]

I've never heard of this. Are other Caviar Green users aware of this?
Anyone having any experience with this?

Thanks in advance!
Florian Philipp


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[gentoo-user] Re: hdparm + Western Digital Green "idle3"

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 25/08/12 15:55, Florian Philipp wrote:
> I've just checked out the man page for hdparm. There I noticed the
> new -J switch. It reads:
>
>> Get/set  the  Western  Digital (WD) Green Drive's "idle3" timeout
>> value.  This timeout controls how often the drive parks its heads and
>> enters a low power consumption state.  The factory default is eight
>> (8) seconds, which is a very poor choice for use with Linux.  Leaving
>> it at the default will result  in  hundreds of  thousands  of  head
>> load/unload cycles in a very short period of time.  The drive
>> mechanism is only rated for 300,000 to 1,000,000 cycles, so leaving
>> it at the default could result in premature failure, not to mention
>> the performance impact of the drive often having to wake-up before
>> doing routine I/O.
>>
>> WD supply a WDIDLE3.EXE DOS utility for tweaking this setting, and
>> you should use that program instead of hdparm if at all  possible.
>> The  reverse-engineered implementation  in hdparm is not as complete
>> as the original official program, even though it does seem to work on
>> at a least a few drives. [...]
>>
>> A setting of 30 seconds is recommended for Linux use. [...]
>
> I've never heard of this. Are other Caviar Green users aware of this?
> Anyone having any experience with this?

I have the same issue with a Seagate drive.  The problem isn't just 
reduced lifetime, but also an annoying high pitch sound when that 
happens, and an also annoying freeze on the first disk I/O after the 
heads have been parked.

The solution to this however is different; I use "-B 255" to disable 
that feature entirely.  Parking the heads *at all* is just brain 
damaged.  There's no reason at all.  I don't know if the WD disks 
support the -B option though.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: hdparm + Western Digital Green "idle3"

[Adam Carter]

>> I've just checked out the man page for hdparm. There I noticed the
>> new -J switch. It reads:
>>
>>> Get/set  the  Western  Digital (WD) Green Drive's "idle3" timeout
>>> value.  This timeout controls how often the drive parks its heads and
>>> enters a low power consumption state.  The factory default is eight
>>> (8) seconds, which is a very poor choice for use with Linux.  Leaving
>>> it at the default will result  in  hundreds of  thousands  of  head
>>> load/unload cycles in a very short period of time.  The drive
>>> mechanism is only rated for 300,000 to 1,000,000 cycles, so leaving
>>> it at the default could result in premature failure,

# smartctl -a /dev/sda | grep Load_Cycle_Count
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   001   001   000    Old_age
Always       -       920472

So i'm at 920K  - has anyone tried -J? Since it returns this (below) I
think i'll just leave it drive with the 8 second timer. The drive is
mirrored.

Use of -J is EXTREMELY DANGEROUS.
This implementation is not as thorough as the official WDIDLE3.EXE.
Use at your own risk!
Please also supply the --please-destroy-my-drive flag if you really want this.
Program aborted.