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

[Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com>]

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.

- Mark


gandalf ~ # 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 Caviar Green (Adv. Format)
Device Model:     WDC WD10EARS-00Y5B1
Serial Number:    WD-WCAV55464493
LU WWN Device Id: 5 0014ee 2ae6b5ffe
Firmware Version: 80.00A80
User Capacity:    1,000,204,886,016 bytes [1.00 TB]
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 10:53:59 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:  (0x82) Offline data collection activity
                                        was completed without error.
                                        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:                (19800) 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:        ( 228) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time:        (   5) minutes.
SCT capabilities:              (0x3031) SCT Status 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   131   128   021    Pre-fail
Always       -       6441
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age
Always       -       65
  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   074   074   000    Old_age
Always       -       19316
 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       -       63
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age
Always       -       14
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   001   001   000    Old_age
Always       -       700488
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   120   113   000    Old_age
Always       -       27
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

SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num  Test_Description    Status                  Remaining
LifeTime(hours)  LBA_of_first_error
# 1  Short offline       Completed without error       00%     11655         -
# 2  Extended offline    Completed without error       00%      8797         -
# 3  Short offline       Completed without error       00%      8794         -
# 4  Extended offline    Completed without error       00%      1009         -
# 5  Extended offline    Completed without error       00%       388         -
# 6  Short offline       Completed without error       00%       376         -

SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
 SPAN  MIN_LBA  MAX_LBA  CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
    1        0        0  Not_testing
    2        0        0  Not_testing
    3        0        0  Not_testing
    4        0        0  Not_testing
    5        0        0  Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
  After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.

gandalf ~ #