Re: Western Digital GreenPower drives and Linux

From: Christian Pernegger
Date: Thu Apr 10 2008 - 11:02:01 EST


[ Keep me CCd on this, please. ]

> Those fancy new WD GreenPower drives seem to be heavily suffering from the
> rapidly increasing head load/unload problem. [...] I got one of them
> (WD5000AACS) recently and to my horror [...]

I have the same disks, only with more warranty and supposedly
"enterprise" firmware (WD1000FYPS). The bug is the same, though, on
all four of them (~ 9 cycles /hour):

9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age
Always - 917
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 198 198 000 Old_age
Always - 8025

9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age
Always - 906
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 198 198 000 Old_age
Always - 7908

9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age
Always - 907
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 198 198 000 Old_age
Always - 8051

9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age
Always - 918
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 198 198 000 Old_age
Always - 7869

> I got the _DOS_ utility from WD which issues vendor specific commands to
> control that feature.

Have they confirmed it's a bug? I have no idea how often the disks
should do that.

> [...] With it the unload feature can be either disabled or timer set from
> 100ms to 25.5 seconds. But obviously I can't try it...

Why? Using a DOS boot disk once would not be that bad as a workaround,
would it? Or is the setting not persistent? Either way I'd prefer to
be able to leave the feature on (in usable form), eventually.

The bigger question is - why the rapid loads / unloads? In my case the
disks are idle hours at a time. No system files on there, just bulk
data. Does / could the controller (sata_sil24 in my case) have any
influence on this kind of power management?

Thanks,

C.
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