Messages in this thread | | | From | "Tvrtko A. Ursulin" <> | Subject | Re: Western Digital GreenPower drives and Linux | Date | Thu, 10 Apr 2008 08:48:08 +0100 |
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On Wednesday 09 April 2008 21:18:35 Tvrtko A. Ursulin wrote: > I got one of them (WD5000AACS) recently and to my horror after less than > three days of being power on this is what I saw: > > 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 66 > 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 197 197 000 Old_age Always - 10233 > > At this rate the disk would reach it's design limit for load/unload cycles > in around 80 days. Not good - so I implemented a lame workaround of keeping > disk busy every couple of seconds - hopefully that won't kill it sooner > that unloads would.. > > I am also currently talking with first line of WD's tech support trying to > get some data on how exactly those drives manage head unloading, but that > may not lead anywhere useful.
I got back from WD's tech support and received a DOS utility which can control this drive feature, apparently using vendor specific commands. With it head unload timer can be disabled or set to a period between 100ms and 25.5s.
Of course I asked for more than a DOS utility, but the question really is how was this feature intended to work with Windows for example, is there something there which would prevent such rapid load/unload cycle growth, and why isn't it documented somewhere?
I am kind off hoping that someone from WD is reading this list and will notice this in case my effort with tech support fails.
Tvrtko
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