DEGRADED: One or more devices could not be opened

[joeschmuck]

I was under the impression that deactivating the head loading timer was not a good idea, and that setting the time to 300 seconds was the proper thing to do.

My head timer was deactivated on all six of my WD Reds and it's been over 5 years of continuious run time, no issues to date. That was the direction many people were taking 5 years ago. At the time the WD Red lineup had a max cycle count of 300,000. Since then that value doubled and has made the disable setting not really needed. Now I recommend 300 seconds. I've seen some very high load cycle values in the recent past on some postings and many drives are going strong.