Hacking WD Greens (and Reds) with WDIDLE3.exe

[cyberjock]

So anyone who buys new Green drives for a NAS is taking a bit of a gamble that they'll be usable?

Depends on your definition of "usable". If "usable" means "use the wdidle tool" then it is a gamble. In fact, for a short while there were some Greens made by WD that weren't compatible with the tool, but the tool was still actively developed by WD.

But the tool's ability to perform its function is totally dependent on WD. Clearly they've not tried to break it for 5+ years, so it's pretty clear what their intentions are. But there's no guarantees it will work on hard drives manufactured tomorrow. It's as good as "not supported" is for anything in the IT field. May work. May not.

You can bet money that if we have confirmed reports that the tool no longer works on Greens there will be a big warning on the front of this thread and I will stop recommending Greens altogether. As it is, the WD Reds aren't significantly more expensive than the Greens, so generally buying the Reds is the better action because of the warranty.

 

[rogerh]

Depends on your definition of "usable". If "usable" means "use the wdidle tool" then it is a gamble. In fact, for a short while there were some Greens made by WD that weren't compatible with the tool, but the tool was still actively developed by WD.

But the tool's ability to perform its function is totally dependent on WD. Clearly they've not tried to break it for 5+ years, so it's pretty clear what their intentions are. But there's no guarantees it will work on hard drives manufactured tomorrow. It's as good as "not supported" is for anything in the IT field. May work. May not.

You can bet money that if we have confirmed reports that the tool no longer works on Greens there will be a big warning on the front of this thread and I will stop recommending Greens altogether. As it is, the WD Reds aren't significantly more expensive than the Greens, so generally buying the Reds is the better action because of the warranty.

3TB about 11% more expensive, 6TB 10%, 4TB about 20% more expensive at the moment here. The 4TB greens are a particular bargain.

Edit: make that 6% more for the 3TB, all from reputable suppliers.

 

[cyberjock]

Yes, but on sale they are often the same price, or less than $10 more. :P

 

[rogerh]

Yes, but on sale they are often the same price, or less than $10 more. :p

Not spotted them on sale in UK in the last year or two, but I will certainly be keeping my eyes open as I need 3 more 3TB ones.

 

[Simon33]

Thank you for this thread.

I have a WD10EZRX built on 24 Apr 2015. My drive had a 12.8 second delay to park, I changed it to 300 second and it worked.

Btw: I read that wd wants to change the label green into blue:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meld...-Gruen-2803928.html?wt_mc=rss.ho.beitrag.atom

 

[Ericloewe]

Thank you for this thread.

I have a WD10EZRX built on 24 Apr 2015. My drive had a 12.8 second delay to park, I changed it to 300 second and it worked. :)

Btw: I read that wd wants to change the label green into blue:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meld...-Gruen-2803928.html?wt_mc=rss.ho.beitrag.atom

Interesting change. It sounds absolutely useless, since the greens are well-established and they don't exactly have a bad reputation.

Another interesting tidbit is that the new (if not the current ones) 3TB Blues (Greens) are actually 4-platter 4TB drives downrated to 3TB, due to excessive surface defects.

 

[joeschmuck]

Blues, Greens, what the hell is going on here. 4TB down to 3TB? Excessive surface defects, sounds like something to stay away from, but which ones, the Blues or the Greens? Stop blowing my mind this early in the morning

 

[solarisguy]

Will new Blue/Green be 5400 rpm or IntelliPower? That is a question...

 

[Ericloewe]

Blues, Greens, what the hell is going on here. 4TB down to 3TB? Excessive surface defects, sounds like something to stay away from, but which ones, the Blues or the Greens? Stop blowing my mind this early in the morning

I wouldn't say that the fact that they're binned is bad. What bugs me is that the fourth platter adds power consumption, noise and heat. At least they could sell them as 3.5TB drives or something, but a whole quarter of the drive?

As for the Greens becoming Blues, WHY?????

Will new Blue/Green be 5400 rpm or IntelliPower? That is a question...

IntelliPower was always 5400 RPM, in practice. Just a fancy name.

 

[Sonik]

I wouldn't say that the fact that they're binned is bad. What bugs me is that the fourth platter adds power consumption, noise and heat. At least they could sell them as 3.5TB drives or something, but a whole quarter of the drive?

As for the Greens becoming Blues, WHY?????


IntelliPower was always 5400 RPM, in practice. Just a fancy name.

This seems like a weird decision by WD. My guess is maybe to drive up sales of the Blacks?
If they'll be the only WD's left with a 7200 speed then more people will be prepared to buy those instead of the blues.

That's the only reason I can think of for the change.

Looking on the WD site they already have the new larger capacity Blues listed. And they are indeed 5400 rpm.
The 1TB is still available and still 7200.
Maybe they'll eventually discontinue these once they've cleared stock.

Shame as I've bought a lot of 1TB Blues in the past. :(

 

[Ericloewe]

I think they've bled the blues to death over the last few years. You'll notice the shortage of new products.

What I really don't get is why they'd rebrand the Greens as Blues.

 

[cyberjock]

I'd definitely like to read this "evidence" that excessive surface defects are responsible for "downrated" drives.

I sure don't buy it, not for a second. Mostly because AFAIK the platters themselves are outsourced (they aren't made by WD, HGST, etc.) so WD would NOT be the "only one" with this problem.

 

[Ericloewe]

I'd definitely like to read this "evidence" that excessive surface defects are responsible for "downrated" drives.

I sure don't buy it, not for a second. Mostly because AFAIK the platters themselves are outsourced (they aren't made by WD, HGST, etc.) so WD would NOT be the "only one" with this problem.

The website quotes one Jörg Andreas, exec with unspecified position at WD, as saying that he tends not be happy with the 3TB drives (this is a somewhat liberal translation), and that the new 3.5" Blues use 1TB platters. The 3TB model uses four platters with excessive defects for a 1TB/platter rating, he says.

 

[cyberjock]

Ok, just read the Google translated version. Still doesn't seem like a big deal to me at all.

Company-A sells a 4TB drive that fails in my server shortly after installation. I do an RMA to manufacturer. What do you think they do with the disk if they can't resell it as a total 4TB drive? Downrate it. What's the next "downrate" for hard drives below 4TB? There may be less "spare space" on the 4TB than on the designed 3TB, so a disproportionately large ratio of 4TB are downrated to 3TB than say 3TB to 2TB. We just don't know though.

This sounds like much adieu about nothing. It's like when Intel admitted to binning their parts. Everyone was in shock and horrified. Why? That's called business and that's how it works! Aside from you, I've never heard of that article before. To be honest, I don't see what the big deal is. I bet if you worked at any/every other hard drive manufacturer there's someone on the inside that has realized that some model or firmware revision just sucks really badly, but they don't openly talk about it either. Why? Because they don't want people like us to take it out of context (and it's easy to do since we have no info except what one person says in a sentence or two) and that's all.

So yeah... not a big deal to me at all.

 

[Ericloewe]

Ok, just read the Google translated version. Still doesn't seem like a big deal to me at all.

Company-A sells a 4TB drive that fails in my server shortly after installation. I do an RMA to manufacturer. What do you think they do with the disk if they can't resell it as a total 4TB drive? Downrate it. What's the next "downrate" for hard drives below 4TB? There may be less "spare space" on the 4TB than on the designed 3TB, so a disproportionately large ratio of 4TB are downrated to 3TB than say 3TB to 2TB. We just don't know though.

This sounds like much adieu about nothing. It's like when Intel admitted to binning their parts. Everyone was in shock and horrified. Why? That's called business and that's how it works! Aside from you, I've never heard of that article before. To be honest, I don't see what the big deal is. I bet if you worked at any/every other hard drive manufacturer there's someone on the inside that has realized that some model or firmware revision just sucks really badly, but they don't openly talk about it either. Why? Because they don't want people like us to take it out of context (and it's easy to do since we have no info except what one person says in a sentence or two) and that's all.

So yeah... not a big deal to me at all.

Yeah, not a big deal, just an interesting move that makes the 3TB new Blues more power-hungry (W/TB) than the rest of the family.

 

[meconium]

Hello

ive just got new (1384hours on) WD10JPVX in my notebook. It clicks all the time, i reduced that clicking with hdparm but it still clicks.
My Load Cycle Count is 26138.
I dont know if its too much or not...
should i use wdidle3? i mostly use notebook on AC and i doubt that should have a bug battery impact anyway.

thank you

 

[Ericloewe]

Hello

ive just got new (1384hours on) WD10JPVX in my notebook. It clicks all the time, i reduced that clicking with hdparm but it still clicks.
My Load Cycle Count is 26138.
I dont know if its too much or not...
should i use wdidle3? i mostly use notebook on AC and i doubt that should have a bug battery impact anyway.

thank you

I assume this has nothing to do with FreeNAS.

In any case, if the 2.5" drives have the same 600 000 cycle rating, don't bother changing anything. Wdidle might not even work, anyway.

 

[joeschmuck]

It clicks all the time

This is normal, it's a notebook hard drive and it expects you to drop it and bounce it around so it parks the heads every chance it gets in order to protect itself.

 

[alexg]

I purchased WD30EZRX WD-GREEN on 8/9/2015 and finally had a chance to use install it this weekend. After 14 hours of running, i only see 4 LCC. Do I still need to use WDIDLE or did WD finally changed them?

Code:

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Western Digital Caviar Green (AF, SATA 6Gb/s)
Device Model:     WDC WD30EZRX-22D8PB0
Serial Number:    WD-WCC4N4RP9AH3
LU WWN Device Id: 5 0014ee 2b62b8f2b
Firmware Version: 80.00A80
User Capacity:    3,000,592,982,016 bytes [3.00 TB]
Sector Sizes:     512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
Rotation Rate:    5400 rpm
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   ACS-2 (minor revision not indicated)
SATA Version is:  SATA 3.0, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 1.5 Gb/s)
Local Time is:    Mon Oct 26 07:44:56 2015 EDT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       14
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       4

 

[Ericloewe]

I purchased WD30EZRX WD-GREEN on 8/9/2015 and finally had a chance to use install it this weekend. After 14 hours of running, i only see 4 LCC. Do I still need to use WDIDLE or did WD finally changed them?

Code:

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Western Digital Caviar Green (AF, SATA 6Gb/s)
Device Model:     WDC WD30EZRX-22D8PB0
Serial Number:    WD-WCC4N4RP9AH3
LU WWN Device Id: 5 0014ee 2b62b8f2b
Firmware Version: 80.00A80
User Capacity:    3,000,592,982,016 bytes [3.00 TB]
Sector Sizes:     512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
Rotation Rate:    5400 rpm
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   ACS-2 (minor revision not indicated)
SATA Version is:  SATA 3.0, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 1.5 Gb/s)
Local Time is:    Mon Oct 26 07:44:56 2015 EDT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       14
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       4

Yes, most likely.