Hacking WD Greens (and Reds) with WDIDLE3.exe

[joeschmuck]

Who the hell told you that running the tool would fix it? The head parking will never give you an error like this. The reason you change or disable the head parking timer it to lengthen the life of the heads. Constant loading will cause damage. If you get your pool recovered, I strongly urge you to save off any important data right away. Then you need to run the 'smartctl -x /dev/ada7' command and report your results in a new thread. Someone will see it, if not me and help you out. I'd say you have a failing hard drive for ada7.

 

[cyberjock]

For anybody reading this in the future - I had (3) 1TB Blues that I ran with this, turns out they do not have a head park timeout so you don't need to bother running them through this process.

Right.. if it mattered for Blue or Black drives I would have included them in the subject of the thread and in the body. That should have been a no-brainer. ;)

 

[diedrichg]

I made my statement because how is someone supposed to know knowledge from the omission of facts?

 

[cyberjock]

I made my statement because how is someone supposed to know knowledge from the omission of facts?

Technically, I didn't omit anything. In fact, I gave you enough information that you could have made the determination for yourself that Blue and Black disks are inappropriate for this setting. I discussed Intellipark technology in depth. If you look at any documentation on Blues and Blacks you'll see no mention of Intellipark. The reason for that is Intellipark is not compatible with the intended use case for Blue and Black drives.

 

[Benny.Banutzi]

Hi All; Well done on this informative thread;

Three years ago, I was fortunate enough to stumble on an internet posting regarding the load cycle counts of the then new WD Green drives. I've used the WDIDLE3 utility in the past on both 2.0TB WDEARS / 2.0TB WDEARX model green drives, with great success.

My current setup is a little dated, but suffice to say working quite well, with a 4 disk raidz2 pool, with power on hours in the range of about 2.6 years and load cycle counts of around 150 for the disks. In my instance I disabled the parameter rather than applying a 300 second limit.

I've read in places that people have had success with the WDIDLE3 tool on the equivalent WD 3.0 TB Green Drives but I have been unable to find any conclusive reporting regarding the success of using WDIDLE3 on WD 4.0TB WD40EZRX Green Drives.

I'm planning somewhat a new build, and given the success I've had with the WD WDEARS/WDEARX, I'd prefer to stick with WD.

However, given the lack of general information on the success or otherwise of WDIDLE3 on the WD4.0TB greens, I'd like to hold out.

Can any one help to validate or conclusively verify that WDIDLE3 actually works (or is even required due to excessive LLC) on WD40EZRX green drives and that WD hasn't infact disabled the firmware, or locked down the ability to change this setting with WDIDLE3 or an equivalent tool?

Moderator: Is there any benefit for masses maintaining a list at the beginning of this thread of all of the WD Green drives that WDIDLE3 works on?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

I just want to mention that I ran WDIDLE3 on various WD drives I have lying around. Most of the non-green drives reported a disabled idle timer, but they all allowed setting of the idle timer. More interestingly to me, two of the drives are 2.5" Scorpio Black drives, both of which reported an 8-second idle time setting (and later investigation revealed correspondingly high load cycle counts).

 

[cyberjock]

However, given the lack of general information on the success or otherwise of WDIDLE3 on the WD4.0TB greens, I'd like to hold out.

Can any one help to validate or conclusively verify that WDIDLE3 actually works (or is even required due to excessive LLC) on WD40EZRX green drives and that WD hasn't infact disabled the firmware, or locked down the ability to change this setting with WDIDLE3 or an equivalent tool?

Moderator: Is there any benefit for masses maintaining a list at the beginning of this thread of all of the WD Green drives that WDIDLE3 works on?

Thanks in advance.

From the moderator, and OP:

1. Why would I keep a list? I already told you what it works on.. WD Greens and some Reds. Is the WD40EZRX a WD Green? Yes it is. So does the wdidle3 tool work? Yes it does. No list is necessary.
2. If we had to keep a list, do you *really* think model number is all that will matter? Firmware, production date, etc could be the deciding factor. Do you now want to suggest someone spend time maintaining some all-inclusive list on a free and open source product? I hope not because I won't be the guy that spends that kind of time volunteering to buy all the hard drives to make that assessment.
3. Hold out all you want. I've already told you what drives works. Until someone tells me otherwise I'm going to continue to assume I'm correct. And judging from the number of people that read this thread every week I can bet that if suddenly things changed I'd probably have multiple responses of the problem in very short notice.

Just like the person that asked about Blue and Black drives.. don't overanalyze this. It's stupid simple. I've given you every piece of information I've found on the topic. There isn't much more to talk about except to tell you to read it and understand it.

 

[Martino]

Just to say thanks.
By the way my old Green was set to 8sec, my new Red was alredy set to 300 ;)
Cheers!

 

[robles]

Holy shit, there's a really big difference in WD Greens and Reds.

WD Red

Code:

ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   177   175   021    Pre-fail  Always       -       4125
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       23
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       545
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       12

WD Green

Code:

ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   177   176   021    Pre-fail  Always       -       4150
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       51
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       580
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   180   180   000    Old_age   Always       -       60808

60808 vs 12!!
I have a 1 year warranty on the Green, so I'm thinking on leaving it like that and wait for it to fail so I can WDIDLE the new one...

 

[cyberjock]

You're hoking I hope... you won't kill it in a year like that. What it does mean is that just after warranty it'll fail. So do yourself a favor and fix it. LOL.

 

[robles]

Yeah you're right, I'll fix it :)

 

[Yatti420]

Windows is bad enough on the greens.. Nas they'll load and unload constantly it's a must for nas use..

Sent from my SGH-I257M using Tapatalk 2

 

[PhilNotPhil]

I registered for an account just to say thanks for this thread. I don't even work with FreeNAS, just saw mention of the problem in the Amazon review for the 4TB drive and found this thread by googling. I did the whole bit on a Windows machine with Ultimate Boot CD in about seven minutes, including watching the whole video. Thank you thank you thank you.

 

[Sonik]

Hi guys, I've just joined today so apologies if this has already been asked.
I've bought two WD Green 2TB WD20EZRX drives, but I won't be using these in a NAS. I'm just using them as backup drives in an external dock.
Would you still recommend changing the timer to 300 even when not using in a NAS?

 

[Ericloewe]

Hi guys, I've just joined today so apologies if this has already been asked.
I've bought two WD Green 2TB WD20EZRX drives, but I won't be using these in a NAS. I'm just using them as backup drives in an external dock.
Would you still recommend changing the timer to 300 even when not using in a NAS?

Check for yourself if the load cycle count growth is acceptable. Lifetime limit is 600 000 for Reds, IIRC. Greens may be different (check their specs).

 

[joeschmuck]

Hi guys, I've just joined today so apologies if this has already been asked.
I've bought two WD Green 2TB WD20EZRX drives, but I won't be using these in a NAS. I'm just using them as backup drives in an external dock.
Would you still recommend changing the timer to 300 even when not using in a NAS?

If you are not using it in something that will get bumped around then I would recommend the 300 second setting regardless of the use. Remember, this is only 5 minutes where the drive will not park the heads so there is no real risk.

I would not however disable the parking, that would be a risk in my opinion unless you are using it in a NAS.

 

[carpler]

Hi to everyone!
I'm waiting for my HP N54L microserver to build my new NAS.
In the meantime I got my new hard drive WD 4TB Red WD40EFRX that I will use in the NAS.
Looking for a possible firmware update, I came across this post and I would like to ask a few things.
Keeping in mind that I currently have a PC with Windows, how can I check if my disc suffers of high LCC? Which test do you suggest?
To make this test is mandatory to connect the drive to a SATA port or can I also use a USB docking station?
I guess the program WDIDLE3 not work if the disc is in a docking station, but the tool WD5741 (running under Windows) works with the dock?
According also to the recent post I did not understand if, using the disk in a NAS, is recommended to disable completly or set it to 300 seconds?
Many thanks!

 

[Trophy]

Hi all,

I've been successfully using WDIDLE3 on multiple WD green disks over the years but when trying to use it with a WD40EZRX disk, I get the following error message:

VSCSendKey CMD Error 51 04 10 4F 00 00 A0

The ATA is set to IDE in the BIOS and I'm using an UBCD which has WDIDLE3 on it. The utility recognized the disk fine, it says
Model: WDC WD40EZRX-00SPEBo
Serial: WD-WCC4e2051050
and then comes the error message in the next line (no matter what WDIDLE3 parameter I use).

Since other folks seem to have used the utility successful on this type of disk, could this be a faulty disk? Any other thoughts? Any input would be highly appreciated.

Thanks a lot!

 

[cyberjock]

No way to know. The tool is no longer sanctioned by WD and when it was WD Reds didn't exist. It's just been luck that WD Reds worked at all.

The only thing I can honestly say you know for sure is that the wdidle3 tool is not compatible with your hard drives. Any kind of hypothesizing above that is just an indulgence.

I wouldn't worry about it, and I wouldn't have even tried it on your Reds (I didn't try it on the ones I bought 2 months ago). If there is a problem, load cycle counts will increase rapidly and you'll have your "sign" that you have work to do.

 

[Trophy]

Thanks for your quick response - however, my drive is a green drive, which is why I am concerned about LLC issues. I assume for a green drive I still should be, right?