Hacking WD Greens (and Reds) with WDIDLE3.exe

[golemcito]

Hi

Does anybody know if wdidle work in the new green 6Tb disks?

Best Regards

 

[cyberjock]

There are no reports that it doesn't. But at the same time there aren't a lot of 6TB greens out there.

 

[9C1 Newbee]

I vaguely remember a person saying it did. Please let us know what happens.

 

[travalon]

1st THANK YOU for such a great thread.
2nd FYI - I just diddled a 3tb Green manufactured 06/14
and a 3tb Red manufactured 05/14.
Well not the Red it was already set to 300 secs.
If it was you would you adjust a Green going in a desktop?
Thx.

 

[9C1 Newbee]

1st THANK YOU for such a great thread.

You are welcome. We are here to help! Well some of us are. Others just just lurk around. Like digital ninjas in wait.

2nd FYI - I just diddled a 3tb Green manufactured 06/14 and a 3tb Red manufactured 05/14. Well not the Red it was already set to 300 secs.

Glad to know they can still be adjusted. We had a scare recently, turned out to be a hardware issue.

If it was you would you adjust a Green going in a desktop? Thx.

If it was me? Without a damn doubt. And the funny thing is, I fought it for so long. I had extensive failures to the tune of 1 drive a month out of a pool of 6. Now, I have been treated pretty good by WD drives. But yeah. DO IT!

 

[MrTester]

Hi,

I have two WD40EZRX (4tb Greens) which im using in RAID1 for my ITX 2012R2 Server. The date on both disks is 16th September 2014. I just successfully updated both to 300 seconds using UBCD & WDIDLE3 thanks to this fantastic guide. My array decided it needed to re-build though but I think that was just because I happened to have one of the cables unplugged the second time I rebooted. Anyway thanks all! :)

 

[flyfrank]

Hey Mr Tester,
would you be so kind and check the growth of the LCC per day for me?
I would like to figure out, if my is fine or not...
Thanks in advance

Frank

 

[MrTester]

Will do, will report back in a week or so.

Cheers.

 

[Borja Marcos]

I've got four 3 TB Red drives, model WDC WD30EFRX-68EUZN0 with firmware version 80.00A80.

I am using them presently on a FreeBSD system and the load count is not increasing. The system is currently idle, I am not using it yet for anything, and the only processes running are the system daemons (cron, etc) with the default configuration and a systems statistics collector (devilator) that reads several system variables every 5 minutes and writes them to a file.

The load count is not increasing for me. For example, included are the SMART variables of one of the disks. It's been fixed in 398 for a week or so. Before that I tinkered with the system several times, rebooted, etc. That explains the load count. But at least this revision (labeled as NASware 2.0) seems to have a seconds timeout.

Code:

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   200   200   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   179   178   021    Pre-fail  Always       -       6041
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       77
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x002e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       608
10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0032   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       74
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       55
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       398
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   122   117   000    Old_age   Always       -       28
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0008   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0

 

[flyfrank]

Hmm, I have the following informations

Code:

Disk: /dev/ada0
Device Model:     WDC WD30EFRX-68EUZN0
Serial Number:    WD-WMC4N0D493AE
Firmware Version: 82.00A82
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       10
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   098   098   000    Old_age   Always       -       1687
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       3
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       2108
----------
Disk: /dev/ada1
Device Model:     WDC WD30EFRX-68EUZN0
Serial Number:    WD-WMC4N2680360
Firmware Version: 80.00A80
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       10
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   098   098   000    Old_age   Always       -       1686
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       6
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       642
----------
----------
Disk: /dev/ada3
Device Model:     WDC WD30EFRX-68EUZN0
Serial Number:    WD-WMC4N2678661
Firmware Version: 80.00A80
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       9
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   098   098   000    Old_age   Always       -       1686
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       5
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       651
----------
Disk: /dev/ada4
Device Model:     WDC WD30EFRX-68EUZN0
Serial Number:    WD-WMC4N2652418
Firmware Version: 80.00A80
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       8
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   098   098   000    Old_age   Always       -       1660
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       5
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       626
----------

I still think that ada0 is my problem child... I updated all of them to 300 sec.
Frank

 

[9C1 Newbee]

I think the numbers look fine. But there is nothing wrong with disabling it either.

 

[flyfrank]

Your´re right, trying to disable ada0 and I will see whats gonna happen.
I´ll be back ;-)

 

[unijabnx2000]

Time to put 2.5" WD Blacks and Blues on the list!

They were all set to 8 seconds ... I suspected them when I was looking at the LCC today and since they are only about 2 months old I found it odd the LCC was so high.

Blacks are ~52-62k
Blue is 92k

 

[cyberjock]

Thanks for the update. I am not overly surprised since 2.5" drives are "designed" for laptops, a situation where power savings might be particularly important. I'll update the thread. :D

 

[unijabnx2000]

well even though the software shows it disabled the park timer, I believe they are still parking...

The numbers are still going up...

:(

 

[Proto_6]

hey guys,

just to keep this very useful thread updated...

bought 4 x WD40EZRX 4TB HDDs over Xmas... all manufactured 24 Nov 2014...

ran the Wdidle3 tool (using UBCD 5.3.2) on them, all had the parking timer set to 8.0 secs... successfully adjusted the parking timer to 300 secs, no problem...

- M

 

[ss4johnny]

I just picked up some new Reds and ran the updater from the WD site. First one says the firmware's already updated. So I'm probably not going to bother with anything else.

 

[mattlach]

If it was me? Without a damn doubt. And the funny thing is, I fought it for so long. I had extensive failures to the tune of 1 drive a month out of a pool of 6. Now, I have been treated pretty good by WD drives. But yeah. DO IT!

I never wdidled my greens. I bought them before I built my FreeNAS box, and just reused them, before I read about all the intellipark issues on here.

I meant to wdidle them, but I never got around to it, due to the server downtime it would cause. Instead I just let them go. Two of them finally died after 4 years of 24/7 use, and when they did I replaced them with larger reds.

I just picked up some new Reds and ran the updater from the WD site. First one says the firmware's already updated. So I'm probably not going to bother with anything else.

This was my experience too. I have run the utility on all of them, just to be sure, but all of them have had the new firmware. Worth doing just in case you get one that has been sitting on a shelf at a retailer for a long time, and still has the old firmware, I guess.

Now all of the disks in my main storage box are reds. They have been going since May, with the highest LCC of the bunch being 137. I feel like they are good out of the box :p

I still have two Greens with almost 400k LCC's though that are still alive and kicking. At this point it isn't worth the downtime. I'll just wait for them to kick it, and then swap in some reds.

 

[9C1 Newbee]

I still have two Greens with almost 400k LCC's though that are still alive and kicking. At this point it isn't worth the downtime. I'll just wait for them to kick it, and then swap in some reds.

I have hypothesized 2TB drives are more robust than 3TB. I have the 3TB ones. What capacity was yours?

 

[mattlach]

I have hypothesized 2TB drives are more robust than 3TB. I have the 3TB ones. What capacity was yours?

Well, I've had a total of 6 WD Greens (2x 2TB drives and 4x 3TB drives.) for the last 4-5 years from back when I first started playing with redundant storage and got a 5 bay Drobo (which was dreadfully slow)

I got the two 2TB's (WD20EARS) first and had them directly in my desktop for a while mirrored. Then when I got my 5 bay Drobo I transferred them over there with the first 3 3TB greens (1x WD30EZRS and 2x WD30EZRX), which I had for a about a half a year before getting frustrated, selling it and moving to FreeNAS. When I moved to FreeNAS I picked up my 4th 3TB Green (WD30EZRX) and did a 6 drive RAIDz2. That was in 2011.

So without digging up old invoices, the 2TB WD Greens were probably mid to late 2009 vintage, the first three 3TB drives were mid 2011 vintage (right when WD was switching from WD30EZRS to WD30EZRX, which is why they are mixed) and the final 3TB Green was likely late 2011 just as I was planning my first FreeNAS build.

The drives were as follows (in order of purchase)

1. 2TB WD Green (WD20EARS) -- Deceased. Removed it when firmware became corrupted. It thought it was a 1.12 petabyte drive, and slowly aggregated errors.
2. 2TB WD Green (WD20EARS) -- Still alive. Serving as a large USB stick to transfer non-critical data
3. 3TB WD Green (WD30EZRS) -- Still alive, but not in use. Drive has become VERY loud when spinngin, and has the "clicks of death", but it still works, just don't trust it.
4. 3TB WD Green (WD30EZRX) -- Dead. Still spins up, but accumulates a lot of read and write errors.
5. 3TB WD Green (WD30EZRX) -- Still used in a backup mirror with the other 3TB Green
6. 3TB WD Green (WD30EZRX) -- Still used in a backup mirror with the other 3TB Green

So the 2TB's ahve seen one failure and one survivor after years of abuse. They were the oldest and most used drives though

The 3TB's, out of 4, two are still in active use, one I don't trust, and one is outright dead. Funnily enough the EZRS (the oldest one) is th eone I don't trust, and one of the EZRX:es (the newer ones) is the one that is actually dead.

So learn what you will from my experiences. Keep in mind that they are very small sample sizes though, and probably don't mean much in the grand scheme of things.