SOLVED WD Utility for RED drives with High Load Cycle Counts

[jyavenard]

Ran WDIDLE3.EXE utility on them; all of them had the timing feature enabled, and it was set to 8s !!
So no sure what the WD5741 utility is supposed to do, but for me it did nothing, yet experienced very high load count...

(for people using a LSI based HBA card; WDIDLE3 didn't see the drive, had to connect them to intel sata)

Hopefully won't have more issues, will notice on how it progresses from now on

 

[Yatti420]

If you do a little math you can see what the Idle timers are set to on new drives.. Ofcourse with drives like my Ears where I've changed the timer after months of hammering the drive the answer changes now as time progresses.. This should be standard procedure for Green/Reds before use.. I hope Cyberjock stickied his instructions on running wdidle..

 

[joeschmuck]

Hmm... I tried running this utility against all my drive, and for all of them it states that the update is not needed.

I seen on another thread that you did run the WDIDLE3.exe and changed your timer from 8 seconds to disabled. Your LCC values should stop climbing now. And you make a good point, what does the firmware update actually do?

 

[SmallGuy]

Hmm... I tried running this utility against all my drive, and for all of them it states that the update is not needed.
Firmware is 80.00A80




You have the same firmware as I; how did you manage such a low load count ?

Same disk set-up as post #28. And keep in mind I use Freenas as a home NAS, only 2 users and medias streaming in the evening and the week-end, as I am a busy man (not enough to let down FreeNAS forum ;) ).

 

[cyberjock]

I wrote a how-to guide on making this change. It explains everything and links the tools and a video of someone doing it. It's in the how-to guides section(I think hacking). Wrote it just a few days ago because of popular demand.

 

[jyavenard]

You may want to add to your how-to guide, that the utility for the WD Red does *not* change the timing feature, and that for my new Red it was set to 8s and only WDIDLE3 allowed to change that value

 

[jyavenard]

A side question..

Couldn't we use the advanced power management instead and use value 254?
Value 254 in APM is supposed to disable power management and head parking completely.

Seeing that this is available via the GUI, it may be much easier to do and not require any downtime while you boot DOS and run the wdidle3 utility

 

[cyberjock]

You may want to add to your how-to guide, that the utility for the WD Red does *not* change the timing feature, and that for my new Red it was set to 8s and only WDIDLE3 allowed to change that value

Interesting. That tends to validate even further that the Reds really were nothing more than Greens with just some minor changes to the firmware. I'll update my guide though. Thanks for the feedback.

A side question..

Couldn't we use the advanced power management instead and use value 254?
Value 254 in APM is supposed to disable power management and head parking completely.

Seeing that this is available via the GUI, it may be much easier to do and not require any downtime while you boot DOS and run the wdidle3 utility

I tried to see if anyone has done this. Someone tried a value of 255(which I think is the same as disabled for APM). Apparently 255 was not supported for one individual when they tried it on one of their WD Greens. I do know that I had forgotten to set wdidle on one of my replacement drives, and I racked up a couple thousand over a course of 2-3 months while in my FreeNAS box before I caught the error. Would be interesting to see of APM does affect the intellipark feature.

 

[Yatti420]

Wait so is the new red tool changing idle timer or not?

 

[cyberjock]

Wait so is the new red tool changing idle timer or not?

For those with some WD Reds, apparently not. I think it goes like this..

- WD Reds introduced to market in 2012. Everything is fine. (I'll call these drives group 1)
- WD Red drives manufactured around Sept-Dec 2013 changed to having an 8 second idle park(normally I'd call it intellipark, but I don't think that term is appropriate for WD Reds). wdidle3 works on these drives. (I'll call these drives group 2)
- At some point people complained, WD backtracked and changed it to 300 seconds(or disabled... not sure which). Likely Dec-2013/Jan-2014. (I'll call these drives group 3)
- January 2013 WD released the tool for WD Reds(compatible with linux and windows.. woohoo?) called wd5741

If you are in group 1, this stuff doesn't matter.
If you are in group 2, you have an 8 second delay. wdidle3.exe works and the new wd5741 *may* NOT work.
If you are in group 3, you have a 300 second delay(or its disabled.. not sure which exactly), and both wdidle3 and wd5741 *should* work.

This is simplified down horribly, and some info may be inaccurate. The bottom line is you should follow my guide if you have any question about what to do. It's all explained there.

 

[crumbz]

I have two drives produced in late December 2013 and six produced in January 2014 and all of these have the timer set to 300 from the factory.

Edit: All 4TB drives.

 

[jyavenard]

For those with some WD Reds, apparently not. I think it goes like this..


This is simplified down horribly, and some info may be inaccurate. The bottom line is you should follow my guide if you have any question about what to do. It's all explained there.

Mine were manufactured in November 2013, so part of your group 2.

Idle time was enabled and set to 8s, red utility did nothing.

From reading various forums, it seems the 4TB are set differently to the 2TB and 3TB model. On anandtech forums, seems all recent 2 and 3 are set to 300s while the 4TB is set to 8s. At least that's what I get from reading the various comments.

 

[Yatti420]

I noticed the 4tb drives these days are low rpm? Even Seagate? Too many read errors at higher rpms? Wouldn't surprise me if the 4tb greens are rebranded reds at bare minimum..

jyavenard are you sure the red tool did nothing? Do we have confirmation from somebody else? I swear I read it set somebodies timer to 300s.. Maybe the update didn't take - Did you completly power off after upgrade?You figure they would build the new tool for the drives with 8s timers.. Now I'm confused..

 

[cyberjock]

I remember someone claiming 300 seconds too. Not jyavenards biggest fan but I'll take him at his word on this. He does know these ropes.

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk

 

[jyavenard]

I

jyavenard are you sure the red tool did nothing? Do we have confirmation from somebody else? I swear I read it set somebodies timer to 300s.. Maybe the update didn't take - Did you completly power off after upgrade?You figure they would build the new tool for the drives with 8s timers.. Now I'm confused..

Running the tool using a Linux live DVD, the tool listed all the disks, and the actions taken for each disk on the side.
For each of them you had a comment that it had the latest firmware and no actions were taken.
I don't recall the exact wording, I could post a screen capture if you want (a tad annoying though as I have to take my freenas box offline)

Here are the screen captures:

 

[SmallGuy]

I have check on an other set-up:

Code:

[root@FreeNAS] ~# smartctl -a /dev/ada0 | grep '4 St\|9 Po\|192 Po\|193 Lo'
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032  100  100  000    Old_age  Always      -      10
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032  100  100  000    Old_age  Always      -      688
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032  200  200  000    Old_age  Always      -      5
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032  197  197  000    Old_age  Always      -      10595
[root@FreeNAS] ~# smartctl -a /dev/ada1 | grep '4 St\|9 Po\|192 Po\|193 Lo'
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032  100  100  000    Old_age  Always      -      97
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032  098  098  000    Old_age  Always      -      1495
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032  200  200  000    Old_age  Always      -      47
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032  200  200  000    Old_age  Always      -      49
[root@FreeNAS] ~# smartctl -a /dev/ada2 | grep '4 St\|9 Po\|192 Po\|193 Lo'
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032  100  100  000    Old_age  Always      -      98
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032  098  098  000    Old_age  Always      -      1495
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032  200  200  000    Old_age  Always      -      48
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032  200  200  000    Old_age  Always      -      49

ada0 present the trouble.
WDC WD30EFRX-68EUZN0
serial: WD-WMC4N1XXXXX

ada1 & ada2
WDC WD30EFRX-68EUZN0
serial WD-WMC4N0XXXXX

 

[crumbz]

I'll post my numbers also, for later reference :) These are pretty much brand new drives as you can see from the Power On Hours.

Model: WDC WD40EFRX-68WT0N0
Serial: WD-WCC4E******

Code:

[root@freenas] ~# smartctl -a /dev/da0 | grep '4 St\|9 Po\|192 Po\|193 Lo'
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032  100  100  000    Old_age  Always      -      10
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032  100  100  000    Old_age  Always      -      33
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032  200  200  000    Old_age  Always      -      9
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032  200  200  000    Old_age  Always      -      57
[root@freenas] ~# smartctl -a /dev/da1 | grep '4 St\|9 Po\|192 Po\|193 Lo'
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032  100  100  000    Old_age  Always      -      10
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032  100  100  000    Old_age  Always      -      33
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032  200  200  000    Old_age  Always      -      9
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032  200  200  000    Old_age  Always      -      58
[root@freenas] ~# smartctl -a /dev/da2 | grep '4 St\|9 Po\|192 Po\|193 Lo'
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032  100  100  000    Old_age  Always      -      12
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032  100  100  000    Old_age  Always      -      33
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032  200  200  000    Old_age  Always      -      11
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032  200  200  000    Old_age  Always      -      59
[root@freenas] ~# smartctl -a /dev/da3 | grep '4 St\|9 Po\|192 Po\|193 Lo'
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032  100  100  000    Old_age  Always      -      11
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032  100  100  000    Old_age  Always      -      33
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032  200  200  000    Old_age  Always      -      10
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032  200  200  000    Old_age  Always      -      58
[root@freenas] ~# smartctl -a /dev/da4 | grep '4 St\|9 Po\|192 Po\|193 Lo'
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032  100  100  000    Old_age  Always      -      11
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032  100  100  000    Old_age  Always      -      33
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032  200  200  000    Old_age  Always      -      10
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032  200  200  000    Old_age  Always      -      56
[root@freenas] ~# smartctl -a /dev/da5 | grep '4 St\|9 Po\|192 Po\|193 Lo'
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032  100  100  000    Old_age  Always      -      10
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032  100  100  000    Old_age  Always      -      33
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032  200  200  000    Old_age  Always      -      9
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032  200  200  000    Old_age  Always      -      57
[root@freenas] ~# smartctl -a /dev/da6 | grep '4 St\|9 Po\|192 Po\|193 Lo'
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032  100  100  000    Old_age  Always      -      12
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032  100  100  000    Old_age  Always      -      44
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032  200  200  000    Old_age  Always      -      11
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032  200  200  000    Old_age  Always      -      60
[root@freenas] ~# smartctl -a /dev/da7 | grep '4 St\|9 Po\|192 Po\|193 Lo'
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032  100  100  000    Old_age  Always      -      10
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032  100  100  000    Old_age  Always      -      33
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032  200  200  000    Old_age  Always      -      9
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032  200  200  000    Old_age  Always      -      58

 

[joeschmuck]

@crumbz

I suspect your timer is set to 300 seconds since your LCC is not climbing like crazy, but they definitely are not disabled. Out of curiosity do you have the HDD Standby value set for something other than "Always On" in the GUI? The Start_Stop_Count seems a bit high for as few hours that you have the drives powered up. Of course that could be due to a lot of rebooting or tuning it on and off several times. This could become an issue as from what I understand, the most wear and tear for a drive comes during the spinup of the drive.

 

[crumbz]

@crumbz

I suspect your timer is set to 300 seconds since your LCC is not climbing like crazy, but they definitely are not disabled. Out of curiosity do you have the HDD Standby value set for something other than "Always On" in the GUI? The Start_Stop_Count seems a bit high for as few hours that you have the drives powered up. Of course that could be due to a lot of rebooting or tuning it on and off several times. This could become an issue as from what I understand, the most wear and tear for a drive comes during the spinup of the drive.

wdidle3.exe reports that the timer is 300 seconds on all my drives, and HDD Standby is "Always On".

Start_Stop_Count is 10-12 in such a short time because I have been booting/rebooting a few more times than usual to run wdidle3.exe for instance, and moving data from my old drives over to the new ones, re-installing FreeNAS, etc. Hopefully I won't need to reboot or power off my server for a good while now.

I will keep an eye on this Load_Cycle_Count value, but I'm not worried as long as no more than two of my drives fail at once. And if they fail I hope they do before the warranty runs out.

 

[joeschmuck]

Good idea to check the timer setting and I too think you will be fine with those settings.