Western Digital Green Drives - WDIDLE3.EXE

[Yatti420]

Hello everybody,

I've seen alot of posts lately regarding the Load Cycle Count in the WD Green / Red hard drives.. I own a pair of green drives and have had issues with the LCC increasing dramatically over the course of days when initially purchased.. I read that there is an "idle timer" for the drive heads. Leaving it at the default 8 seconds causes the drive to move the heads off the platters or something to similar effect causing performance issues and frustration.

I chose to run WDIDLE3.EXE on my drives via USB/DOS to minimize the LCC increase.. I did this after one of my WD20EARS failed when I was using it for media..

The first step involves getting a clean formatted USB and installing FreeDOS image which will allow you to load the USB with various DOS tools to run.. Instructions can be found here on creating the DOS ready USB.. I usually use a small stick and keep it around for running other diagnostics etc in the future..

I then located WDIDLE3 from Western Digital - http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=609&sid=113

I just located another tool called WDSpinUp however I have not run this tool.. I'm not sure if this is controlling spin-up speeds etc..

Once wdidle.exe is copied onto the dos USB you may now put it in the server to boot up.. Configure your bios to boot off this new USB. You should be presented with a DOS prompt.. Execute wdidle3.exe and follow the instructions provided. Readme provided below for reference..

WDIDLE3.EXE - WD Readme

//=============================================================================
//
// Copyright 2005-2009 Western Digital Corporation
//
// RESTRICTED RIGHTS LEGEND
// ------------------------
//
// Use, duplication or disclosure by any commercial industry (public
// or private), private individual or by any Government Agency without
// an expressed written consent of release from Western Digital
// Corporation is subject to restriction set forth in paragraph
// (b)(3)(B) of the Rights in Technical Data and Computer Software
// clause in DAR 7-104.9(a).
//
// Manufacturer is:
//
// Western Digital Corporation
// 20511 Lake Forest Dr.
// Lake Forest, CA 92630
// 1-800-275-4932
//=============================================================================

WDIDLE3 Version 1.05 for DOS


DESCRIPTION
- DOS Level utility to setup or report the idle3 value.


FEATURES
- Scan for all drives. Non-WD Drives shall only show the model and serial
numbers.
- Uses a Vendor Specific Command to set or get the idle3 timer.
- Timer can be set from 8 to 25.5 seconds on older drives.
- Timer can be set from 8 to 300 seconds on newer drives.


USAGE
WDIDLE3 [/S[<Timer>]] [/D] [/R] [/?]
where:
/S[<Timer>] Set timer, units in seconds. Default=8.0 (8.0 seconds).
Resolution is 0.1 seconds from 8.0 to 12.7 seconds.
Resolution is 30 seconds from 30 seconds to 300 seconds.
Note, times between 12.8 and 30 seconds will be set to 30 seconds.
/D Disable timer.
/R Report current timer.
/? This help info.
DOS ERRORLEVEL
0 No error
1 Drive problem
254 Internal program error
255 Invalid command line argument

You should now be able to run WDIDLE3 on all green western digital drives.. I chose to disable my timer as the drives sleep according to FreeNAS after 5 minutes (these are no longer media drives etc)

If you are looking for a tool to modify WD RED idle timer please see Western Digital's new tool located here.. http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=619&sid=201&lang=en

I may clean up this how-to with more detailed instructions in the future.. See ya,

 

[cyberjock]

I'm actually working on a full fledged guide for this problem. If you don't mind I will probably delete this thread when I throw up my guide. ;)

 

[Yatti420]

Certainly..

 

[pschatz100]

I know this is an old thread, but I just ran WDIDLE3 as described in the original post. and now I have a question:

I have three WD drives: one 500GB Black, one 2TB Green and one 2TB Red. From the factory, idle times were "disabled" for the Black, 8 sec for the Green, and 300 sec for the Red - which is exactly what I would have expected.

As a test, I ran WDIDLE3 and set idle time to 8 sec. The program modified all three drives, not just the Green drive. I did not expect the program to modify all the drives, and so far as I know there is no way to tell it to select a particular drive. I ran it again to set the idle time to 300 sec and it modified all three drives to 300 sec. OK.

Now the question: WDIDLE3 set the idle time on the Black drive to 300 sec (or so it reports.) Is this a problem? Originally, that drive reported idle time disabled.

Note: For those of you who have IPMI... what a treat. I simply booted from a DOS bootable USB, and used the remote console. The whole job took me less than 5 minutes!!

 

[cyberjock]

I'd say if your Black drive still works then no problem. If you read the documentation for the tool it says something like "disconnect all drives that aren't wd greens or that you don't intend to modify before running this tool".

 

[Yatti420]

You can still change the timer on the black as required.

Sent from my SGH-I257M using Tapatalk 2

 

[pschatz100]

I know I could change the Black back, but that would mean taking down the server to boot into DOS. So far, after one day I haven't noticed any weird issues. I'm going to give it a week, then check again. If there is nothing strange, then I'll just leave it.

The documentation I have, wdidle3.txt from the zip file, doesn't say anything at all about disconnecting drives other than greens. I even went back to the download page and checked. If there is something about this, then I missed it somehow. Yes, the documentation does say that it discovers all WD drives - but I don't see anything that would have led me to expect that it would modify anything other than a green drive.

The utility for the reds, wd5741.exe does allow you to select the drive which is why the behavior of wdidle3 surprised me.

 

[cyberjock]

Well, the wd5741.exe actually updates the disk. So while the end-game is the same, one actually updates the firmware while another updates a setting. ;)

 

[MishaMash]

Created an account just to update this. I have spent 3 hours trying to get a bootable USB working to fix my own WD drive with the wdidle3 utility.

Below is, by far, the easiest way to do this.

Step 1: Download Rufus - https://rufus.akeo.ie/
Step 2: Plug in the USB drive to be used.
Step 3: Run the Rufus .exe
Step 4: In the Device dropdown menu, select the USB drive to be used.
Step 5: Hit Start (all default options are fine)
Step 6: Let rufus do it's thang.
Step 7: Copy wdidle3.exe to the root directory of the USB drive.

You're done. The USB drive is now bootable to DOS and you can run wdidle3.

If your computer doesn't boot to the USB drive, you'll have to go into BIOS and change your boot settings. Make sure UFEI is disabled or set to secondary because it will ignore the flash drive completely.

Otherwise, thanks for the help! wdidle3 completely resolved this issue with my WD10SPCX-24HWST1 1TB drive.