Critical Design Flaw Found in WD Caviar Green HDDs

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Originally Posted by Serra

That sounds about right. "Green" drives are really good for bulk data only... eg. media, not your OS disk. As long as you use them that way they're fantastic... of course it's just about impossible to convey that to the general public.

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I just bought a WD20EARS specifically for archiving purposes, I even copied my media files to the main OS drive so I don't have to access the green drive as much, except when pulling out archived data (installers, templates, etc). I hope you're right because I was worried when I saw this thread.

I'm using 4 x WD15EARS for RAID 5 in a NAS... anyone know if this would be affected?

As I understand it, this issue is mainly prevalent if you're using it as a system drive

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Originally Posted by zerazax

I'm using 4 x WD15EARS for RAID 5 in a NAS... anyone know if this would be affected?

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Make sure to keep an eye on S.M.A.R.T. If you see anything funny (load cycles e.g.), just use wdidle3 to disable intellipark.

Checked my one pc's 4 disks in RAID10 (WD20EARS) month ago and they had load cycles at 57000's. Thats 6month old drives, i immidietly used wdidle3 to disable intellipark.

I did that month ago and now load cycles have only raised up from 57262 to 57292, thats 30 load cycles in 1month, i say its fixed now, machine has been shut down manually every 2 or so days for night, dont need 4 gaming and work machines up 24/7 :)

Guys,
This fix has been out for almost a year,
and WDIDLE 1.00 won't work correctly on many drives.

You need version 1.03 at the minimum. But even this won't remove the parking on newer drives; it just sets it to 5860 seconds or something like that (1 hour).

If you want to disable the parking, use Wdidle 1.05.


BTW that report ALSO refuses to admit that even some WD blacks have the same intellipark feature that need to be disabled. Not sure about the retail ones, but I know that all the external WD Blacks do-usually the ones from the Elements brand (The ones that you can remove the USB enclosure from and then use internally).

Try http://support.wdc.com/product/downl...id=609&sid=113

wow, this is really disappointing. here i am having two 1.5TB greens in raid1, thinking it was a safe way to secure my data for the past 15 years :shakes:

what should i do now? replace them or keep them until they break? :confused:

Guys, WD is aware of this post and is working to get the correct info out...

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Originally Posted by Falkentyne

Guys,
This fix has been out for almost a year,
and WDIDLE 1.00 won't work correctly on many drives.

You need version 1.03 at the minimum. But even this won't remove the parking on newer drives; it just sets it to 5860 seconds or something like that (1 hour).

If you want to disable the parking, use Wdidle 1.05.


BTW that report ALSO refuses to admit that even some WD blacks have the same intellipark feature that need to be disabled. Not sure about the retail ones, but I know that all the external WD Blacks do-usually the ones from the Elements brand (The ones that you can remove the USB enclosure from and then use internally).

Try http://support.wdc.com/product/downl...id=609&sid=113

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Thanks for the tip on the blacks.

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Originally Posted by RPGWiZaRD

Is Samsung really the only decent reliable manufacturer atm? Oh wait not for long...

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I should probably pick up another 2GB F4.

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Originally Posted by RPGWiZaRD

Is Samsung really the only decent reliable manufacturer atm? Oh wait not for long...

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..yes. no.

Gave up on Seagate years ago, went with WD, ran into issues with every 500gb platter drive i've touched, started to go Samsung--just in time for them to give up...

that is why i have been using Seagate for 10 years since i got my first PC :)

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Originally Posted by antiacid

This guy probably doesn't have 25 drives idling 90% of the time ;)

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If I did, then absolutely I'd be concerned about it. I've had bad luck with power saving technologies. :(

my green drives fall asleep all the time and have a 5-10 second wakeup time sometimes, can be pretty annoying

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Originally Posted by BababooeyHTJ

I should probably pick up another 2GB F4.

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i love mine. so quiet. i should grab to more and run some raid 10

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Originally Posted by Mats

This has been going on for a long time. Not saying that it has been posted here before tho, but end users have been changing these settings for years.

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This. This is an OLD OLD issue for Ubuntu laptop users for example, dating back almost 5 years now.

Infact, my laptop's HDD(4 years old) just "clicked" while writing this post. :) Back in 2008 when I got this I read about the issue and based on some estimates the HDD has reached it's MTBF value for load/unload cycles in early 2009.. And I have had this running more or less 24/7 for past two years. No probs.

Anyone know if something similar happened with the original Caviars?

I have 1 Caviar One black 1To ( SataIII WD1002FAEX), and 2x 500go Blue ( WD500AAKS)... the 2 Blue ( older ) are really quiet ( got them since years )..

the 1To is all but not silent first i was don't think the problem is really the same as described, just it make a bit of clicking noise when you write on it ( only when a bit fragmented), i start to ask me if it does not get the same feature. Im not really worry as i use it only for data storage not on primary..

I like Western Digital discs for being reliable and for having good/fast/honest support .

While i knew about the problem described here , i bought a WD green 2tb to attach to my PS3 though . I'll see how it goes ..

If it brakes , I'll just contact support and i'm sure they will replace it within warranty . Never had any troubles with their support before .

I have four 2TB green, I wounder if I can use that fix even with my nas box. Why don't they fix it with a firmware update ?

So I've got 4 WD10EALX Blue's RAID10. Should I worry about these?

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Originally Posted by Brahmzy

So I've got 4 WD10EALX Blue's RAID10. Should I worry about these?

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Does EALX blues have Intellipark? If not, then no.

You just need to check the smart data.
I think it's power on cycle count or cycle count, something like that.
It'll increase quite a bit everytime you refresh the page in say aida64.

If it doesn't, you're good, if it does, then the drive needs the mod.

You'll have to check without raid, and apply the mod, again without raid...
And probably without extra drives too...


Thanks for the heads up Falkentyne.

I'de kinda like to see it tested on a 2tb green.
Then again I'm not on the market for more drives right now.

Still not really worth it without tler though.

I can access the smart information from within my Raid control.
but i don't see anything on power on cycle count or cycle count

below is the data from the smart info from my drive.
they are identical for all 5 drives.

Code:

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1 Raw Read Error Rate 51 200 200 OK 
3 Spin Up Time 21 145 155 OK 
4 Start Stop Count 0 100 100 OK 
5 Reallocated Sector Ct 140 200 200 OK 
7 Seek Error Rate 0 200 200 OK 
9 Power On Hours 0 89 89 OK 
a Spin Retry Count 0 100 100 OK 
b Calibration Retry Count 0 100 100 OK 
c Power Cycle Count 0 100 100 OK 
c0 Power-Off Retract Count 0 200 200 OK 
c1 Emergency Retract Cycle Ct 0 176 176 OK 
c4 Reallocated Event Count 0 200 200 OK 
c5 Current Pending Sector 0 200 200 OK 
c6 Offline Uncorrectable 0 200 200 OK 
c7 UDMA CRC Error Count 0 200 200 OK 
c8 Multi Zone Error Rate 0 200 200 OK

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MadHacker

Those values look a bit odd, most raid controllers won't give you access to the smart data or temp readings.
I'm surprised it gave you any data though...

This is why I've never liked Green drives :p: Who cares about a couple extra watts when the Blue/Black drives are so much better anyway. I've always looked at the Green drives as for people who are tight fisted and just want to save a few quid, so they deserve their failure rates :D