Critical Design Flaw Found in WD Caviar Green HDDs

[NEOAethyr]

Yep, known for along time now.
They park there heads every 5secs.
Which causes alot of stress.

Older ver's of the drives you could mod with 2 dos util's.
One util was to change the idle config, the 2nd to enable some sort of raid command/s that the green drives didn't have but the blacks did.

My 2 drives were among the last models to support those apps.
The newer drives, the 1.5tb and above, can't use those 2 dos apps.

Really a shame though, greens are the way to go, nice after they are modded.
They are slower by 10megs compared to the blacks but there temps and wattage requirements are awesome.

I would not buy a green unless you could mod it.
So essentially I would never buy another green drive again ^^, sucks.
But that's just how things are, unless westerndigital wants to re-open the ability to mod them.

I completely disabled idle on my 2 drives.
Still uses way less power then the blacks.

I think the 2 apps were called:
wdidle3_1_00
WDTLER

//=============================================================================
//
// Copyright 2005-2008 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 1.00 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 100 ms to 25.5 seconds, in 100ms increments.


USAGE
WDIDLE3 [/S[<Timer>]] [/D] [/R] [/?]
where:
/S[<Timer>] Set timer, units in 100 milliseconds (1 to 255). Default=80.
/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

The other prog I think is the raid timeout modder thing.

Edit:
Just realized, Hawk-NGO and his/her website... in the news again.
Ohwell I guess lol.