Critical Design Flaw Found in WD Caviar Green HDDs

[Hawk-NGO]

It has come to our attention that Western Digital's Caviar Green HDDs suffer from a critical design flaw caused by an aggressive power-saving feature. Western Digital has developed a new technology called Intellipark (aka Idle 3 mode) and it is designed to reduce power consumption, in part by positioning the HDD's heads in a park position and turning off unnecessary electronics after 8 seconds of inactivity.

According to an in-house investigation and user reports', some software and operating systems are incompatible with the Intellipark feature causing endless head parking movement as the HDD continuously goes in/out of idle mode. This abnormal behavior creates stress on the HDD and that could lead to the following issues:

• Loud clunking/clicking/buzzing noises every few seconds.
• Artificially increases the number of load-unload cycles in S.M.A.R.T.
• Possibly shortens life-time of the HDD.
• Possibly reduces performance of the HDD.

Read more: http://www.ngohq.com/news/19805-crit...reen-hdds.html

[kromosto]

strange that wd didnt notice this while testing

[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.

[AAbenson]

this has been going on with WDs green line for quite some time now...actually if i remember right it was introduced with the switch to 500gig platters at the time ...
or to put it another way ever since they introduced this feature in the green drives theres been problems.
they should just remove it entirely

[deathman20]

Really so this is in all Green drives.... Wonderful. Got 2 1TB WD Green's, that I've been using in my server. Might not be much but the data on the 2 drives is quiet important and don't need it failing because something that slipped QA years ago :/

[saaya]

As I've said before, a feature that can't be disabled is not an advantage and not progress ...
And this is what you end up with Ts Ts Ts

[WangChung]

Wasn't this the reason you couldn't run these drives in RAID? I could swear users were aware of the direct cause of this issue before, interesting to see that WD is just now acknowledging it.

[Bobsama]

Hardly surprising about the design flaws. These things have been getting a bad reputation for high failure rates for months or years. At the moment, the only good and cheap drives are Samsung Spinpoints.

[Origin_Unknown]

Wasn't this the reason you couldn't run these drives in RAID? I could swear users were aware of the direct cause of this issue before, interesting to see that WD is just now acknowledging it.

you may well be right

[Molotox]

We've had so many of those green fail us at work, I'm not surprised in any case.

[MadHacker]

I have 5 of them in Raid6, No problems with them what so ever

[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.

[RPGWiZaRD]

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

[highoctane]

Wasn't this the reason you couldn't run these drives in RAID? I could swear users were aware of the direct cause of this issue before, interesting to see that WD is just now acknowledging it.

TLER is the big issue with breaking the raids on higher capacity drives, parking/unparking the heads should be consistently fast enough not to break a raid.

[D749]

TLER is the big issue with breaking the raids on higher capacity drives, parking/unparking the heads should be consistently fast enough not to break a raid.

Not to get off topic but is TLER required for RAID10? I'm trying to figure out if I have to go with the RE4 drives (which support TLER) for my future RAID10 setup with 2TB drives. Thanks.

[IanB]

Not to get off topic but is TLER required for RAID10? I'm trying to figure out if I have to go with the RE4 drives (which support TLER) for my future RAID10 setup with 2TB drives. Thanks.

Ask yourself why you are building a RAID 10. You want reliability - that's the mirror part. RE class drives are an order of magnitude more reliable (bit error rates). You want speed - that's the stripe part. RE4 drives are intrinsically faster than standard greens. And they are designed to run properly in RAID.

OK, you are going to pay more for that reliability, but surely that's worth it long-term (less disk replacements) if you're considering such a setup? So if you're not looking for an as-cheap-as-sh*t RAID solution, but you want the speed and reliability you expect from this setup, why on earth would you NOT want the RE4s?

[dng]

i have this drive and it has the same symptom as described. it's annoying as it would affect my gaming. time for me to move files to another drive, yikes.

[freeloader]

That's why I never buy any of that power saving garbage. I'd rather use full speed, "all the time" drives. I don't care about the few watts per drive I'll save.

[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.

[Olivon]

I'm not suprised ... Plenty problems at work with this green series ...

[mattkosem]

Greaaat. Glad I just stuck one of these in my HTPC for TV recordings... :-/

Maybe they can patch it with firmware updates?

--Matt

[antiacid]

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.

Quoted for truth. I'm using my green drives for a flexraid array for archives and the files are split so that the usage pattern spins only one drive per cluster of activities.

i have this drive and it has the same symptom as described. it's annoying as it would affect my gaming. time for me to move files to another drive, yikes.

I'm afraid you didn't purchase the proper drive for your application. The green drives are not meant to be system drives.

That's why I never buy any of that power saving garbage. I'd rather use full speed, "all the time" drives. I don't care about the few watts per drive I'll save.

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

[Manabu]

WD aknoledges the problem with the models: WD20EADS, WD20EARS, WD15EADS, WD15EARS, WD10EADS, WD10EARS, WD8000AARS, WD7500AADS, WD7500AARS, WD6400AADS, WD6400AARS, WD5000AADS, WD5000AARS

Then, it directs you to download the wdidle3 as a fix. BUT they didn't updated the wdidle3 page to reflect those new models:

This utility is designed to upgrade the firmware of the following hard drives: WD1000FYPS-01ZKB0, WD7500AYPS-01ZKB0, WD7501AYPS-01ZKB0.

CAUTION: Do not attempt to run this software on any hard drives other than what is listed above.

One WD representant said that this information is outdated, and that it would be changed.... 10 months ago: http://community.wdc.com/t5/Desktop/...ght/true#M1113

So, if something goes wrong when I'm trying to fix their drives with their tools, I might have problems with the warranty... even thought it is reported working by lots of people, even by an WD representant.

[NEOAethyr]

System incompatible lol...
Linux or windows, it's gonna idle every so many secs regardless of what you got your software setup to do.
The only way to fix it is to mod the firmware.

It's funny I think, they must of known that it will kill performance.
In the back of there mind they must of thought about reliability, but figured it would be ok anyways.
Well I guess not, if these drives are dropping dead left and right because the head parking is to aggressive...

I mean come on, the idle timer should be set to something like 5mins.
Any lower just doesn't make any sense to me unless it's use for storage only.

Anyways I'm forced to buy the blacks.
Otherwise I would buy the greens again, only if they were modable.

I like the idea of not really needing a fan to cool them, even though I use one anyways, it doesn't need to be anything special, a 0.1x amp fan will do.
And they are pretty quiet, plus they use maybe 5watts of power, I forget, but it's around 2-3x lower then a conventional drive.

Edit:
WD10EADS are the model's I'm using I think, and yeah they are definitely affected, originally they were anyways.
I ran wdidle3 long ago before I raided them, 2nd day I had them after I verified them ok the day before.
I did alot of research before I bought the 2 drives...

Anyways I've got v1.00.
I think there was one more ver slightly above that but it was buggy and didn't work.
The one they are talking about now is probably a completely new ver or maybe that one ver that didn't work for my drives.

They should put out the correct ver for both wdidle3 and wdtler...
Let the user do decide what they are gonna do...

So, if something goes wrong when I'm trying to fix their drives with their tools, I might have problems with the warranty... even thought it is reported working by lots of people, even by an WD representant.

I wouldn't worry so much.
Just make sure the system you do this is on is 100% stable, and that you don't use raid mode to run these util's on.

I set the value, then reset and checked the value to ensure it was actually set.
Then I took the drive out and did the other the same way.

After modding I raided the 2 drives and partitioned them.
Been all good since.
The smart data power on off count or whatever it was is no longer counting up like mad.

Oh, and since these are sata drives, better make sure you use good cables before you attempt.
Hate to have the cable go out in the middle of a thing like this.

[phantomferrari]

this is why i stop using their green drives. one flat out died on me in less than a year. the other one i got to replace it still works but makes a ticking noise almost constantly. lets just say i dont use that drive anymore