[lug] Head load/unload cycles on WD disks

[Simos]

On Tue, 10 Dec 2019 00:06:55 +0000 duboulder <blug-mail at duboulder.com> wrote:
> 
> I've been avoiding WD drives the last few years due to frequent head load/unload. Especially on green drives (one died with ~2 million cycles at 2yrs). Even smartctl -s standby,off didn't seem to reduce the frequency.
> 
> Our external seagate drives don't have this problem(1). Has WD gotten any better the last couple of years? Just wondering if it is safe to use WD again.
> 
> 
> (1) -- Seagate Laptop HDD - ST3000LM016-1N217V --
> Start_Stop_Count   59
> Power_On_Hours     27919
> Head_Flying_Hours  27912 (3.1 yrs)
> Load_Cycle_Count   83
> Total_LBAs_Written 38,187,200,047
> Total_LBAs_Read    35,940,540,839

Hi,

Not sure if this actually answers your question, but disabling the idle3 timer has worked for me for many years now on my HTPC with a WD Green drive:

idle3ctl -d /dev/sda

For more see the following but idle3-tools is a standard package in Debian, Ubuntu, etc:

http://idle3-tools.sourceforge.net/

For what it's worth, I always thought this was only a problem on WD Green drives, not WD Reds, Blacks, etc.

HTH,

Simos