View source for Western Digital Green - Drive Fix - Linux

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=Here's the story= <!--T:1-->

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I have recently discovered (a bit too late) that Western Digital Green hard drives have a serious issue when used in Linux as a main drive or a NAS drive.
The problem can also occur in certain situations in windows too.
The problem is due to a feature called '''intellipark'''. Which parks the heads on the drive after 8secs of drive inactivity.

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Many Linux installations write to the file system a few times a minute in the background (eg. writing logs). As a result, there may be 100 or more load cycles per hour, and the load cycle rating may be exceeded in less than a year. This problem also makes the drives very unresponsive and makes your system feel slow as the heads need to be unparked when you try and load something.

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My friend has killed two 1TB Green drives on his XBMC media box in 4years.  The 500GB drive in my partners machine is in deep trouble as the '''load_cycle''' count is at '''1991353''' after a '''power_on_hours''' of '''29549hrs'''. Compare that to my WD Black 1TB which has a '''load_cycle''' count of '''721''' after '''13579hrs'''.

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Now Western Digitals specsheet says that the drives are good for 300,000 Load/unload cycles, so this is a pretty big deal.
[http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-771438.pdf]

=How to check/evaluate your WD Green Drive= <!--T:6-->

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If you have a Western Digital Green drive, please check your '''SMART''' information before it's too late. To do this you will need to install the package called '''smartmontools''' with pamac, octopi, or pacman:

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{{UserCmd|command=sudo pacman -S smartmontools}}

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Now check like this changing '''sda''' to whatever your Green drive is. <br>
(Use lsblk in terminal or gparted or i-nex or something to work out which drive it is.):

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{{UserCmd|command=sudo smartctl -A /dev/sda | grep "^193"}}

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193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   253   253 
 000    Old_age   Always       -       1991353

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If the Load cycle count exceeds a few thousand, you're affected by the idle3 timer problem.

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Here is how the output should look when this isn't a problem:

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{{UserCmd|command=sudo smartctl -A /dev/sdb | grep "^193"}}

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 193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   200   200   
 000    Old_age   Always       -       721


=This is how we solve the problem= <!--T:16-->

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Ok so you have the problem and want to fix it. Western digital have made a DOS utility to fix it if you ask them for it. Or can find it. Its called wdidle3.exe

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But we aren't going to use that. Instead we are going to use a Linux unofficial alternative called '''idle3-tools'''. It is already packaged in Manjaro so no need to compile it. but here is the source [http://idle3-tools.sourceforge.net]

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Install '''idle3-tools''' with pamac or octopi or like this in the terminal:

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{{UserCmd|command=sudo pacman -S idle3-tools}}

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Now check what your drives timer is currently set as. (replace sda if needed with your own drive.):

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{{UserCmd|command=sudo idle3ctl -g /dev/sda}}

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It will likely say it's set to 80 [8sec]

==Modify the timer== <!--T:38-->

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In-depth instructions and source of the tool can be found [http://idle3-tools.sourceforge.net| here].

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The advisable approach is to simply set the timer to the linux default of 30 seconds (replace sda if needed with your own drive):

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{{UserCmd|command=sudo idle3ctl -s 129 /dev/sda}}

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'''Disable the timer (not recommended)'''

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To just let the system power management handle the drive disable the timer (replace sda if needed with your own drive):

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{{UserCmd|command=sudo idle3ctl -d /dev/sda}}

==Power off and verify== <!--T:44-->

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Next step is to shutdown and power off your computer. Rebooting isn't enough!
You need to power off, so the drive will turn on with the new settings.

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Now verify the status:

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{{UserCmd|command=sudo idle3ctl -g /dev/sda}}

==Optional step== <!--T:31--> 

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Remove idle3-tools and smartmontools with octopi or pamac or in a terminal:

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{{UserCmd|command=sudo pacman -R idle3-tools smartmontools}}


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That's it! All done. You can now enjoy the reliability and speed from the WD Green drive that you expected to have when you bought it.


=Support= <!--T:35-->

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Following is a link to this page's forum counterpart where you can post any related feedback: [https://classicforum.manjaro.org/index.php?topic=17890.0]
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