WD Red Drive Head Parking - New Tool from WD

I don't see it.
http://support.wdc.com/product/download ... 19&lang=en

I do.

I saw the link (as fastfwd outlined), but clicking on it just made it disappear.

This one works though: http://support.wdc.com/product/download ... 01&lang=en

Do a google search for the section enclosed in red in the screenshot, click on the relevant result and you will get to it.

When you click on the link on the WD Download page it appears like the link just disappears.

What actually happens is that the page refreshes with the exact same information at the top of the page (minus the link), but the bottom of the page is update with the details of the tool and buttons to download the various versions. You probably have to scroll down to the bottom of the page to see the updated information and the download options.

Very confusing.

Hi,

Just got my RED drives and wanted to check them with the tool but it does not see my drive - which is perfectly working now under windows. I have connected it by SATA to the Intel port of the motherboard - which is the primary controller.

It sees another WDC drive (esata) I have on the system, but it doesn't see the RED.

Ideas?

EDIT: tried on the other controller - both on the motherboard - still no luck

You could try installing it the NAS and looking for the symptom (runaway load cycle counts). Perhaps power down and remove existing drives, so you don't actually add it to the RAID array until you've confirmed its ok.

I have already installed the drives in the NAS and I cannot see problems with the the load cycle. One drive says 6, one 4 after 13 hours. I guess I don't need the 'fix' then?

Can I run the tool from the NAS itself? Or maybe WDIDLE?

I am very very happy with these drives. So quiet, so cool. Fantastic. During the sync the drives never exceeded 39 degrees, while the older seagate were going over 46 degrees (triggering the fan) when IDLE!

I was in a similar position to you recently, trying to test a new Red drive and ensure WD's head parking was set to a reasonable value. Before I heard about the new Red utility listed above I used WDIdle3 with the /R option to figure out the factory default. WDIdle3 said it was 300, i.e. 5 minutes, which is the max value it would set anyway so the factory default was good. I later got hold of the Red utility and that didn't give the specifics WDIdle3 reported but told me "no adjustment required". I wouldn't use WDIdle3 to actually try to set a value on a Red drive, but I don't think you can do any damage just using it to retrieve information off the drive.

I've got both UBCD and Parted Magic on a usb boot stick and I ran both WD and PM extended diagnostics on the drive a couple of times before installing it. After both the diagnostics and quite some time just sitting in the little test box I have the load/unload counts were just about the same as the power on counts, so I think the setup is ok and the WDIdle3 report accurate even though it's not officially approved for use on the Reds. If WDIdle3 says the timeout is 300 then you're probably OK, though I'd still recommend using the UBCD and Parted Magic utilities to check for any other issues before installing it for actual use.

To be honest I only run the quick test on Hard Drive sentinel and a quick seek test.