So I checked the SMART stats on my new 4TB Red drive (WD40EFRX) today. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that in only 249 power-on hours it has already experienced 36820 load/unload cycles!Meanwhile, the 4TB Seagate drive (ST4000VN000) in that NAS, with the same number of power-on hours, has a load cycle count of... 2.36820 load cycles in 249 hours is one load cycle every 24 seconds or so. According to Western Digital's marketing "datasheet", the drive is rated for 600K cycles; at this rate, my drive will reach that 600K threshold in only about another six months.Is anyone else seeing this sort of crazy green-drive head parking behavior from WD Red drives?

The WD30EFRX does not behave that way. On my Pro-6 I have 185 load-cycles over about 10000 hours. Spindown is enabled.On the RN102 I have 4 load-cycles over about 5000 hours.I'd contact WDC support.

StephenB wrote:The WD30EFRX does not behave that way.Thanks, that's good to know.StephenB wrote:I'd contact WDC support.Have. Telephone support told me that the "600,000" figure in the datasheet was just a description of one of the conditions under which they tested the drives, not the maximum rating, and that the drive could withstand a limitless number of load cycles... So I opened a case via their website. Now I'm waiting for a response.

I think they advertise a utility that lets you change the settings on the RED drives. This is not WDIDLE, its something newer (and supported). You might ask about it.

Excerpts from the response I just received:I wrote:Is there a limit to the number of load cycles guaranteed by WD for this drive? What is that limit? Western Digital wrote:600,000 cycles is where Western Digital guarantees the integrity of the dataI wrote:Is it normal for this drive to be parking its heads every 24 seconds, or is it misconfigured? Western Digital wrote:not every 24 seconds .... but it is normal because it has the same "Intellipower" feature that the green drives have.I wrote:Do you recommend that I reconfigure the drive to park its heads less frequently (or never)? How can I do that? Western Digital wrote:It cannot be reconfigured out of Western Digital's premises .... [doing that] would void its warranty. and...Western Digital wrote:Since it seems to be loading the cycles quicker than it should we recommend to have the unit replacedSo it seems that this drive is indeed not working as expected. I'll post a followup here when I receive my replacement drive.

An update:I received a new 4TB Red drive this weekend and used it to replace a deteriorating 2TB drive in my Pro Pioneer. I didn't think to check the SMART stats until 16 hours into the resync process (the NAS had to do three resyncs total, because it now contains a mix of 2TB, 3TB, and 4TB drives), at which point it was showing 570 load cycles... Which disappointed me, because it seemed to imply that the new drive was parking its heads every 100 seconds or so. That's better than once every 24 seconds like the old drive, but still meant that this one would reach the maximum 600K cycles in less than two years.But I waited another couple of hours for the resyncs to finish, then checked again... And the load count was still at 570.And now it's been another three hours, and the load count is still at 570.I'll check again tomorrow and post another update. If the count is still at 570, I'll be satisfied that this drive is working as it should be, and that the old drive was simply defective.

WD Red drives park their heads like WD Green drives?

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vandermerwe
Master
Nov 16, 2013
fastfwd, you say that WD agreed that you could return the drives under warranty.
Did you receive a refund or did you receive a different model WD drive as a replacement?
Interested to know as I am having problems returning these to the reseller as they maintain the drives are fit for purpose when clearly they are not. WD say they will send me a different model but they will be refurbished drives.
fastfwd
Virtuoso
Nov 16, 2013
I live in the USA and I purchased from Amazon. For the first drive, I received an identical replacement -- Amazon's policy is to ship the replacement and then allow 30 days for me to ship the old drive back, so I had both drives simultaneously for a time. For the second drive, I received a refund... Which I used to purchase a Seagate ST4000VN000 from Amazon.

I opened a support case with WD for each drive, and in each case their representative suggested that the drives could be returned to my place of purchase under warranty. I then referenced those support-case numbers in my correspondence with Amazon.
vandermerwe
Master
Nov 17, 2013
Great thanks.
coreyinoz
Tutor
Nov 18, 2013
I just bought a brand new WD30EFRX (3TB Red) with a production date of Oct '13 and it appears that it is still affected. I'm racking up 1K+ LCC's every 24 hours.

I don't understand - why would this happen on a drive that's on the HCL, and supposedly specifically for NAS use?

I don't have the luxury of exchanging so I plan on using WDIDLE3 - any opinions on S300 vs /D?

Thanks.
fastfwd
Virtuoso
Nov 18, 2013
coreyinoz wrote:
I just bought a brand new WD30EFRX (3TB Red) with a production date of Oct '13 and it appears that it is still affected. I'm racking up 1K+ LCC's every 24 hours.

That's interesting. Others have reported that the 3TB WD30EFRX drives does not have this problem, and that only the 4TB WD40EFRXs do.

coreyinoz wrote:
I don't have the luxury of exchanging so I plan on using WDIDLE3 - any opinions on S300 vs /D?

My opinion is that the NAS is happiest when it can control and be aware of what the drives are doing. So my preference would be to disable the timer with /d and then, if spindown is desired, to let noflushd handle that by enabling spindown in Frontview.
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
Nov 18, 2013
Odd. My WD30EFRX drives don't have high load cycle counts and I didn't need to run WDIDLE3 on them.
coreyinoz
Tutor
Nov 18, 2013
mdgm wrote:
Odd. My WD30EFRX drives don't have high load cycle counts and I didn't need to run WDIDLE3 on them.

It's all very frustrating. That's what I was hoping for. Up to 2200 over 56 hours in the ReadyNAS...

My local PC shop will charge me a re-stocking fee to return this, and I just went through hours of work to migrate to this drive when I had heard about this and noticed my Green was up to 1.7M LLC.

Anand says that the Red's are defaulted to /d to begin with - so I'm going to set it to /300 and report back. I also have a ticket in with WD - if they ever answer...

To their credit, Netgear has come back and forth with me 3 times already - essentially pointing me to WDIDLE and washing their hands of it.
ocso
Aspirant
Nov 20, 2013
Hi,
I can confirm that one of my WD30EFRX LCC value is increasing. I bought it yesterday and LCC value is 1112 after 24 hours.
I bought another WD30EFRX two weeks ago and after 14 days 10 hours operation its LCC value is: 7
Two disks have the same firmware (80.00A80) but the model ID is different:
1st HDD: WDC WD30EFRX-68AX9N0
2nd HDD: WDC WD30EFRX-68EUZN0 (parking heads)

According to the HD Sentinel: Acoustic management and Advanced Power management are not supported on these drives.
Etz
Aspirant
Nov 20, 2013
Interesting, as both of my drives are already almost an year old, LLC count is still 2 and havent increased a notch... :roll:

Exact model is: WD30EFRX-68AX9N0 FW: 80.00A80
vandermerwe
Master
Nov 20, 2013
coreyinoz and ocso

One of you at least as filed a case with WD, ocso have you done so?

WD need to be made aware of the level of customer dissatisfaction this issue is causing. It doesn't only affect Netgear products - Qnap and Synology are affected too.
WD need to feel that the complaints are going to affect sales, then they should act to fix it. In addition to submitting a case with WD you may consider posting reviews of the product on the site you purchased. I think some prospective buyers would want to know about this problem before making a purchase.

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WD Red drives park their heads like WD Green drives?

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