I have two WD10EADS 1TB drives in my Duo. The first was installed a months ago as Drive 2, mirroring the 500 GB Seagate that came with the Duo. The WD drive seemed to work just fine, so I recently bought a second and installed it as Drive 1.In just a week of use, the newer drive is exhibiting a large and growing number of Load Cycles. After a little research, I found that the WD10EADS drive comes in a number of flavors. The first configuration had 4 platters (each approx 250 GB). A second variant had 3 platters. The latest vintage, which is the kind I just bought, has a pair of 500 GB platters. I am seeing vastly different behavior from the two WD10EADS units, as reported by the Duo's SMART reports.Drive 2: WDC WD10EADS-00L5B1. This is a 3-platter drive, installed in my Duo last month. - power-on hours = 1012 - Load Cycle Count = 670 - Power Cycle Count = 78Drive 1: WDC WD10EADS-00M2B0. this is the newer 2-platter drive, installed last week. - power-on hours = 74 - Load Cycle Count = 3477 - Power Cycle Count = 10The LCC value on Drive 1 increases by 2 or 3 every minute or so.I have my Duo configured to spin-down the drives after 10 minutes. Even so, the LCC continues to climb, even when the drives should both be spun down.I've done some web research and found extensive coverage of this issue at QNAP, Synology and Quiet PC Review forums. The root cause appears to be that the WD power-saving 'green' design parks the heads after 8 seconds of inactivity, while the Linux OS tickles the drive every 20 seconds or so, thereby unparking the heads. The Green series of drives are rated by WD for 300K load cycles during the drive's lifetime. Thus, there is some concern that the constant park/unpark operations will wear out the drive prematurely.One customer received back from Western Digital a troubling statement:...The unit is not recommended for NAS or RAID use, due to its end-user design. But, under normal use, rather than strenuous or highly demanding tasks, there should be not much issue with the unit. Johnny T.Western Digital Service and SupportI can't explain why my two WD10EADS drives are behaving differently. I can think of three possibilities:- the two different models have different firmware, and they park/unpark the heads using different algorithms. (note that both my drives have the same 01.00A01 firmware).- the two models are both parking/unparking the same, but are reporting differently through SMART. In other words, my Drive 2 also has large LCC count, but I just don't know it. It's been suggested by some experts that WD deliberately masked the actual operational statistics reported by some of their other drives in order to quell consumer concerns.- my Drive 1 is operating as the Linux boot drive, and is being frequently accessed by the kernel as the kernel goes about its routine tasks. But Drive 2 is merely a RAIDed data disk that does not get repetitive accesses. Detailed discussion and debate on this topic can be found here:http://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=14273http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=51401&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0http://forum.synology.com/enu/viewtopic.php?f=124&t=11682Based on my observed SMART reports, I feel some caution is warranted re the use of WD10EADS drives in RAIDed ReadyNAS systems. Be aware that all such drives are not created equal: you need to know the full part number to know if you have a 4-platter, 3-platter, or 2-platter unit.

Mr. Solo,Thank you for replying. I am delighted to hear that the Jedi Masters are aware of and working on this little problem.Some additional information:I provided incorrect specs regarding the firmware in my two WD drives ( I really must get new glasses). My older (3-platter) drive has firmware 01.01A01. The newer (2-platter drive) has firmware 01.00A01. It is the latter that is experiencing the increasing LCC.Yesterday I exchanged my drive for another identical model. I was hoping that my local store might still have some of the older stock (the 3-platter drive with the 01.01A01 firmware). Unfortunately, they only had one in stock, and it is from the same manufacturing lot as the one I was returning. The replacement drive is now installed as Drive 1 in my Duo, and the LCC is growing by 2 or 3 counts per minute. I can hear the heads park/unparking. So I conclude that the LCC behavior I was seeing was not due to a defect in the particular drive that I had, but is inherent in the 01.00A01 firmware.I have opened a ticket with WD asking them about the difference between 01.00A01 and 01.01A01, and how they propose to address the issue. I have not yet received a reply. If I hear anything from them, I'll update this thread.As you know, WD issued a DOS utility some time ago (wdidle3.exe) that a user could invoke to modify the drive's timer. The utility was intended for a different line of drives, and has since been withdrawn by WD. They claim it will void the warranty if used on the EADS drives.Cheers,Dave

It's been a week since I swapped my WD10EADS-00M2B0 for a replacement WD10EADS-00M2B0. It's been running in my Duo as Drive 1. The drive has 124 power-on hours. The Load Cycle Count continues to grow, with just over 3000 park/unpark cycles.My other drive (Drive 2) is a WD10EADS-00L5B1. It has just over 1200 power-on hours, and a mere 780 Load cycles.Let's do the math. The older -00L5B1 with firmware 01.01A01 has .65 load cycles per hour of operation. The newer -00M2B0 with firmware 01.00A01 has 24.2 load cycles per hour.It's clear the two different variants behave differently.A trouble ticket has been open at WD for over a week. They have yet to reply.

so i assume that if one has their box configured to spin the disks down, that the load/unload count will probably not increment, at least while the drives are spun down? unless this is actually still a bad idea on WD drives; i can't tell if those caveats about WD and spindown in the official compatibility list is old information by now.

pfile wrote:so i assume that if one has their box configured to spin the disks down, that the load/unload count will probably not increment, at least while the drives are spun down? @pfile,I do have my Duo configured to spin-down, after 20 minutes. You are correct in that the heads are not parking/unparking while the drives are spun down: the LCC count doesn't change and I don't hear the heads chattering away. The LCC would be much higher if I did not have the drive spinning down.The caveat you are referring to in the Official Drive Compatibility list pre-dates version 4.1.5. The Netgear footnote indicates that the WD GP drives should be ok to spin down on 4.1.5 and later releases.

WD10EADS WD Caviar Green - 1TB >> excessive Load Cycle Count

22 Replies

NAS_t
Aspirant
Aug 27, 2009
lindebrand wrote:

But as I've understood this is a "problem" not only caused by the NAS right? Just that you'd like more reliable drives in a NAS?

/lindebrand

This is a contentious issue - there has been a lot of discussion and (heated) debate on the other forums that I cited in the first post on this thread. I don't think it's fair to say that this problem is "caused by the NAS". It's more of an interaction between the type of disk I/O that the NAS Linux-based OS generates, and the WD green design.

The root cause is that the WD "green" design aggressively parks the heads in order to reduce power consumption. They call this feature "IntelliPark". I understand that there is an 8-second timer in the WD firmware -- if the drive has not been asked to do anything for 8 seconds, the heads get parked. It seems that the RAIDiator OS interacts with the drive frequently (some experts claim every 20 seconds or so) which briefly unparks the heads. Then after 8 seconds of no activity, Intellipark parks the heads. Rinse and repeat, with a few park/unpark cycles happening every minute. Ironically, if the NAS was doing any real work (ie copying files), the heads would never get a chance to park, and thus the Load Count would not keep growing.

Frankly, I do not know if this behavior makes the Caviar Green drives any less reliable. We won't really know until a couple years from now whether there are large numbers of drives failing with huge LCC counts.

lindebrand wrote:
But as I've understood this is a "problem" not only caused by the NAS right? Just that you'd like more reliable drives in a NAS? /lindebrand

93turbo

Aspirant

Sep 12, 2009

Han Solo wrote:
NAS-t wrote:

I can't explain why my two WD10EADS drives are behaving differently. I can think of three possibilities:
- the two different models have different firmware, and they park/unpark the heads using different algorithms. (note that both my drives have the same 01.00A01 firmware).

This is the one I most agree with. WD created an algorithm to handle this load/unload issue. If the drives see excessive load/unloads it is supposed to set the timer to higher value something like 5 minutes (can't remember the exact value at this time). I think that sometimes for whatever reason the algorithm is not working exactly as expected. I talked to WD about the utility that a user can use to manually change this setting and they provided us with the same utility but the user does not have to pick a time but rather the software just sets it to 5 minutes. We will be posting a link to this software after we try it out here.

Have you found any solution in this case yet?

NAS_t
Aspirant
Sep 12, 2009
No solution found. Indeed, WD refuses to acknowledge there re even is a problem. They replied to the trouble ticket I opened and told me:
- "We have not recognized the "load/unload" issue as a problem for those drives".
- "We have no firmware upgrades for this drive".

Meanwhile the Load Cycle Count on the affected WD10EADS drives continues to climb.

Disk1 WD10EADS-00M2B0
- firmware = 10.00A01
- LCC = 23600
- Start/stop = 480
- Power-on Hours = 571
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -> 41 Load Cycles per hour

Disk2 WD10EADS-00L5B1
- firmware = 10.01A01
- LCC = 1187
- Start/stop = 1187
- Power-on Hours = 1656
- - - - - - - - - - - - - --> 0.7 Load Cycles per hour

My newest WD10EADS drive has a third the power-on hours of my first such drive, yet has twenty times the number of park/unpark cycles.

There is another anomaly between the two drives: the 'good' drive reports exactly the same number of Load Cycles and Start/Stops. That's not the case with the other one. It's apparent that the firmware in the two drives is behaving quite differently.

Note that I have disk spindown configured in FrontView (20 minute timer). Once the ReadyNAS decides to spin down the drives, they both go into sleep mode, and the constant park/unpark cycle ceases (as evidenced by the absence of noise).

Other than the constant head chatter, the system is working fine. Neither drive reports any read errors or reallocated sectors.

-Dave
93turbo
Aspirant
Sep 13, 2009
Here is my info

I have tree WD10EADS with following status:

Disk 1
WD10EADS-00M2B0
Power On Hours 44
Power Cycle Count 6
Load Cycle Count 1781

Disk 2
WD10EADS-00M2B0
Power On Hours 19
Power Cycle Count 3
Load Cycle Count 1153

Disk 3
WD10EADS-65L5B1
Power On Hours 1356
Power Cycle Count 18
Load Cycle Count 28

I don't buy Green power again. I go for the Black edition when this disks have give up.
shanaclan4
Aspirant
Sep 30, 2009
You might want to consider the WDIDLE3 utility as documented here: http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=32319&p=184386&hilit=WDIDLE3#p184386

I am using different WD Caviar Green drives known to have high LCC issues and have run the WDIDLE3 to disable the Idle Park feature (IntelliPark). My LCCs are holding steady.

If you decide to tweak, let us know how you get on with the change.
LukeS
Aspirant
Oct 27, 2009
Check out my post about issues with the different versions of the WDIDLE3 utility before using it on WDxxEADS drives: viewtopic.php?f=84&t=34642&p=191490
fmantek
Aspirant
Dec 07, 2009
I am just coming about this thread, as i installed a few more WD Green drives (1.5TB) in a new NVX unit and saw that WD special bin i can download.

Now, on a NV+ unit, that is using 4 WD Green 1TB drives (all the same part numbers), i see the following (at the end):

11440 power on hours
684276 LLC count

That is an avg. of 60 LLCs per hour. So far the drives report no other issue (like sectors defect etc). They are just happy as can be.

Not sure if there was ever an official answer if the high LLC count is, in fact, a problem. But if so, it seems to take a while.

Frank

Model: WDC WD1000FYPS-01ZKB0
Serial: WD-WCASJ1740341
Firmware: 02.01B01
SMART Attribute
Raw Read Error Rate 0
Spin Up Time 7741
Start Stop Count 108
Reallocated Sector Count 0
Seek Error Rate 0
Power On Hours 11440
Spin Retry Count 0
Calibration Retry Count 0
Power Cycle Count 108
Power-Off Retract Count 139
Load Cycle Count 684276
Temperature Celsius 41
Reallocated Event Count 0
Current Pending Sector 0
Offline Uncorrectable 0
UDMA CRC Error Count 0
Multi Zone Error Rate 0
ATA Error Count 0

Extended Attribute
Hot-add events 0
Hot-remove events 0
Lp stat events 0
Power glitches 0
Hard disk resets 0
Retries 0
Repaired sectors 0
Bigbearf
Aspirant
Apr 22, 2010
I was asked to post a "how to" regarding WDIDLE3 and WDTLER in a PM and figured I would post it for all.

@NAS-t

I would be glad to help. I believe you are in luck with the firmware that you have. I have 5 of the WD20EADS drives with this firmware. Four of them have required no WDTLER or WDIDLE3 fixes. Have you put these in your RN yet and monitored SMART status? Look particularly at Load Cycle Count (LCCs) escalation. I am at work right now but from the top of my head this is what I did.
1. Searched for WDTLER and WDIDLE3 fixes which are DOS apps.
2. Made a bootable DOS disk with both of these on it.
3. Connected the WD drive while still in caddy to old Windoze IDE motherboard using a IDE to SATA adapter that I got from Amazon for about $10. If you have a Windoze computer with a SATA connector you do not need this.

Here is a great link that I essentially followed.
http://forum.synology.com/enu/viewtopic ... 24&t=20907

Hope this helps.
bigbearf
akeiler
Aspirant
May 19, 2010
BigBearf wrote:
2. Made a bootable DOS disk with both of these on it.

Just to add:
I had good experienced using the Ultimate Boot CD (current Version 5):
Extract the ISO, add the WD Tools to the directory structure and recreate a custom ISO using the provided batch file. Burn to CD and boot from it.

Worked like a charm. :D
seegersa
Aspirant
May 24, 2010
Hi folks ... thought I would chime in here. I have 6 of these in my ReadyNAS PRO Pioneer ...

NAS is running fine - but I'm definitely going to be replacing these with approved 2TB drives eventually ...

Notice how the LCC issue seems to be apparent on those with the WD-WCAV* serial number?

Has anyone else noticed this?

SMART Information for Disk 1

Model: WDC WD10EADS-00M2B0
Serial: WD-WMAV50104862
Firmware: 01.00A01

Power On Hours 6043
Spin Retry Count 0
Calibration Retry Count 0
Power Cycle Count 260
Power-Off Retract Count 10
Load Cycle Count 2939
Temperature Celsius 34
Reallocated Event Count 0
Current Pending Sector 0
Offline Uncorrectable 0
UDMA CRC Error Count 0
Multi Zone Error Rate 0
ATA Error Count 0

SMART Information for Disk 2

Model: WDC WD10EADS-00M2B0
Serial: WD-WMAV50105031
Firmware: 01.00A01
SMART Attribute
Raw Read Error Rate 0
Spin Up Time 7433
Start Stop Count 2773
Reallocated Sector Count 0
Seek Error Rate 0
Power On Hours 6043
Spin Retry Count 0
Calibration Retry Count 0
Power Cycle Count 260
Power-Off Retract Count 7
Load Cycle Count 2766
Temperature Celsius 34
Reallocated Event Count 0
Current Pending Sector 0
Offline Uncorrectable 0
UDMA CRC Error Count 0
Multi Zone Error Rate 0
ATA Error Count 0

SMART Information for Disk 3

Model: WDC WD10EADS-00M2B0
Serial: WD-WCAV50119621
Firmware: 01.00A01
SMART Attribute
Raw Read Error Rate 0
Spin Up Time 7175
Start Stop Count 614
Reallocated Sector Count 0
Seek Error Rate 0
Power On Hours 4061
Spin Retry Count 0
Calibration Retry Count 0
Power Cycle Count 239
Power-Off Retract Count 13
Load Cycle Count 416681
Temperature Celsius 33
Reallocated Event Count 0
Current Pending Sector 0
Offline Uncorrectable 0
UDMA CRC Error Count 0
Multi Zone Error Rate 0
ATA Error Count 0

SMART Information for Disk 4

Model: WDC WD10EADS-00M2B0
Serial: WD-WMAV50115134
Firmware: 01.00A01
SMART Attribute
Raw Read Error Rate 0
Spin Up Time 7333
Start Stop Count 2763
Reallocated Sector Count 0
Seek Error Rate 0
Power On Hours 6046
Spin Retry Count 0
Calibration Retry Count 0
Power Cycle Count 263
Power-Off Retract Count 11
Load Cycle Count 2752
Temperature Celsius 35
Reallocated Event Count 0
Current Pending Sector 0
Offline Uncorrectable 0
UDMA CRC Error Count 0
Multi Zone Error Rate 0
ATA Error Count 0

SMART Information for Disk 5

Model: WDC WD10EADS-00M2B0
Serial: WD-WCAV50111546
Firmware: 01.00A01
SMART Attribute
Raw Read Error Rate 0
Spin Up Time 7550
Start Stop Count 213
Reallocated Sector Count 0
Seek Error Rate 0
Power On Hours 3595
Spin Retry Count 0
Calibration Retry Count 0
Power Cycle Count 211
Power-Off Retract Count 8
Load Cycle Count 371908
Temperature Celsius 38
Reallocated Event Count 0
Current Pending Sector 0
Offline Uncorrectable 0
UDMA CRC Error Count 0
Multi Zone Error Rate 0
ATA Error Count 0

SMART Information for Disk 6

Model: WDC WD10EADS-00M2B0
Serial: WD-WCAV50365320
Firmware: 01.00A01
SMART Attribute
Raw Read Error Rate 0
Spin Up Time 7150
Start Stop Count 45
Reallocated Sector Count 0
Seek Error Rate 0
Power On Hours 704
Spin Retry Count 0
Calibration Retry Count 0
Power Cycle Count 43
Power-Off Retract Count 4
Load Cycle Count 69425
Temperature Celsius 36
Reallocated Event Count 0
Current Pending Sector 0
Offline Uncorrectable 0
UDMA CRC Error Count 0
Multi Zone Error Rate 0
ATA Error Count 0

Forum Discussion

WD10EADS WD Caviar Green - 1TB >> excessive Load Cycle Count

22 Replies

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