WD2002FYPS - 2TB

davec wrote:

Just got my 2TB discs. Trying to use Freedos with wdidle3. If I burn the Freedos iso to disc I can't seem to add wdidle to the same disc (it closes the disc). I tried to just burn the FReedos files and add wdidle3 at the root level of the CD, but then the CD won't boot at all. I'm sure I must be missing some basic idea about how to set up the Freedose boot CD with wdidle3. Can someone explain how to burn the CD so it will work. Thanks!

The same thing with CD.
So I use USB-FDD.

Can you explain what is USB-FDD?

davec wrote:
Can you explain what is USB-FDD?

Floppy Disk Drive 3,5" :) connected by USB. Format diskette with MS-DOS option, than put wdidle3.exe on this. Than reboot!

Okay, I finally made a FreeDos CD with wdidle3 that works!
Here's what I did:

Downloaded FDOEMCD.builder.zip from http://www.fdos.org/bootdisks/.
Added wdidle3.exe to CDROOT folder.
Executed MAKEISO.BAT to create new FDOEM.ISO CD image file.
Burned FDOEM.ISO to CD and viola - it will boot to DOS and allows wdidle3 to run.
Disabled wdidle3 timer on all discs (I'm actually using WD20EADS)

Now to backup my data, reset the NAS to factory default (to increase sector size) and restore the data...will post results once its all running.

WD RE4-GP (WD2002FYPS)
3.5-inch Enterprise SATA Hard Drives
2 TB, 1.2 million hours MTBF, 64 MB Cache, IntelliPower
Manufacturer Information

Background

I've been waiting for ReadyNAS Pro units to be re-stocked by suppliers in Australia for a few weeks (months?) now and they have finally arrived! I did a bit of research, as most users in this thread have, and decided to go with Western Digital's 2.0TB Enterprise green drives, even though there seems to be a potential issue with LCC activity.

I purchased six (6) WD2002FYPS units today for the ReadyNAS Pro which will act as a replacement for an existing ReadNAS NV+. I will install three (3) WD2002FYPS units initially in an X-RAID2 configuration and then keep the remaining units as reserve in case of failure, until needed (when capacity hits 80%) or to test any future WD2002FYPS firmware upgrades.

Model: ReadyNAS Pro Business Edition [X-RAID2] 
Serial: ------RS001--
Firmware: RAIDiator 4.2.4    
Memory: 3072 MB [4-5-5-15] 
  
MAC address: 00:1F:--:--:--:73 
IP address 1: 192.168.0.212 

MAC address: 00:1F:--:--:--:72 
IP address 2: Not Connected 
  
Volume C:  Online, X-RAID2, 3 disks, 0% of 3692 GB used

Hardware Upgrades

After removing the three (3) factory supplied 500GB Seagate drives and installing three (3) WD2002FYPS drives I installed a single 2GB KVR800D2N6 memory module. Once the drive and memory upgrade was complete, the unit was powered on for the first time, and by default (after 8 minutes) proceeded to automatically configure X-RAID2. After 3 hours, the X-RAID2 resync is 40% complete and the three (3) WD2002FYPS drives have the following SMART statistics:

SMART Information for Disk 1

Model: WDC WD2002FYPS-01U1B0 
Serial: WD-WCAVY-----44 
Firmware: 04.05G04 

SMART Attribute 
Raw Read Error Rate 0; Spin Up Time 0 ; Start Stop Count 3 ; Reallocated Sector Count 0 ; Seek Error Rate 0 ; Power On Hours 240 ; Spin Retry Count 0 ; Calibration Retry Count 0 ; Power Cycle Count 2 ; Power-Off Retract Count 1 ; Load Cycle Count 5 ; 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

SMART Information for Disk 2

Model: WDC WD2002FYPS-01U1B0 
Serial: WD-WCAVY-----73 
Firmware: 04.05G04 

SMART Attribute 
Raw Read Error Rate 0 ; Spin Up Time 0 ; Start Stop Count 4 ; Reallocated Sector Count 0 ; Seek Error Rate 0 ; Power On Hours 246 ; Spin Retry Count 0 ; Calibration Retry Count 0 ; Power Cycle Count 2 ; Power-Off Retract Count 1 ; Load Cycle Count 5 ; Temperature Celsius 44 ; 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 WD2002FYPS-01U1B0 
Serial: WD-WCAVY-----96 
Firmware: 04.05G04 

SMART Attribute 
Raw Read Error Rate 0 ; Spin Up Time 0 ; Start Stop Count 4 ; Reallocated Sector Count 0 ; Seek Error Rate 0 ; Power On Hours 247 ; Spin Retry Count 0 ; Calibration Retry Count 0 ; Power Cycle Count 2 ; Power-Off Retract Count 1 ; Load Cycle Count 4 ; Temperature Celsius 42 ; 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

LCC - Low Count?

I'm a bit perplexed about the reported "Power On Hours" being 240 hours+ (as they were factory sealed) but the "Load Cycle Count" appears to be in single figures at this stage. Further research on the Western Digital website uncovered this information:

Why is the S.M.A.R.T Attribute 193 Load/Unload counter increasing for my WD RE2-GP SATA II hard drive (WD1000FYPS-01ZKB0, WD7500AYPS-01ZKB0, WD7501AYPS-01ZKB0)? Symptom: WD drives are designed to reduce power consumption, in part by positioning the heads in a park position (unloading the heads) and turning off unnecessary electronics, resulting in substantial power savings. WD defines this mode as Idle 3. Some utilities, operating systems, and applications, such as some implementations of Linux, for example, are not optimized for low power storage devices and can cause our drives to wake up at a higher rate than normal. This effectively negates the power-saving advantages of low-power drives, such as Western Digital’s RE2GP, and artificially increases the number of load-unload cycles. Solution: The number of systems using such applications and utilities is limited and customers can resolve this symptom by optimizing their systems to not wake up the drives unnecessarily every 10 to 30 seconds or so, thereby gaining substantial power savings and eliminating superfluous activity. Most customers, when made aware of the unnecessary activity caused by their systems, have modified their utility, operating systems, or applications to take advantage of Western Digital's advanced power-saving mode. Other customers have requested a utility (See link below) to modify the behavior of the drive to wait longer before invoking Idle 3 mode. Although such a change eliminates significant power savings during periods of inactivity. This update is described in WD's Process Change Notice PCN 2579-701324-A02 (see attached PDF file). Please click on this link, RE2GP Idle Mode Update Utility, to download the utility. NOTE: The update also supports a low-power spin-up feature optimized for highly energy efficient, large scale storage applications, which is enabled using a utility, WDSpinUp Utility, also available at the RE2GP Download page.

Note the above quote in red. Even though this FAQ specifically addresses WD1000FYPS/WD RE2-GP (1.0TB) units, it's quite possible Western Digital (given time and feedback) may create a similar "RE4GP Idle Mode Update Utility" to address the same issues our WD2002FYPS drives are experiencing.

A Western Digital supported utility?

The current "RE2GP" idle mode utility is freely available on the WD1000FYPS download page, but at this point in time no corresponding utility is available on the WD2002FYPS download page. It might be worth keeping an eye on this download page to see if a RE4GP utility appears over the next few weeks, otherwise you can pro actively ask Western Digital to release this utility on this support web page.

As a final note, at the beginning of the X-RAID2 resync, I disabled a few services as indicated in the following log summary:

 Fri Jul 31 00:24:12 EST 2009 Successfully stopped UPnP service. 
 Fri Jul 31 00:24:12 EST 2009 Printers no longer advertised over Bonjour. 
 Fri Jul 31 00:24:12 EST 2009 FrontView no longer advertised over Bonjour. 
 Fri Jul 31 00:23:51 EST 2009 Successfully stopped AFP service. 
 Fri Jul 31 00:23:51 EST 2009 AFP service no longer advertised over Bonjour. 
 Fri Jul 31 00:21:18 EST 2009 Successfully synchronized clock with a NTP server. 

What Next ...

Using "WDIDLE3.EXE" might be the way to go, but I'm not convinced just yet (mainly because it voids my warranty) and I'll petition Western Digital for a supported utility or firmware upgrade. When it comes to altering WD2002FYPS firmware in the future, I'll simply update a single drive at a time and re-sync overnight so hopefully the X-RAID2 technology should handle it.

I'll let you know how the setup goes over the next few days ...

WD RE4-GP (WD2002FYPS)
3.5-inch Enterprise SATA Hard Drives
2 TB, 1.2 million hours MTBF, 64 MB Cache, IntelliPower
Manufacturer Information

Six hours later ...

The ReadyNAS Profinished re-syncing 6 hours ago and has been idle with no data moved onto it during this time. Unfortunately (as we feared) the LCC count has increased by about 700 during this idle time.

SMART Information for Disk 1
Model: WDC WD2002FYPS-01U1B0 
Serial: WD-WCAVY-----44 
Firmware: 04.05G04 
SMART Attribute 
  
Raw Read Error Rate 0 ; Spin Up Time 0 ; Start Stop Count 3 ; Reallocated Sector Count 0 ; Seek Error Rate 0 ; Power On Hours 251 ; Spin Retry Count 0 ; Calibration Retry Count 0 ; Power Cycle Count 2 ; Power-Off Retract Count 1 ; Load Cycle Count 767 ; Temperature Celsius 39 ; 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

Cause and Effect

Obviously the Idle 3 mode settings are too aggressive. Can a Jedi roughly summarise what and how often the ReadyNAS Pro interrogates the X-RAID2 integrity or flushes logs. This could give us a rough idea of timing before Idle 3 mode should be initiated ... Or if it's just better to disable it all together. What's a Jedi's best hypothetical guess/practice without committing to an "offical" support response?

Contacted Western Digital

I sent a message via the Western Digital support site requesting a utility to adjust the Idle 3 mode times. If anyone else gets the chance, you can submit a similar support question so we can generate more interest about this issue with Western Digital?

infrant.delta wrote:

Further to Netgear knowledgebase answer #3263 "The S.M.A.R.T Attribute 193 Load/Unload counter continue to increase for the WD RE2-GP SATA II hard drives". There is currently an "RE2GP Idle Mode Update Utility" for the WD1000FYPS drive to alter "Idle 3" mode settings. I wish to be able to alter the same settings for my 2.0TB WD RE4-GP (WD2002FYPS) to increase the time before "Idle 3" mode is invoked. Can you provide me with a utility similar to "RE2GP Idle Mode Update Utility" for the WD RE4-GP (WD2002FYPS) model?

Firmware Upgrade

Now that the re-sync is complete, I'll perform an upgrade to RAIDiator 4.2.5

Name:   RAIDiator-x86     Version:   4.2.5    Date:   Wed May 6 18:41:31 2009    Size:   51277824

More later ...

WD RE4-GP (WD2002FYPS)
3.5-inch Enterprise SATA Hard Drives
2 TB, 1.2 million hours MTBF, 64 MB Cache, IntelliPower
Manufacturer Information

Another four hours later ...

RAIDiator upgraded to 4.2.5 and four hours later the LCC count has incremented another 900 cycles. :?

SMART Information for Disk 1
Model: WDC WD2002FYPS-01U1B0
Serial: WD-WCAVY-----44
Firmware: 04.05G04

SMART Attribute
Raw Read Error Rate 0 ; Spin Up Time 0 ; Start Stop Count 4 ; Reallocated Sector Count 0 ; Seek Error Rate 0 ; Power On Hours 257 ; Spin Retry Count 0 ; Calibration Retry Count 0 ; Power Cycle Count 3 ; Power-Off Retract Count 1 ; Load Cycle Count 1613 ; Temperature Celsius 40 ; 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

Time to look at additional RAIDiator settings, or even (against my better judgement) looking further into WDIDLE3!

WD RE4-GP (WD2002FYPS)
3.5-inch Enterprise SATA Hard Drives
2 TB, 1.2 million hours MTBF, 64 MB Cache, IntelliPower
Manufacturer Information

Hacking at Idle 3 with [WDIDLE3.EXE]

After doing a bit of researching I decided to give WDIDLE3.EXE a go. Instead of disabling the Idle 3 timer, I decided to follow Western Digital's support advice to extend rather than disable it.

1. Powered down ReadyNAS Pro unit and extracted Disk #1.


2. Plugged Disk #1 into bare-bones machine with SATA controller.


3. Found a copy of WDIDLE3.EXE through Google.


4. Created a bootable FREEDOS CD which included WDIDLE.EXE using FREEDOS (PM me if you want a copy of the ISO image).


5. Booted from FREEDOS CD into CLI.


6. Executed CLI command "C:\WDIDLE3.EXE /S254" and powered down bare-bones machine.


7. Inserted Disk #1 back into ReadyNAS Pro unit and powered up.

Immediate Results

The ReadyNAS Pro unit booted up with no issues and review of logs appear to be fine. After 30 minutes the LCC on Disk #1 remained unchanged, while unmodified Disk #2 and #3's LCC values continued to increase. :D

It was interesting to note that the default timer setting for the drive was for 12.8 seconds. Using the "C:\WDIDLE3.EXE /S254" command resets the timer to 25.4 seconds (don't ask why I didn't use 25.5 seconds).



SMART Information for Disk 1
Model: WDC WD2002FYPS-01U1B0
Serial: WD-WCAVY-----44
Firmware: 04.05G04

SMART Attribute
Raw Read Error Rate 0 ; Spin Up Time 0 ; Start Stop Count 4 ; Reallocated Sector Count 0 ; Seek Error Rate 0 ; Power On Hours 259 ; Spin Retry Count 0 ; Calibration Retry Count 0 ; Power Cycle Count 5 ; Power-Off Retract Count 2 ; Load Cycle Count 1919 ; 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


Sit and wait ...

I'm going to update my Disk #2 and Disk #3 and also set their Idle 3 timer values to 25.4 seconds, copy data onto the unit and see how things go over the next few weeks. If all goes well I'll update my remaining three (3) WD2002FYPS drives and I should be set for the next year or two! :)

WD RE4-GP (WD2002FYPS)
3.5-inch Enterprise SATA Hard Drives
2 TB, 1.2 million hours MTBF, 64 MB Cache, IntelliPower
Manufacturer Information

1 Resync, 5000 Files and 1.75 Terabytes later ...

To be sure the drives were still responsive after the Idle 3 timer change, I performed a RAID resync so the ReadyNAS Pro could perform a full rescan of the system drives. On checking the SMART data I can't see anything unusual with the LCC count steady and no errors.

SMART Information for Disk 1
Model: WDC WD2002FYPS-01U1B0
Serial: WD-WCAVY-----44
Firmware: 04.05G04

SMART Attribute
Raw Read Error Rate 0 ; Spin Up Time 0 ; Start Stop Count 7 ; Reallocated Sector Count 0 ; Seek Error Rate 0 ; Power On Hours 309 ; Spin Retry Count 0 ; Calibration Retry Count 0 ; Power Cycle Count 6 ; Power-Off Retract Count 2 ; Load Cycle Count 1920 ; Temperature Celsius 39 ; 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

Over the past few hours I've also copied just under 2 terabytes of data via a NFS backup job from an existing ReadyNAS NV+ box. I have been surprised at how responsive the ReadyNAS Pro X-RAID2 shares have been compared to the ReadyNAS NV+ X-RAID ones. Streaming and file access have been fine without skipping a frame while watching test movies at the same time as writing data, even over wireless connections.

Conclusion

So far I'm happy with the way things have turned out using the WD2002FYPS 2.0TB drives in combination with the ReadyNAS Pro. Assuming things progress well and no new drives > 2.0TB are released, I will consider upgrading the drives in my ReadyNAS NV+ units!

Model: ReadyNAS Pro Business Edition [X-RAID2]
Serial: ------RS001--
Firmware: RAIDiator 4.2.5  
Memory: 3072 MB [4-5-5-15 DDR2]

IP address 1: 192.168.0.212
IP address 2: Not Connected

Volume C: Online, X-RAID2, 3 disks, 48% of 3692 GB used

In my opinion these 2.0TB Western Digital drives are great and work well with the ReadyNAS Pro, but only if you remember to apply the "WDIDLE3.EXE" Idle 3 timer change beyond the default 12.8 seconds to the WD2002FYPS firmware! :D :) :D :)

[Disclaimer] - This configuration works flawlessly for me as of the date of this post, but may not work for you. Using any advice featured in this thread is at your own risk and may void your Netgear or Western Digital warranty.

Upgraded my NV to 3xWD20EADS after disabling idle3 timer. All working well and no change in load cycle count.

Thanks for all the help Muxje.