WD20EARS just added on the official HCL - mistake and issues

Coxy117 wrote:
UPDATE: installed RAIDiator 4.1.7-T29 beta as per CommanderQ's excellent post, and it seems to have done the trick. I'd still value the opinion of the forums as to whether its worth my doing the WDIDLE3 update, bearing in mind I'm a home user who is only using my NAS to store and access music, photos and digital music production files rather than heavy business usage. Ta.

Hi Coxy117,

I'm largely in the same category as you are - my NV+ is for home use (music, video, pictures, etc.), though I do exercise it pretty well with the video part. :) I can throw in some information from Western Digital on the WDIDLE3 utility and the underlying power-saving issue, though. I looked into it pretty thoroughly in making my original post, though I didn't mention this particular part.

In Western Digital's support articles related to this, they state that the "Idle 3" mode is for power saving. This is the mode that results in the Load Cycle Count increasing every time it enters and leaves this "Idle 3" mode (parking / unloading the drive heads). Unfortunately, when I was observing my NV+ before I used the WDIDLE3 utility, even when not in use, the drives continue to wake up (fairly frequently) from this mode, incrementing the Load Cycle Count.

Here's the fun part that's a mere mention in Western Digital's support articles - in cases like this (i.e. Linux) where the drive is continuously allowed to enter "Idle 3" mode to save power and then awakened a short time later, the power savings are effectively negated. While Western Digital is also quick to point out that upwards of 1 million Load Cycles are expected and supported by their drives, the power saving intentions are never realized. In essence, since we can't achieve any notable power savings until Netgear (or one of us clever persons :D ) resolves this power-saving issue, all we're doing is increasing our LCC values for no gain.

My suggestion to you would be to run the WDIDLE3 utility on the drives, if it's convenient or reasonably possible, just to stop that value if you have any concern or just don't like large, increasing values. :) There's no particular reason to leave it enabled since there's no benefit (yet). However, Western Digital has designed the drive to handle a lot of those cycles, so there's no pressing need to run the utility if you don't have a suitable PC handy. Their statement is that the drives are perfectly fine, even in this scenario, and there's no reason to doubt them, since their statement in their knowledge base means that they will support the drive if excessive Load Cycles are the reason a drive failed.

It's a toss-up and your preference, in the end. Personally, I'll disable it for now and enable it when I can get some power savings. :)