ReadyNAS NV+ 2TB WD20EARS vs WD20EARX

There's an issue with Western Digital green drives, which is the LCC (load cycle count). I'm not a real expert, but here's what I know.

WD green drives, both the WD20EARS and I believe the newer WD20EARX help save power by periodically parking the heads. Each time they do so, it increases the LCC count by one. You can examine the LCC count on a drive installed in in a Readynas simply by checking the SMART status in Frontview.

When a WD green drive is installed in a PC, the LCC increases as the drive is used, but it increases slowly. Which is fine.

But, when the drive is installed in a Raid NAS like the Readynas (the same is also true for other brands of Linux based NAS), the LCC increases rapidly; on my Readynas NV+, which I keep powered up all the time, but don't heavily access, it hit 250,000 in 3 months or so.

Many have posted on the web that high LCC counts are a bad thing, and will contribute to early drive failure.

When I asked WD tech support about this, they told me two things:
-WD Green drives are not designed for NAS environments, only for desktop PC use
-WD tests the drives up to an LCC of about 1,000,000 but beyond that you're on borrowed time. (I was only told this once, so it is unconfirmed). On a readynas, I would expect the drive to hit an LCC of 1,000,000 in about a year.

There is a solution. WD has a utility you can easily download that will reset the so-called idle timer on the drive such that the LCC does not increase. You lose some of the greenness of the drive, but you probably increase its life expectancy. Many have posted on various forums that using a WD green drive in a NAS without running the utility first is a mistake. But who knows. YOu only have to run the utility once.

The utility is called wdidle3, and you can easily find it either on WD's web site, or on this forum. It is a DOS program; you need a PC to run it, and you must have a PC with a SATA port into which you can temporarily install the drive to run the program.

I have asked Readynas, via this forum, why they have WD green drives on the HCC (the WD20EARX is on the list now, and the WD20EARS was, as I recall, on it previously) given the LCC issue. I've not gotten an answer. (Readynas could also build a function similar to widle3 into the readynas firmware, but as far as I know they haven't)

As I recall, running widle3 is non-destructive of data, as always when monkeying with drives, backups are highly recommended. With an appropriate PC it is very quick. You may be able to run widle3 with an external drive enclosure and an esata connection, if you have one, but this is unconfirmed.

And, some say you don't have to worry about this at all with the WD20EARX drives, so you may wish to do some web searching on your own.

alexofindy wrote:
There's an issue with Western Digital green drives, which is the LCC (load cycle count). I'm not a real expert, but here's what I know.

Thanks for all the information!

I just checked the LCC on my drives and they're already over 600k. I guess the best solution here may be to switch to WD WD2002FAEX or Seagate ST2000DL003, since those are the other 2TB drives I can find locally. I'll do some googling on those first of course, but if anyone knows of issues with them I'd appreciate hearing about it.

The WD RED WD20EFRX is another alternative (though not on the HCL for the NV+ right now, it likely will be).

BTW, I've chosen not to run widdle3 myself. WD doesn't recommend it (though of course a lot of folks have done it successfully).

StephenB wrote:
The WD RED WD20EFRX is another alternative (though not on the HCL for the NV+ right now, it likely will be).

"Specifically designed and tested for small office and home office, 1-5 bay NAS systems." I like the sound of that. Maybe I'll take a flier on one of those to start with and hope it shows up on the HCL soon. Thanks for the tip!

i just bought an nv+ v2 (to complement my nv+ v1 of 7 years!) and 3 x WD20earx after checking the HCL.

I installed them no problem, but already lcc's are climbing. I just took them out and tried to run wdidle3 on them and got a "pci-x not supported >32 bit address" - ive googled to my fingers bleed - any ideas what to do??
IS this error because the newer drives dont allow wdidle to update firmware, or is it some weird setting with the PC I'm trying to run wdidle3 from?

Like others, I'm a little annoyed that they are on the HCL and yet there are all these issues...i understand they are "green" drives and so not looking for super performance, but dont want them to just wear out after a year cos the heads keep parking unnecessarily either...

Should I be worried?
Is there a cure?
Maybe the HCL should be annotated with a warning on these drives?

Thanks in advance...

Just saw this on WD page
"Note: If you are having issues updating the firmware of a drive connected to a PCI Serial ATA controller or Serial ATA RAID controller, please install the drive into a system with Serial ATA connections directly on the motherboard (Onboard Serial ATA controller) and try again."

Have I just answered my own question?!

Anyone else having these problems with WD20EARX that have been purchased in the last month? Wondering if WD have disabled WDIDLE3 somehow for these drives?

Can't help you specifically. Wish I could.

If anyone from netgear is reading this, maybe you guys could prepare a readynas add-on that runs the equivalent of wdidle3 from the readynas. I think it's just a matter of a single LInux command, and I'll bet WD would tell you what it is.

toomanybarts wrote:
Just saw this on WD page "Note: If you are having issues updating the firmware of a drive connected to a PCI Serial ATA controller or Serial ATA RAID controller, please install the drive into a system with Serial ATA connections directly on the motherboard (Onboard Serial ATA controller) and try again." Have I just answered my own question?!

So did you connect the drive to a Serial ATA connection directly on the motherboard (Onboard Serial ATA controller) like it tells you to do ?

You may be interested in http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=59700