HOWTO: Disable WD IDLE3 via ReadyNAS

[edalquist]

I did this on my ReadyNAS Ultra 4. I installed the RootSSH Access addon to get shell access and got the idle3-tools download link from http://idle3-tools.sourceforge.net/

# Install packages needed to compile idle3-tools
apt-get update
apt-get install libc6-dev gcc gdb libtag1-dev uuid-dev make automake

# Do all work on /c (don't want to take any more space on the flash than we have to)
cd /c

# Download & Extract idle3-tools
wget "http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/idle3-tools/idle3-tools-0.9.1.tgz?r=http%3A%2F%2Fsourceforge.net%2Fprojects%2Fidle3-tools%2F&ts=1324565985&use_mirror=superb-sea2"
mv idle3-tools-0.9.1.tgz\?r\=http\:%2F%2Fsourceforge.net%2Fprojects%2Fidle3-tools%2F\&ts\=1324565985\&use_mirror\=superb-sea2 idle3-tools-0.9.1.tgz
tar -xzvf idle3-tools-0.9.1.tgz 

# Compile idle3-tools
cd idle3-tools-0.9.1
make

# Disable the idle timer on each drive
./idle3ctl -d /dev/sda
./idle3ctl -d /dev/sdb
./idle3ctl -d /dev/sdc
./idle3ctl -d /dev/sdd

The last step is to shutdown (NOT REBOOT) the ReadyNAS, unplug it, then plug it back in and boot. The IDLE timer should now be disabled.

[swalter0306]

Edalquist,

you truly made my day :-]]]

I just tried this on a Duo v2 and it simply worked like a charm. I got two WD20EARX disks inside the unit, running for four months now - and stumbled across the LCC issue just two weeks ago. I realized that one of the disks had already reached 100K, so I was desperately seeking for a way to get rid of this.

I had no way of finding a current desktop machine that I could hook up the drives to, so this was my last hope.

Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!!!

[tiranor]

Damn, i did this recently on my disk, had to do all the complicated stuff with my desktop. If only i had found this thread...

[KydDynoMyte]

Thanks for this tip. I just tried this remotely on my DuoV2 and it seems to work great. I have 2 WD30EZRX in there and they were factory set to 80 (8 seconds). After almost a month set at 80 they are both over 54,000 on LCC. I set them both to 250 (25 seconds ¿or maybe 61 minutes?) and will see how it goes over the next few days. I scheduled the power timer to shut it off for an hour to see if that will let the new setting take effect. If not I'll power cycle it when I get home.

EDIT: If what I read is correct, this will hopefully also make the drives less noisy since they won't be parking the heads so much.

UPDATE: This seems to of fixed my LCC issue. In 4 days my LCC count has increased by only 3 on both disks. The disks are quieter since the heads aren't parking all the time. Also remotely setting the power timer settings to power off the nas for just an hour let the new idle3 setting take effect, so this could be done completely remotely.

[avicenne13]

Hi,

I would be glad if someone gives me a hand here. I did as instructed (using drives WD30EZRX), however i could not decide on the correct parameter.

Some people say that they changed it to 300s
Some disable using the /d option

However, when looking at the description and the table below, I am totally lost. Should I use -s300, -s254 or what? How do I know which version of the wdidle?

Regards.



Meaning of the returned raw value depending on the wdidle3 version

The value 0 is used when the timer is disabled.
The values 1 to 128 are reported in .1s by all wdidle3.exe versions.
The values 129 to 255 are in .1s for version 1.00, but in 30s for versions 1.03 and 1.05
The difference only affects the output, the stored timer is identical between versions. Maybe different WD drives have different beheviour.

wdidle3 v1.00 v1.03 v1.05
0 disabled disabled disabled
1 100ms 100ms 100ms
100 10s 10s 10s
128 12.8s 12.8s 12.8s
129 12.9s 30s 30s
130 13s 60s 60s
254 25.4s 3780s 3780s
255 25.5s 3810s 3810s

[KydDynoMyte]

I didn't want to disable it all together because parking the heads is suppose to increase power savings. That's one of the reasons I got a NAS and green drives in the 1st place.

I am guessing to set 300 seconds (5min) you'd want to use "-s 138" on each drive.
138-128=10
10x30=300 seconds

I set mine to 250 which I think is 61 minutes, but I hear my drives working all the time and the LCC does go up a digit every couple of days, so maybe it is really 25 seconds, in which case you'd want to use "-s 3000" but it looks like you can only use up to "-s 255" (25.5 seconds).

If you can afford to do it twice, I'd try "-s 138" on each drive first for a few days and see if the LCC count stops growing so fast. If not try "-s 255".

[tiranor]

When i looked at this problem on WD forums, disabling the parking is heavily discouraged, as many people reported bad behavior of the disk. The recommended value is 254, it's as if disabled (i don't get any LCC, as i disabled the disks' shutdown).

[Peekay]

Help!

I'm following the OP's instructions to try and disable or alter the timer on my 2 WD20EARX drives on my ReadyNAS NV+

Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be working as follows, I'll write notes next to each of the original steps incase somebody can see the problem.

# Install packages needed to compile idle3-tools
apt-get update - This works fine
apt-get install libc6-dev gcc gdb libtag1-dev uuid-dev make automake (First issues as follows):
Note, selecting automake1.4 instead of automake
You might want to run `apt-get -f install' to correct these:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  automake1.4: Depends: autoconf but it is not going to be installed
               Depends: autotools-dev (>= 20010511.2) but it is not going to be installed
  gcc: Depends: cpp (>= 4:3.3.5-3) but it is not going to be installed
       Depends: gcc-3.3 (>= 1:3.3.5-1) but it is not going to be installed
       Depends: cpp-3.3 (>= 1:3.3.5-1) but it is not going to be installed
  libc6-dev: Depends: linux-kernel-headers but it is not going to be installed
  libtag1-dev: Depends: libtag1 (= 1.4-2bpo2.netgear2) but it is not going to be installed
  smbclient: Depends: samba-common (= 3.0.37.netgear2) but 2:3.5.15-netgear1 is to be installed
E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution).
I continued on to see if it would work either way


# Do all work on /c (don't want to take any more space on the flash than we have to)
cd /c - fine

# Download & Extract idle3-tools
wget "http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/idle3-tools/idle3-tools-0.9.1.tgz?r=http%3A%2F%2Fsourceforge.net%2Fprojects%2Fidle3-tools%2F&ts=1324565985&use_mirror=superb-sea2" - fine
mv idle3-tools-0.9.1.tgz\?r\=http\:%2F%2Fsourceforge.net%2Fprojects%2Fidle3-tools%2F\&ts\=1324565985\&use_mirror\=superb-sea2 idle3-tools-0.9.1.tgz (issue as follows):
mv: cannot stat `idle3-tools-0.9.1.tgz?r=http:%2F%2Fsourceforge.net%2Fprojects%2Fidle3-tools%2F&ts=1324565985&use_mirror=superb-sea2': No such file or directory
nas-02-17-A3:/c# tar -xzvf idle3-tools-0.9.1.tgz
tar -xzvf idle3-tools-0.9.1.tgz - fine 

# Compile idle3-tools
cd idle3-tools-0.9.1 - fine
make - issue (as follows):
cc -g -O2 -W -Wall -Wbad-function-cast -Wcast-align -Wpointer-arith -Wcast-qual -Wshadow -Wstrict-prototypes -Wmissing-prototypes -Wmissing-declarations -fkeep-inline-functions -Wwrite-strings -Waggregate-return -Wnested-externs -Wtrigraphs    -c -o idle3ctl.o idle3ctl.c
make: cc: Command not found
make: *** [idle3ctl.o] Error 127

I stop at that point as the program isn't working.

Also how do I actually check the current cycle count of the drives?

Thanks in advance!

[mdgm-ntgr]

Peekay the instructions are for x86 (i.e. NVX/Ultra/Pro) not for Sparc e.g. your NV+ (v1). Don't think the source code would be designed to run on Sparc anyway so even if you could get it to compile I wouldn't trust it.

Edit: A user above reported them working on the Duo/NV+ v2 (ARM) but that's very different hardware with a different OS.

[Peekay]

mdgm wrote:
Peekay the instructions are for x86 (i.e. NVX/Ultra/Pro) not for Sparc e.g. your NV+ (v1). Don't think the source code would be designed to run on Sparc anyway so even if you could get it to compile I wouldn't trust it.

Eeep - should I remove anything of what I've done?

Is there any way to alter the WD idle3 values on a Sparc machine?

Or is the alternative rigging the drives up to another machine to do it? (can I even do this once they have been in RAID?)
I also only have Windows machines other then the NAS so no easy way to run IDLE 3 Tools on a *IX environment.

Looking like I should have went Seagate drives ~_~

[mdgm-ntgr]

If things are still working fine on your NAS, you shouldn't need to uninstall stuff. However it would be good to ensure your backup is up to date and if you have the time do a factory default (wipes all data, settings, everything).

There is a DOS utility that will run on Windows: http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=609&sid=113

You should use that.

[Peekay]

mdgm wrote:
There is a DOS utility that will run on Windows: http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=609&sid=113 You should use that.

Cheers, I'll get onto it now, the drives are still effectively new so no dramas there.

Should I be worried about any damage I've done to my NAS by going as far as I did in trying to build the idle3 tools?

[mdgm-ntgr]

Did you force apt-get to install the packages even though they have unmet dependencies. If not you should be fine.

However if you want to restore full software support you should backup your data and do a factory reset.

The new WD Red disks already have the appropriate WDIDLE3 setting. Unfortunately only the WD10EFRX is on the compatibility list for your NV+ (v1) at this time.

[Peekay]

mdgm wrote:
Did you force apt-get to install the packages even though they have unmet dependencies. If not you should be fine. However if you want to restore full software support you should backup your data and do a factory reset. The new WD Red disks already have the appropriate WDIDLE3 setting. Unfortunately only the WD10EFRX is on the compatibility list for your NV+ (v1) at this time.

Sorry to sound stupid but I'm basically a Linux/command line newb.
By force are you referring to it's suggestion to APT GET -f install? If so - no I didn't do that suggestion.

[mdgm-ntgr]

Ah, good. You should be fine then, I think.

[mdgm-ntgr]

Just used this on a Duo v2. Thanks edalquist.

[otivax]

Thanks from Spain.
Works fine for me and my ReadyNAS Duo v2 (arm). My WD20EARX-00PASB0 stops to increase LCC
Sorry for my english.

[Ney]

I just wanted to say thank you for this guide. My LCC count had gotten over 20k in less than 3 months =O So set it to 254 on all disks and hope it helps
Do you people know wether enable HDD spindown in the power menu is adviced with WD green disks or should i disable it and let the Greens do their thing?

[mgbenson]

Is anyone able to confirm if this method work/should be tried on an NV+v2?

I've got 2 x WD20EARX drives installed (both '-008FB0' with LCC ~235,000), and have just added a third ('-00PASB0' which is claiming it failed during restriping) before I stumbled across this thread and the advice to not use the WD green....

[mdgm-ntgr]

It worked for me on the Duo v2 so it should also work on the NV+ v2 (charcoal chassis, runs RAIDiator 5.3.x)

[mgbenson]

Thanks, although I've now got a bigger problem as drive 3 failed / not being recognised after and expansion and drive 1 has now failed too....

http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=68981 :-( (Netgear Case #20343149)

[Bob_K]

Linux code and procedures look like Greek to me. I'd love to start down the road of learning how to use it. Can this code be run from a Win7 machine? Is a Linux emulator required?

Can someone point me to a tutorial?

[Bob_K]

I ended up using the advice here (http://blog.vacs.fr/?post/2009/03/21/Co ... ing-SSH%3A) and here (http://readynasxtras.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=27) to get started. I used the free telnet client program called PuTTY (http://www.putty.org) to make the interface between my Win7 x64 computer and the ReadyNAS Ultra 4.

SYNTAX (from the idle3 Sourcefourge page http://idle3-tools.sourceforge.net/)

idle3ctl [options] /dev/device
•-h : display help
•-l : show license and exit immediately
•-V : show version and exit immediately
•-v : verbose output
•--force : force even if no Western Digital HDD are detected
•-g : get raw idle3 timer value (default action)
•-g100 : get idle3 timer value as wdidle3 v1.00 would display it
•-g103 : get idle3 timer value as wdidle3 v1.03/v1.05 would display it
•-d : disable idle3 timer
•-s<value> : set idle3 timer raw value (1-255)

I used the command ./idle3ctl -s145 /dev/sda which resulted in a 510 second timer. I confirmed that with the command ./idle3ctl -g103 /dev/sda.

I'm really not sure yet how the different version of wdidle3 affect the timer raw value, but at least I'm getting started on understanding. One of my drives had a LCC of 286,000, so I needed to do something quick.

[pugilares]

Any solution for a SPARC machine? I have Duo v1 and two WD10EARS disks inside. LCC count for one of disks is already 501 458 and going up steadily. Second disk has 308 207 cycles counted so far. I don't have a PC with 3,5 bay here - only laptops.

[wmsteele]

Post 1 worked perfectly on a NV+ V2 with four WD30EZRX drives (RAID5), the constant noise was driving me mad. My NAS box is only 3 days old so no permanent damage done.

In that short time, roughly 68 hours, the drives all reported Load Cycle Counts of around 1800.

The chirping/ticking of the drives alerted me that something wasn't right, I have a couple of other green WD drives in Windows PC's that dont make a sound, guess its Linux they don't like.