[ Keep me CCd on this, please. ] > Those fancy new WD GreenPower drives seem to be heavily suffering from the > rapidly increasing head load/unload problem. [...] I got one of them > (WD5000AACS) recently and to my horror [...] I have the same disks, only with more warranty and supposedly "enterprise" firmware (WD1000FYPS). The bug is the same, though, on all four of them (~ 9 cycles /hour): 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 917 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 198 198 000 Old_age Always - 8025 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 906 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 198 198 000 Old_age Always - 7908 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 907 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 198 198 000 Old_age Always - 8051 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 918 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 198 198 000 Old_age Always - 7869 > I got the _DOS_ utility from WD which issues vendor specific commands to > control that feature. Have they confirmed it's a bug? I have no idea how often the disks should do that. > [...] With it the unload feature can be either disabled or timer set from > 100ms to 25.5 seconds. But obviously I can't try it... Why? Using a DOS boot disk once would not be that bad as a workaround, would it? Or is the setting not persistent? Either way I'd prefer to be able to leave the feature on (in usable form), eventually. The bigger question is - why the rapid loads / unloads? In my case the disks are idle hours at a time. No system files on there, just bulk data. Does / could the controller (sata_sil24 in my case) have any influence on this kind of power management? Thanks, C. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-ide" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
