On Tue, 2008-12-23 at 08:53 -0600, Matt Garman wrote: > A while ago I stumbled on a thread on the Linux kernel mailing list > titled "Western Digital GreenPower drives and Linux". It's easy to > find via google, or use this link[1]. > > The gist is that if you look at the SMART attributes on these > drives, chances are you'll see a really high Load_Cycle_Count. I do > for my WD GP drives. > > I posted[2] on the ars technica forums a while back with the same > topic. The suggestion in the last post was to use hdparm's > spindown_time (-S) parameter to change the drive's behavior. I > tried this, and it does in seem to keep that Load_Cycle_Count > variable from increasing so quickly. > > But the original thread on LKML made it sound like the only way to > solve the problem was with Western Digital's Windows-only > "wdidle3.exe" utility. It has also been suggested that on the RE2-GP drives there is a jumper setting which stops it from happening. As to whether that actually works or not, I do not know. > > Another question is this: does that Load_Cycle_Count SMART attribute > really correspond to the number of head parks that have a specified > ceiling (300k for consumer drives, 600k for enterprise/RE2)? Some > of the threads I've read suggest that the SMART attribute talks > about "soft" head parks (moving the head away from the platters), > and WD's spec is for "hard" parks (where the head actually comes to > rest, as in power down). > > Here's another interesting thread on the topic on silentpcreview[3]. > > Anyway, I haven't been able to find a conclusive answer to this on > the web. Just wondering if anyone on the list has any more info. > > Thanks, > Matt > > [1] http://groups.google.com/group/linux.kernel/browse_thread/thread/505ccf760023d132/7e4f4e996f911efd > > [2] http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/24609792/m/481009715931?r=481009715931 > > [3] http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=51401 > > > -- > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in > the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
