[Bug 969165] Re: hdparm: excessive Load_Cycle_Count with some WD "Intelli-Park" HDDs

[jasmineaura]

Confirmed on WD Scorpio Blue 1TB (WD10JPVT) drive that came with my
newly-purchased Dell Inspiron 15R 5520 laptop, with:

# smartctl -A /dev/sda | grep ^193

I probably should've compared Load Cycle Count increase compared to
Windows 7 (Dual booting with Linux Mint Debian Edition + UP5), but
seeing how I accumulated about 3200 Load Cycles in a few tens of hours
use which was predominately on AC power, I decided to disable it
completely on the drive for now, by:

# apt-get install idle3-tools

# idle3ctl -d /dev/sda

# poweroff
(restart won't do. must power cycle drive for firmware change to take effect)

# idle3ctl -g /dev/sda
Idle3 timer is disabled

--

# smartctl -i /dev/sda
smartctl 5.41 2011-06-09 r3365 [x86_64-linux-3.2.0-3-amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-11 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model:     WDC WD10JPVT-75A1YT0
Serial Number:    xxxxxxxxxxxx
LU WWN Device Id: 5 0014ee 602770494
Firmware Version: 01.01A01
User Capacity:    1,000,204,886,016 bytes [1.00 TB]
Sector Sizes:     512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
Device is:        Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is:   8
ATA Standard is:  Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is:    Mon Sep 17 21:49:17 2012 EET
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/969165

Title:
  hdparm: excessive Load_Cycle_Count with some WD "Intelli-Park" HDDs

Status in “hdparm” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  On a Dell E5420 I noticed the HDD is constantly spinning up/down.  The
  drive is a WDC2500BEVT-7 which is apparently a "green" WD HDD which
  has firmware magic called "Intelli-Park" to park the HDD to save
  power.. Apparently the default settings it parks the heads after 8
  seconds of inactivity and with a lifetime of ~1,000,000
  Load_Cycle_Counts we may see these drives fail sooner than expected.

  I was easily able to get the HDD to bump the Load_Cycle_Count by at
  least ~4 in 60 seconds, which equates to ~700,000 in a year assuming
  we use the HDD for 8 hours a day. The lifetime is ~1,000,000
  Load_Cycle_Counts, so this is a bit alarming to say the least.  This
  happens even with hdparm -B 128 /dev/sda; I was under the impression
  that  values > 127 *should* not permit spin down, but looks like this
  drive needs -B 255 for stop this.  So I think we have a green drive
  that tries too hard and will end up shortening its life.

  There is some discussion of this here:

  http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=51401

  And some explanation from WD about the issue here:

  http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5357

  This may affect the following models:

  WD20EADS, WD20EARS, WD15EADS, WD15EARS, WD10EADS, WD10EARS,
  WD8000AARS, WD7500AADS, WD7500AARS, WD6400AADS, WD6400AARS,
  WD5000AADS, WD5000AARS

  Can we quirk on these drives to select a more appropriate default
  hdparm setting?

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