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

[jasmineaura]

Very Important Note: Do NOT confuse spin-down with head-parking (aka
IntelliPark/SmartPark on Western Digital drives -- and not only greens)

Start_Stop_Count = disk spin-ups count
Load_Cycle_Count = r/w head unpark

Example: On my WD Scorpio Blue WD10JPVT (rated for 600,000 Load Cycles),
which had idle3 in its firmware modified from default 8sec to 150sec
(2.5min) using `idle3ctl` (apt-get install idle3-tools, or use WD's
wdidle3 tool in DOS!), I'm parking at an acceptable rate with the
default PM level of 128, when on battery, without spin-downs, just as I
wanted.

# hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep Advanced
 Advanced power management level: 128
    * Advanced Power Management feature set

# hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep -i standby
 Standby timer values: spec'd by Standard, with device specific minimum

Therefore, it is my conclusion that there are only 2 options to stop the
affected drives from parking themselves silly:

1. (Confirmed) On Western Digital Drives, increase idle3 timer in the drive's firmware from the default 8-sec to at least 120sec (2minutes), or 180sec (3minutes) to be safe.
or
2. (Untested) Disable the drive's APM altoghther, with -B 254. Per hdparm's manpage:
"The highest degree of power management is attained with a setting of 1, and the highest I/O performance with a setting of 254.  A value of 255 tells hdparm to disable Advanced Power  Management  altogether on the drive (not all drives support disabling it, but most do)."

For more details on acceptable Load_Cycle_Count rates (which *should* be much higher than Start_Stop_Count rate), see:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/hdparm/+bug/952556/comments/77

On a relevant note, if you want spin-downs as well (-B 127 or lower), make sure to specify a sensible spin-down timeout (-S 36 at minimum -- 3 min), per this:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/hdparm/+bug/952556/comments/29

Obviously, if you don't want spin-downs and are content with -B 128 (or
higher), there's no need to specify -S timeout. It has nothing to do
with head-parking rate, AFAIK.

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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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