System not running right

[Brandon Vincent]

On Tue, Sep 22, 2015 at 12:07 PM, compdoc <compdoc at hotrodpc.com> wrote:
> This causes a huge number being reported in SMART named 'load_cycle count',
> but this count happens whether or not anyone uses smartmontools.

I think he was referring to the fact that smartd queries the SMART
status of a drive every thirty minutes. This can cause the drive to
spin up if it is in a powered down state. smartd on its own will not
cause excessive parking or wear on a WD Green drive. This is more of
an annoyance to some.

What can cause a problem is when a WD Green drive is used as the
primary hard drive for a system. On GNU/Linux reads and writes can
occur with a long delay between them (greater than 8 seconds) as
compared to other operating systems/filesystems. This can cause the
drive to park and unpark the head constantly. Since the drives are
only rated for 300,000 cycles this can cause a problem.

Listen to compdoc and disable the IntelliPark timer. Some WD Green
drives have problems when you "disable" the timer, so I just recommend
people set it to 300 seconds (five minutes). With a five minute delay,
the drive won't park if the system is on.

WD provides a MS-DOS based utility to change the timer, or you can use
the tools provided by the idle3-tools package.

Brandon Vincent