WD5000AADS slowly suiciding via load cycles

[Arno]

Dear all,

I have a WD5000AADS that I pulled form an external enclosure.
This drive has about 200'000 load-cycles after 6 months use in
a desktop and is slowly killing itself that way. I expect it
will die in a year or so. I am also sure this is not a
display bug, if I do a long disk read, the load cycle count
stops increasing.

The problem is that unlike notebook drives where I have seen the
same thing, this 3.5" drive does not support APM and hence I
can not easily turn the too aggressive settings back to
something reasonable.

Does anybody know what I can do to fix this, or is drive
replacement the only option?

Arno

 

[Ed Light]

That's odd. I have a WD5000AAKS, Caviar Blue which,
has 1361 load cycles after more than 2 years in service.
I see yours is the Green. It must be aggressive in power
saving.

There were some WD Greens that went nuts with load cycles. I think that
WD has a utility to turn that off or change the timeout.

It happened when frequent disc activity by the OS came just a bit less
often than the unload timing, so it was constantly unloading and then
coming back for the OS.
--
Ed Light

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[Robert Nichols]

Dear all,

I have a WD5000AADS that I pulled form an external enclosure.
This drive has about 200'000 load-cycles after 6 months use in
a desktop and is slowly killing itself that way. I expect it
will die in a year or so. I am also sure this is not a
display bug, if I do a long disk read, the load cycle count
stops increasing.

The problem is that unlike notebook drives where I have seen the
same thing, this 3.5" drive does not support APM and hence I
can not easily turn the too aggressive settings back to
something reasonable.

Does anybody know what I can do to fix this, or is drive
replacement the only option?

You need to get the WDIDLE3 program from W-D to change that overly
aggressive power management setting. Trick is to find a W-D service
rep. who doesn't deny that the program exists. It's a Windows-only
program, but the setting persists over power cycling, so you just
need to run it once. I had a couple of WD10EADS drives (bought as
bare drives, not in an enclosure) that were destroying themselves
that same way until I got that program. Sorry, but copyright and
licensing restrictions forbid me from redistributing it.

 

[Ed Light]

You need to get the WDIDLE3 program from W-D to change that overly
aggressive power management setting. Trick is to find a W-D service
rep. who doesn't deny that the program exists.

It's here:

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=609&sid=113&lang=en

but, it says never to use it on other than 3 drives listed, with strange
model numbers.

--
Ed Light

Better World News TV Channel:
http://realnews.com

Iraq Veterans Against the War and Related:
http://ivaw.org
http://couragetoresist.org
http://antiwar.com

Send spam to the FTC at
(e-mail address removed)
Thanks, robots.

 

[Arno]

You need to get the WDIDLE3 program from W-D to change that overly
aggressive power management setting. Trick is to find a W-D service
rep. who doesn't deny that the program exists. It's a Windows-only
program, but the setting persists over power cycling, so you just
need to run it once. I had a couple of WD10EADS drives (bought as
bare drives, not in an enclosure) that were destroying themselves
that same way until I got that program. Sorry, but copyright and
licensing restrictions forbid me from redistributing it.

Found it on
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=609&sid=113
The dire warnings on the page all seem to be FUD. The readme does
state that this utility only changes the idle3 value using a vendor
specific command, nothing about being bound to specific drives
or doing a firmware upgrade.

Will do a backup nonetheless and then need to find a way to boot
DOS. You would think that these things can be done at least
with Windows today, after all smartctl can acess everything, so
it must be possible.

Thanks for the pointer!

Arno

 

[Arno]

On 9/7/2010 10:45 PM, Robert Nichols wrote:

It's here:

but, it says never to use it on other than 3 drives listed, with strange
model numbers.

I think this is all FUD. The included README says it is just a
tool to set the idle3 counter with a vendor command, nothing
about firmware, being drive specific or any warnings about
any danger. Going to try it after doing a backup.

Arno