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Advisor
U-PID
Posts: 26
Registered: ‎03-03-2011
0

Very high Load_Cycle_Count (over 5 000 in less than 180h)

[ Edited ]
I have been having the MBL for a few day now. Everything works great, but I am concerned with the load_cycle_count value.
5129 in about 172h which is +1 every 2 minutes... And they say a HD only lives about 300 000 to 600 000 of them... at this rate, the drive will be dead within 1 or 2 years... what values do you have ? (smartctl -a /dev/sda) 
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   200   200   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   167   165   021    Pre-fail  Always       -       6616
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       118
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   191   140    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x002e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       172
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       4
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       3
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   199   199   000    Old_age   Always       -       5129
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   106   082   000    Old_age   Always       -       44
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   200   200   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0008   200   200   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
Trusted Contributor
jazzymood
Posts: 173
Registered: ‎12-19-2010

Re: Very high Load_Cycle_Count (over 5 000 in less than 180h)

[ Edited ]

this is known issue.

google it or read here:

 

http://community.wdc.com/t5/My-Book-Live/Very-high-Load-Cycle-Count/m-p/105556#M256

http://community.wdc.com/t5/My-Book-Live/Just-got-My-Book-Live-my-first-thoughts/m-p/121290/highligh...

 

WD dont care. they simply ignore fact about it..

 

Here is my output from MyBook Live:

 

Power_On_Hours  - 1205

Load_Cycle_Count  - 12520

 

 

 

Advisor
U-PID
Posts: 26
Registered: ‎03-03-2011
0

Re: Very high Load_Cycle_Count (over 5 000 in less than 180h)

Thank you for your reply.

I also remember that I did read somewhere that WD, once upon a time, did provide some utility to fix this... but that it was no longer available.

 

IMHO, WD should say something about this issue. And not stay mute.

Honored Contributor
TonyPh12345
Posts: 17,794
Registered: ‎01-11-2010

Re: Very high Load_Cycle_Count (over 5 000 in less than 180h)

Ya'll are reading too much into that 600,000 number.

 

It's not a number that causes premature death....   

 

WD just says they will endure at least that number.   I have desktop drives that have well over 1 million LC's and they're still running fine...  and they're rated for only 300,000.  

 

All it is is a "Parking Cycle."   A parking cycle is not much more mechanically intensive to a drive than moving the head from the inner to the outer reaches of the platter...  which it does any time it's reading data.

 

So I wouldn't get too spun up about it.. (Pun intended... :smileywink: )

===Live SMP / Live Hub x2 / Live+ / Live x2 / 24 TBytes of QNAP + WD NAS ===
Advisor
U-PID
Posts: 26
Registered: ‎03-03-2011
0

Re: Very high Load_Cycle_Count (over 5 000 in less than 180h)

Well, glad you disk could reach past the million. Mine did not. Died around 450K., after 3.5 yrs...

 

Are you certain that the "parking cycle is not much more mechanically intensive to a drive than moving the head from the inner to the outer reaches of the platter"

The sound certainly is. More intense.

 

"So I wouldn't get too spun up about it". Ok. let's drop the matter. There is not much we can do anyway. And WD wouldn't talk about it.

Staff
oxter
Posts: 1,286
Registered: ‎12-01-2010
0

Re: Very high Load_Cycle_Count (over 5 000 in less than 180h)

But they do talk about this situation, look at this:

 

Some utilities, operating systems, and applications, such as some implementations of Linux, for example, are not optimized for low power storage devices and can cause our drives to wake up at a higher rate than normal. This effectively negates the power-saving advantages of low-power drives, such as WD GreenPower™ models, and artificially increases the number of load-unload cycles. Although the increase in load/unload cycles is within design margins (drive has been validated to 1 million load/unload cycles without issue) a balance between life of product, logging requirements, and low power consumption can be achieved depending on what is critical to the system. Present SMART normalized values have not been re-normalized to 1 million cycles so advisory reporting on this attribute does not mean failure of product.

 

More information in the link below:

 

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5357/session/L3RpbWUvMTMwMDAyOTkyOS9zaWQvbm1sWHlRb2s...

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SACRE BLEU!!!
Advisor
U-PID
Posts: 26
Registered: ‎03-03-2011
0

Re: Very high Load_Cycle_Count (over 5 000 in less than 180h)

Thanks for your reply.

 

I did indeed read this document. However, it is of no use for the MBL.

There is no /etc/syslog.conf file. And there isn't any  /usr/bin/syslogd.

 

So what can we do ?

Trusted Contributor
jazzymood
Posts: 173
Registered: ‎12-19-2010

Re: Very high Load_Cycle_Count (over 5 000 in less than 180h)

[ Edited ]

W O W !!!

W O W !!!

W O W !!!

 

Somebody from other forum finally seem to be able to fix this (going great lenghts)..

 

Check here - http://mybookworld.wikidot.com/forum/t-351295/the-s-m-a-r-t-attribute-193-load-unload-counter-keeps-...

 

(no idea if you can see that forum post without registering there first).

 

In short: trick is to install (compile directly on MBL) seperate tool called idle3-tools and reboot your drive.

After that - NO MORE INCREASING LOAD CYCLE COUNTER.

 

I will do this on my own drive A S A P and confirm results.

 

Edit:

compiled without problems.. but not sure how to set timer for 8minutes (or 5 minutes) - what value should i choose?.

I dont want to disable it completely, becouse I have no idea how that will affect my 10min standby-mode.

 

Check here - http://idle3-tools.sourceforge.net/

Honored Contributor
Myron
Posts: 1,275
Registered: ‎05-01-2011

Re: Very high Load_Cycle_Count (over 5 000 in less than 180h)

[ Edited ]

Jazzymood, I'm a bit of a newbie to Linux not not a non-tech. How does one compile this utility directly on the MBL?

I've got the source files but it seems the necessary bits to compile idle3ctl ain't on my MBL.

 

Can you or someone please assist?  Maybe compille it for me and send it?

 

Failing that who's opened a MyBookLive to get at the drive inside?  I've got the utility on a bootable CD.  The hassle will be connecting the drive to a computer, configuring the idle parameter it off the bootable CD and then reconnecting the drive back in the MyBookLive case, but if their cases are like most others then they are easy to clip together but an ar*e -hole to open without breaking any bits of plastic.

 

Additional:  Seems it's very easy to download, install and remove applications (treading carefully so as not to wake any dragons!) as I' ve downloaded and installed the `make` package but which version of `gcc` package do I need to install to compile `idle3ctl`?  Once I got `idle3ctl` then I can remove the `make` and `gcc` packages to put things back to as they were.  Can anyone help?

Trusted Contributor
jazzymood
Posts: 173
Registered: ‎12-19-2010

Re: Very high Load_Cycle_Count (over 5 000 in less than 180h)

[ Edited ]

I can confirm that using idle3-tools stopped dramatic Load_Cycle_Count increasing.


Be aware that installing it voids your NAS drive warranty as WD seems to not like anything users install on their own.

So consider it carefully especially if you not familiar with Linux.

 

Personally I don't care about that, becouse I did so much modifications already on drive and using it for much more than WD planned :smileyhappy:

 

If you want to do this here is how I did it on my MyBook Live 2TB (WD20EARS drive inside)

 

1) Go to http://idle3-tools.sourceforge.net/ and read whole thing to understand what it is.

2) Log in to your MyBookLive drive using root account.

3) Download idle3-tools from this URL using wget.

     wget http://ignum.dl.sourceforge.net/project/idle3-tools/idle3-tools-0.9.tgz

4) tar zxvf idle3-tools-0.9.tgz

5) cd idle3-tools-0.9

6) nano Makefile

     This step opens Makefile in text editor, find 2 following lines and change them like this:

 

CC = gcc
STRIP = strip

Save changed Makefile with same name (overwriting existing).

7) make

    If it displays that make not found, you need to install it using apt-get install make

    Probably in this case gcc is missing too. You can also install that with apt-get install gcc

8) Run make again and it should compile idle3-tools.

9) Run ./idle3ctl -h

    It will display you this:

 

MyBookLive:~/idle3-tools-0.9# ./idle3ctl -h
idle3ctl v0.9 - Read, Set or disable the idle3 timer of Western Digital drives
Copyright (C) 2011  Christophe Bothamy

Usage: idle3ctl [options] device
Options: 
 -h : displat help
 -V : show version and exit immediately
 -v : version
 --force : force even if no Western Digital HDD are detected
 -g : get raw idle3 timer value
 -g100 : get idle3 timer value as wdidle3 v1.00 value
 -g103 : get idle3 timer value as wdidle3 v1.03 value
 -d : disable idle3 timer
 -s<value> : set idle3 timer raw value
MyBookLive:~/idle3-tools-0.9# 

 10) Run ./idle3ctl -g /dev/sda

        It will show your current setting, which means head parking every 8seconds (we want to change that).

 

MyBookLive:/shares/Public/idle3-tools-0.9# ./idle3ctl -g /dev/sda
Idle3 timer set to 80 (0x50)

Value 80 means 8 seconds.

 

 11) Now take a look on table of bottom section of webpage http://idle3-tools.sourceforge.net/

  As you can see , maximum value is 255 or you can completely disable head parking using this:

 

./idle3ctl -d /dev/sda

 

 

  BUT I really don't know if it is good idea to disable it completely!!! It might screw up your stand-by mode setting

  (which you can change from 10mins to more time in WD Webinterface for Live drive) and add more heat to drive and 

  more $ to power bill.

 

   My drive uses 10minute stand-by time, so I think that head parking timer should be set in this case less than

  10minutes, so I changed it like this:

 

./idle3ctl -s 145 /dev/sda

Which results in 510second (8.5min) timer.

 

12) To make new setting work, you need to power-cycle your  NAS drive.

      I used this command to do this:

 

poweroff && exit

After that, you need to power-off and power-on plug from socket becouse there is no Powerbutton on Live drive.

Then wait after drive boots, and voila ! No more dramatic counter increasing every 8secs.

 

You can test that by executing this:

 

smartctl -A /dev/sda|grep Load_Cycle_Count

After minute, run that command again and you will see that Load Count stays the same.


FINALLY !!!!!!!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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