New user's registration have been closed due to high spamming and low trafic on this forum. Please contact forum admins directly if you need an account. Thanks !

[SOLVED] [Old] WD Green Power drives may kill themselves !!

Got problems with your B2 or B3? Share and get helped!
Post Reply
johannes
Posts: 1470
Joined: 31 Dec 2006, 07:12
Location: Sweden
Contact:

Post by johannes »

Yes, we have tried that, but WD refuses to support Linux systems. Anyways, 95% of the disks shipped with Bubba Two are not RE2-drives, so we would need a fix for all drives. However, getting help from WD with this seems difficult.

We are working on a general "keep-busy" tool that automatically installs on your Bubbas with an update, and only runs on drives that need it. Sorry for it to take so long though.
/Johannes (Excito co-founder a long time ago, but now I'm just Johannes)
Strider
Posts: 20
Joined: 14 Jun 2007, 20:29

Post by Strider »

Hi,

Just one question that may not be pertinent to the particular issues at stake, but it is related to it.

Does this problem apply to USB mounted drives?
Meaning, I have two 1TB My Book WD usb external storage devices and they are affected by this, and that was confirmed by WD.
I can not access smartools command output in this setup (usb) so ... I wonder if, by being mounted by USB they would be affected by the load_cycle as if they where used directly in the SATA bus ...


Regards
necromncr
Posts: 1
Joined: 20 Apr 2009, 01:12

Post by necromncr »

Hi,

I'm new here but I was drawn to this forum by my WD's devilish sounds. I have a WD5000AACS-00ZUB0 drive and while in idle state it creates sounds like this: wd5000aacs.mp3.

Sometimes it will cause those sounds in low usage as well for instance: copying files at 100-200k/sec.

My smartctl says pretty much the same all the time:

Code: Select all

vir1:~# date; smartctl -d ata -a /dev/sda | grep -i -E '(load_cycle|temp|Power_On_Hours|Device Model)'
Mon Apr 20 07:32:02 CEST 2009
Device Model:     WDC WD5000AACS-00ZUB0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   098   098   000    Old_age   Always       -       1780
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   195   195   000    Old_age   Always       -       17860
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   104   091   000    Old_age   Always       -       43
My smart extended tests are all OK and no problems reading or writing on drive has occurred so far.

Anyone has a similar experience / problem? 'cause this one is really going on my nerves...
johannes
Posts: 1470
Joined: 31 Dec 2006, 07:12
Location: Sweden
Contact:

Post by johannes »

necromncr,

This is new to me, I have never heard such a sound. Hard to know what it is, but to be safe I'd exchange the disk as a warrnaty repair. You can do that either by WD, or directly by us. Contact us at support@excito.com for further instructions.

Best Regards,
/Johannes (Excito co-founder a long time ago, but now I'm just Johannes)
rewien
Posts: 127
Joined: 27 Sep 2008, 18:10

Post by rewien »

johannes wrote:necromncr,

This is new to me, I have never heard such a sound. Hard to know what it is, but to be safe I'd exchange the disk as a warrnaty repair. You can do that either by WD, or directly by us. Contact us at support@excito.com for further instructions.

Best Regards,

Hello Johannes,

Have the excito team found a solution to the hardisk increasing load cycles?
I'm running a sript to keep the disk awaike, but everytime we restart bubba two we have to re insert the script

Gr Rewien
novis
Posts: 30
Joined: 12 Sep 2008, 09:36
Location: Suomi Finland

Post by novis »

Code: Select all

Tue May  5 17:27:15 EEST 2009
Device Model:     WDC WD5000AACS-00ZUB0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   093   093   000    Old_age   Always       -       5624
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       301353
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   102   098   000    Old_age   Always       -       45
well.. that's not good :/ can I trust this hd anymore for backups? (edit: well I suppose I should, since having a copy beats having only the original.. still that LC-count kinda sucks bozons)

and for some reason testing fails..

Code: Select all

smartctl -t long /dev/sda
Long (extended) offline self test failed [unsupported field in scsi command]
johannes
Posts: 1470
Joined: 31 Dec 2006, 07:12
Location: Sweden
Contact:

Re: WARNING: WD Green Power drives may kill themselves !!

Post by johannes »

Hi again all,

A brief upddate from us; you should know that we are working on this, but it showed more complex than we first thought and it will be another some time before we release the fix. I hope for your patience, and until then, please use the script suggested above to prevent the problem from progressing.

Generally, a high load cycle count does not seem to be an immediate large risk, many users have reported LCC of a factor 10 above the maximum recommended without having any problems.

I have also updated the title of this thread to show that the issue only applies to old disks.

Hoping for your patience...
//Johannes
/Johannes (Excito co-founder a long time ago, but now I'm just Johannes)
Puma
Posts: 230
Joined: 29 Sep 2008, 06:30

Re: WARNING: [Old] WD Green Power drives may kill themselves !!

Post by Puma »

Excito,

It seems that with the last update the keep busy script doesn't work anymore.

I made the script executable en ran it as described as you told in this forum.
It worked before the update.

After a renew boot it is going up again.

What am I doing wrong??

Puma
Linux is like a wigwam - no windows, no gates, apache inside!
RobV
Posts: 34
Joined: 05 Oct 2008, 05:48

Re: WARNING: [Old] WD Green Power drives may kill themselves !!

Post by RobV »

Hi Puma,
Maybe you want to share the content of your script before someone can comment?
Rob
Puma
Posts: 230
Joined: 29 Sep 2008, 06:30

Re: WARNING: [Old] WD Green Power drives may kill themselves !!

Post by Puma »

Hello,

Script I use:

#!/bin/bash
#workaround for the green drive WD problem loadcycles

while [ true ];do
sleep 5
tail /var/log/messages > /tmp/wdfix
done

Exe
chmod +x /home/storage/extern/wd_stop_unload.sh

RUN with
nohup /home/storage/extern/wd_stop_unload.sh &


I checked it with "top" I can see every few seconds the wd_stop_unload but it keeps increasing!!!
This didn't happen before. at least I think!

puma
Linux is like a wigwam - no windows, no gates, apache inside!
RobV
Posts: 34
Joined: 05 Oct 2008, 05:48

Re: WARNING: [Old] WD Green Power drives may kill themselves !!

Post by RobV »

Hi Puma,

The problem you encounter was identified and a solution was found about 2 months ago in this very forum thread. It has to do with using the /tmp directory which seems to have some kind of caching which avoids repeated physical disk writing (causing the unexpected counter increase...).

See topic http://forum.excito.net/viewtopic.php?p=7337#p7337

That should solve your issue (thanks to Peter).

Rob
RandomUsername
Posts: 904
Joined: 09 Oct 2009, 18:49

Re: WARNING: [Old] WD Green Power drives may kill themselves !!

Post by RandomUsername »

Wow, this was a busy thread that died very quickly wasn't it? I found this while searching for something else and would like to know if there was an official Excito fix. I was aware of this problem in *nix world when it happened but I didn't think it was still a problem as most distros implemented fixes.

That being said, my own Bubba2 which is just over a month old has an LCC of nearly 64000. That puts me on target to hit the 300000 barrier in less than four months from now which is a bit of a worry as I'm not sure my drive will be covered by its warranty (n.b. I have a WD Green Power 1 TB that was bought from a third party).
trencarbe
Posts: 103
Joined: 11 Aug 2008, 16:02

Re: WARNING: [Old] WD Green Power drives may kill themselves !!

Post by trencarbe »

I need to buy new hard drives, one will be used a primary and the second as a backup hard drive.

I have no considerations buying 1 TB or 2 TB, either one suits my purposes.

What would you guys recommend, go for a specific WD Green Power model or another brand??



/TC
johannes
Posts: 1470
Joined: 31 Dec 2006, 07:12
Location: Sweden
Contact:

Re: WARNING: [Old] WD Green Power drives may kill themselves !!

Post by johannes »

Hi all,

Sorry for not closing this thread earlier. The problem is considered fixed now as all new drives since more than a year has this fix implemented. For users who suspect their drives (purchased from us prior to 31/11-2008) are suffering from this, we'll gladly swap these against new drives. Just contact us at support@excito.com and we'll help you out there.

Best Regards,
/Johannes, Excito
/Johannes (Excito co-founder a long time ago, but now I'm just Johannes)
johannes
Posts: 1470
Joined: 31 Dec 2006, 07:12
Location: Sweden
Contact:

Re: [SOLVED] [Old] WD Green Power drives may kill themselves !!

Post by johannes »

And to add, we did thoroughly investigate possible fixes, but couldn't find any that didn't affect other functions in a negative way, so we decided not to.
/Johannes (Excito co-founder a long time ago, but now I'm just Johannes)
Post Reply