[mythtv-users] WD Green drives (was "complete system meltdown")

[Stephen Worthington]

On Tue, 11 Feb 2014 10:24:47 +0100, you wrote:

>Hello,
>
>I have a WDC WD20EARS-00MVWB0 (2TB) disk running for more than 2 years.
>
>I configured the idle3 timer to this value:
>
># idle3ctl -g /dev/sdb
>Idle3 timer set to 252 (0xfc)
>
>And this the SMART info about "Load_Cycle_Count":
>
># smartctl -A /dev/sdb | grep "^193"
>193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   191   191   000    Old_age
>Always       -       29263
>
>Are this values correct? The 252 value is 7560 (252*30) seconds?
>
>Here is the software to change the idle3 timer:
>http://idle3-tools.sourceforge.net

With the more recent WD drives, you are better off using the -g105
parameter with idle3ctl, rather than just -g.  It gives you the time
rather than just a raw value.

Personally, for drives I want to have a timeout, I prefer to disable
the on-disk timer with idle3ctl -d and use hdparm -S to set a timeout.
This is what I have in my /etc/rc.local to do that for my video files
drives:

# Set a sleep timeout for drives that need it.
# A "-S 120" setting is for a timeout of 10 minutes.
hdparm -S 120 /dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD30EZRX-00MMMB0_WD-WCAWZ1474221
& # vid1
hdparm -S 120 /dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD30EZRX-00DC0B0_WD-WMC1T2611150
& # vid2
hdparm -S 120
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD2002FAEX-007BA0_WD-WMAY01435793 & # vid3

That way I can have the drives on either my USB3 docks or my eSATA
docks and still be able to control the timeouts when I need to.  If a
WD drive is on a USB3 interface, idle3ctl does not work, and in any
case you need to cycle the power on a WD drive after using idle3ctl
before it uses the new timeout.