Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Florian Philipp <lists@×××××××××××.net>
To: Gentoo User List <gentoo-user@l.g.o>
Subject: [gentoo-user] hdparm + Western Digital Green "idle3"
Date: Sat, 25 Aug 2012 12:57:50
Message-Id: 5038CB3D.7080101@binarywings.net
1 I've just checked out the man page for hdparm. There I noticed the
2 new -J switch. It reads:
3
4 > Get/set the Western Digital (WD) Green Drive's "idle3" timeout
5 > value. This timeout controls how often the drive parks its heads and
6 > enters a low power consumption state. The factory default is eight
7 > (8) seconds, which is a very poor choice for use with Linux. Leaving
8 > it at the default will result in hundreds of thousands of head
9 > load/unload cycles in a very short period of time. The drive
10 > mechanism is only rated for 300,000 to 1,000,000 cycles, so leaving
11 > it at the default could result in premature failure, not to mention
12 > the performance impact of the drive often having to wake-up before
13 > doing routine I/O.
14 >
15 > WD supply a WDIDLE3.EXE DOS utility for tweaking this setting, and
16 > you should use that program instead of hdparm if at all possible.
17 > The reverse-engineered implementation in hdparm is not as complete
18 > as the original official program, even though it does seem to work on
19 > at a least a few drives. [...]
20 >
21 > A setting of 30 seconds is recommended for Linux use. [...]
22
23 I've never heard of this. Are other Caviar Green users aware of this?
24 Anyone having any experience with this?
25
26 Thanks in advance!
27 Florian Philipp

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Subject Author
[gentoo-user] Re: hdparm + Western Digital Green "idle3" Nikos Chantziaras <realnc@×××××.com>