SMART: Brand new Western Digital hard-disk showing very high load cycle count

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My brand new "WDC WD10EZRX" 1TB Green Hard-disk, SMART log is showing very high load cycle count and it keeps increasing at high rate. enter image description here

What should I do ? Please help me.

Edit:

Finally I got the courage to give "WDIDLE3" tool a try and it worked :) for me . I checked the default idel time it was set to 12s which I changed to 300s (5min). Everything seems to be fine till now.

Hope this may help people who are looking for a solution.

Thank you Guys ! for your time and effort.

curious_kid

Posted 2014-03-29T18:31:31.400

Reputation: 917

I didn't know this, my Load_Cycle_Count is 450k on all 4 drives of this particular array. GG WD. – ioquatix – 2017-06-26T12:49:35.037

Why are you alarmed by a high load cycle? – Ramhound – 2014-03-29T18:58:52.727

1@Ramhound I think 2785 load cycle count is huge compared to 65 hours of power on state. – curious_kid – 2014-03-29T19:25:29.803

It depends on how the disk is being used. WD Greens unload after 8 seconds idle to conserve power. Based on your disk usage time of 65 hours, that is one load/unload every 84 seconds. – G Koe – 2014-03-30T02:57:08.857

Answers

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WD Green Drives are rated for 300,000 load cycles per their spec sheet, and the green drives are designed to unload heads often to conserve power, usually after 8 seconds. High Load cycle counts are definitely a known issue when dealing with WD Green Drives. If you keep an eye on the drives and exceed the rated load and unload, you may want to consider RMAing the drive. enter image description here

OTHERWISE You can use WDIDLE to increase the time before the heads are parked.

WDIDLE3 can be used to change the timer to lower the rate when the HDD will encounter a Load/Unload Cycle. This solution applies to both Enterprise drives including the WD VelociRaptor, WD RE3, WD RE2-GP and WD RE2, and Desktop drives such as the WD Caviar® Black™, WD Caviar® Blue™ and WD Caviar® Green™. Please follow the steps below to update the WDIDLE3 timer:

  1. Download the WDIDLE3 from Here.
  2. Create a USBBOOT by which you can access to DOS environment. ( Refer to http://blogs.oreilly.com/digitalmedia/2004/10/utility-to-make-usb-flash-driv.html )
  3. Attach the WD drive(s) to the motherboard of your computer.
  4. Reboot the computer and enter to DOS environment.
  5. Type WDIDLE3 /S300.

The operation is done successfully if you see the message of “Idle 3 timer is enabled and set to 300 (five minutes)”.

If you still fail to operate this or have other inquiries regarding to this issue please contact Western Digital.

G Koe

Posted 2014-03-29T18:31:31.400

Reputation: 4 333

That HP app won't work with modern Windows. I found this other utility to create bootable DOS USB drives: http://rufus.akeo.ie. It was much simpler with it.

– Andrew – 2016-04-21T21:12:03.530

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Thanks for the reply. Is this same utility published on the WD official site http://support.wd.com/product/download.asp?groupid=609&sid=113&lang=en. If yes then my hard-disk model no is not listed under the supported models.

– curious_kid – 2014-03-29T19:19:55.493

1Try it anyways... – Ramhound – 2014-03-29T19:25:14.217

@Ramhound won't that void the warranty. – curious_kid – 2014-03-29T19:28:56.370

Agrees with Ramhoud, I had to do these "unsupported un warrenty" changes to many drives. It is scary when I am just hacking away at something I do not know what kind of problems it can have, but worked so far on all the ones I did it too. WD doesnt want to talk about it, that is zero help, but at least the tools change it. If I remember right you can parse the numbers it has first, that may have helped know where the software was going. – Psycogeek – 2014-03-29T23:06:18.173

What running a tool by the manufacture? – Ramhound – 2014-03-29T23:16:48.270

To help us all understand better you may want to tell us how the drive is being used. If you are concerned about longevity or about resilience of the drive, you could always have bought WD red drives, which are rated at 600,000 Load/unloads in their life. – G Koe – 2014-03-30T03:05:55.757

Based on your disk usage time of 65 hours, that is one load/unload every 84 seconds. At this rate you've got about 7000 Hours until you hit the limit. (about 292 days of continuous thrashing) So @curious_kid, how are you using the drive? in a typical (windows 8 based on your other questions) desktop? if so, even on 24/7, the disk will still probably last 2 years, which is all the warranty is good for. – G Koe – 2014-03-30T03:12:52.193

You may also want to read this: http://forum.covecube.com/discussion/985/wd-greens-load-cycle-count-warning/p1

– G Koe – 2014-03-30T03:18:38.167

@GKoe I'm using the drive for backup purpose. I don't access it regulary just once in a month for taking backups. Since I'm not using it regularly should I disable it in the BIOS, will that help ? Or should I unplug the sata data and power cable. – curious_kid – 2014-03-30T09:21:06.037

1Any drive that is online in windows is likely to be accessed frequently. Since it is your backup, consider taking the easiest approach. leave it in, backup to it, set a reminder on your calendar a month before the warranty ends, run WD lifeguard tools and a smart check on it then and or at the first sign of trouble, and then RMA the drive if needed. Otherwise replace as needed. Hard drives no longer last forever. – G Koe – 2014-03-30T15:49:08.920

2Thank you Guys ! WDIDLE3 utility worked for me, I change the default idle time to 300s which was earlier set to 12s. – curious_kid – 2014-03-30T17:41:23.800

Asked: 2014-03-29T18:31:31.400

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