7/25/13 Critical Design Flaw Found in WD Caviar Green HDDs

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Critical Design Flaw Found in WD Caviar Green HDDs
April 20th, 2011, 12:51 PM #1
Regeneration
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It has come to our attention that Western Digital's Caviar Green HDDs suffer from a critical design flaw caused by
an aggressive power-saving feature. Western Digital has developed a new technology called Intellipark (aka Idle 3
mode) and it is designed to reduce power consumption, in part by positioning the HDD's heads in a park position and
turning off unnecessary electronics after 8 seconds of inactivity.
According to an in-house investigation and user reports', some software and operating systems are incompatible
with the Intellipark feature causing endless head parking movement as the HDD continuously goes in/out of idle
mode. This abnormal behavior creates stress on the HDD and that could lead to the following issues:
Loud clunking/clicking/buzzing noises every few seconds.
Artificially increases the number of load-unload cycles in S.M.A.R.T.
Possibly shortens life-time of the HDD.
Possibly reduces performance of the HDD.
Western Digital posted a knowledge base article, where it claims that "The number of systems using such
applications and utilities is limited", a statement which we believe is false and inaccurate. Sending an HDD to idle
mode only after 8 seconds of activity is abnormal behavior, which much software doesn't like as they are constantly
writing and reading data to/from the HDD.
According to Western Digital, the following models are affected: WD20EADS, WD20EARS, WD15EADS, WD15EARS,
WD10EADS, WD10EARS, WD8000AARS, WD7500AADS, WD7500AARS, WD6400AADS, WD6400AARS,
WD5000AADS, WD5000AARS, WD1000FYPS, WD7500AYPS and WD7501AYPS.
Western Digital has released a DOS-based utility to modify the behavior of the HDD to wait longer before invoking
idle mode. However, since most of their latest HDDs still ship with the default setting of 8 seconds, we strongly
recommend users with affected HDDs to use the utility and monitor S.M.A.R.T data immediately (we recommend
using CrystalDiskInfo for this task).
How to Adjust Intellipark's Timer
1. Download the WDIDLE3 ISO image and burn it to a CD/DVD.
2. Ensure that your SATA controller is set to IDE mode from the BIOS.
3. Boot from the CD/DVD, it should take you into DOS.
4. In DOS prompt, type: "wdidle3 /S300" to change the default timer from 8 seconds to 300 seconds (5 minutes).
5. In DOS prompt, type: "wdidle3 /R" to verify the results.
We appreciate Western Digital's efforts to conserve energy and protect the environment, but the 8-second-overkill
Intellipark feature could lead to opposite results as more HDDs will be produced to replace defective ones. We sent
7/25/13 Critical Design Flaw Found in WD Caviar Green HDDs
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Intellipark feature could lead to opposite results as more HDDs will be produced to replace defective ones. We sent
an email to Western Digital with a link to this article asking for a comment on this matter. We will update this story
as soon when we hear back from them.
Update #1: Daniel Mauerhofer, Head of EMEA PR in Western Digital has commented on this article. "This issue is far
from critical, does not impair normal functionality or place data at risk, can be mitigated with a utility for the small
percentage of systems affected, and is a well understood industry standard."
Update #2: A user on Western Digital's forum claims that his Caviar Black HDD is affected as well. "WD2001FASS
parks heads after 12.8 seconds. It will eventually kill itself doing this. I was getting around 1400 Load Cycle Count a
day due it parking and waking up constantly."
Last edited by Regeneration; June 12th, 2012 at 07:09 AM..

April 20th, 2011, 01:20 PM #2
Promilus
Professional Member
Posts: 356
CPU: Ath II X3 450
GPU: HD4670
M/B: 870iCafe R2.0
RAM: Corsair XMS3 2x4GB
PSU: Chieftec GPS 450-101AA
As WD6400AADS owner I must admit I never EVER experienced
Quote:
Loud clunking/clicking/buzzing noises every few seconds.
Neither on Ubuntu nor on WinXP

April 20th, 2011, 01:26 PM #3
Regeneration
Site Staff
Posts: 18,299
CPU: Intel Core i7-965
GPU: GeForce GTX 560 Ti
M/B: Intel DX58SO
RAM: 6GB of A-DATA
PSU: X-Spice 630w
@Promilus How's the SMART data?

April 20th, 2011, 01:41 PM #4
Promilus
Professional Member
Posts: 356
CPU: Ath II X3 450
GPU: HD4670
M/B: 870iCafe R2.0
RAM: Corsair XMS3 2x4GB
PSU: Chieftec GPS 450-101AA
Quote:
Originally Posted by Regeneration
@Promilus How's the SMART data?
116k load-unload
My drive is ~1yr old now and 291days ON. BOINC writes small portions of data constantly so I guess it might be
worse without it running most time.

April 20th, 2011, 02:17 PM #5
Kirill
Golden Member

Posts: 1,774
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isnt that SMART feature for IDE connections?
I always had it disabled on sata ... is it ok?
7/25/13 Critical Design Flaw Found in WD Caviar Green HDDs
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RAM: Gskill 16gb
PSU: SeaSonic 750W Gold M

April 20th, 2011, 02:31 PM #6
squall_leonhart
Wielder of Lionheart

Posts: 5,181
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according to a friend that thinks hes a cat, this is fixed in the EARS models.
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April 20th, 2011, 02:33 PM #7
Regeneration
Site Staff
Posts: 18,299
CPU: Intel Core i7-965
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Quote:
Originally Posted by squall_leonhart
according to a friend that thinks hes a cat, this is fixed in the EARS models.
I have 2 EARS models are they are both affected. Running Windows 7.

April 20th, 2011, 02:34 PM #8
daedone
Newbie
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CPU: Core i7 720QM @1.6Ghz
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PSU: ASUS built in (laptop)
Any idea what this would do to a raid-5 array, I'm assuming the until needs to run on single drives, so I'd probably
have to break my array? I have 4 WD10EARS for nearline, and while I *could* recopy the data, I would prefer not
to have to redo 2.6TB.
That said, I haven't heard any head noises, so maybe the array keeps all the drives busy enough as is. (Yes I know
the drives aren't really meant for RAID since they don't do TLER, but I haven't had any problems.)
I'm running 2008R2 EE btw.

April 20th, 2011, 02:38 PM #9
Unregistered
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That feature isn't listed on WD's website

April 20th, 2011, 02:43 PM #10
squall_leonhart
Wielder of Lionheart

Posts: 5,181
well i did say he thinks he is a cat.
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7/25/13 Critical Design Flaw Found in WD Caviar Green HDDs
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Posts: 5,181
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