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#1 2015-04-30 15:21:18

i3
Member
Registered: 2014-08-27
Posts: 12

WD Intellipark - has the problem been solved?

Hey folks,

I want to buy a new hard disk for my arch server. I need a capacity of ~1TB and I also want to make sure, that the emission (noise, heat) and power consumption is very low.
My search for a suitable hard drive led me to the Green series of Western Digital. After some research I found out, that there was a problem with Linux and those hard drives special "function" called Intellipark [1].

Now my question is if this problem is still present or if it has been fixed? I did not find any information on the internet so I would guess that there is nothing new on this topic.
In this case, could you guys suggest me a good hard drive that suites my needs and works fine with Linux (without installing workarounds like idle3-tools).

Thanks in advance!


Links:
[1] https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=73573

Last edited by i3 (2015-04-30 15:23:37)

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#2 2015-04-30 22:34:47

firekage
Member
From: Eastern Europe, Poland
Registered: 2013-06-30
Posts: 617

Re: WD Intellipark - has the problem been solved?

I own 4 WD green power 3TB disk named EZRX if i remember correctly. All of them had mentioned issue but there is solution for it, and in fact, in my opinion, better that doing something with system configs for power manager - you can download apps named wdidle.exe*** (it's on many cd with managament utilities) and boot it. You have disable all disk, connect only WD, than you can do a change in firmware by typing /d /r /s and it's done. I did it for all my disk. Of course, there is one problem with it - changing this options in firmware causes that heads won't click so many times but i don't know if power manager from hdparm will work. I did some setup in hardparm, but don't know if it works with changed option if firmware.

BTW - if you don't like what you did with firmware, you can enable heard parking the same way.


*in fact this apps is recorded on a bootable CD

Last edited by firekage (2015-04-30 22:41:19)

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#3 2015-04-30 22:49:51

mwillems
Member
Registered: 2014-08-09
Posts: 89

Re: WD Intellipark - has the problem been solved?

I have a three WD Greens and five WD Reds (which had the same intellipark issue) all shipped within the last year.  3 of the 8 drives have the issue, generally the one's shipped in the middle of last year still had the problem, but the one's shipped within the last three or four months don't have the problem.  YMMV of course, and the problem is easily fixable.  Keep your eye on the load cycle count in the SMART stats; if it's increasing rapidly day to day, you have the intellipark issue.

I can recommend the reds, in particular. They're very quiet, low power drives.  I have five WD Reds in a server and the average idle power consumption for the entire computer (all five multi-TB drives, a low-power i7 processor, fans, etc.) is between 15 and 20 watts.

Last edited by mwillems (2015-04-30 22:51:44)

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#4 2015-05-02 14:11:25

gnubeest
Member
Registered: 2014-04-19
Posts: 8

Re: WD Intellipark - has the problem been solved?

idle3-tools isn't exactly a workaround, it outright kills the disk's "green" parking so you can rely on your OS to spin the disk down as per normal. Takes thirty seconds and you can remove idle3-tools afterward. The only caveat is that idle3-tools doesn't seem to function over USB, so you have to liberate the disks from any enclosures (including the My Books where they're common) first.

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#5 2015-05-11 14:15:33

i3
Member
Registered: 2014-08-27
Posts: 12

Re: WD Intellipark - has the problem been solved?

Hey thank you for the answer. Does the use of idle3-tools has any impact on the warranty?

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#6 2015-05-11 14:19:43

frostschutz
Member
Registered: 2013-11-15
Posts: 1,409

Re: WD Intellipark - has the problem been solved?

You can also set idle3 using hdparm -J so no longer need a special tool for it

Last edited by frostschutz (2015-05-11 14:20:07)

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