From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Tejun Heo Subject: Re: WDC WD15EARS-00Z5B1: harddrive which does crazy unloading Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:27:38 +0900 Message-ID: <4BA2E11A.5030600@kernel.org> References: <201002081933.10144.suse-linux@ml082.pinguin.uni.cc> <4B9D0772.4080306@teksavvy.com> <4B9D7924.1020908@kernel.org> <201003181716.00173.suse-linux@ml082.pinguin.uni.cc> <4BA2E0E8.1050001@kernel.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from hera.kernel.org ([140.211.167.34]:33949 "EHLO hera.kernel.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751951Ab0CSC1l (ORCPT ); Thu, 18 Mar 2010 22:27:41 -0400 In-Reply-To: <4BA2E0E8.1050001@kernel.org> Sender: linux-ide-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-ide@vger.kernel.org To: Al Bogner Cc: Mark Lord , linux-ide@vger.kernel.org, Daniel Taylor (sorry, forgot to actually cc Daniel. cc'ing and quoting whole body) On 03/19/2010 11:26 AM, Tejun Heo wrote: > (cc'ing Daniel, Hi) > > Hello, > > On 03/19/2010 01:15 AM, Al Bogner wrote: >> WD said to me I can send them the disk, but didn't accept, that this is a >> firmware bug. >> >> Today I got a brandnew WD20EARS (2TB) and it is the same. After about an 1/2 >> hr. I had 12 cycles with an _un_formatted disk. > > That would reach 1.43 years of operation hour w/ 300k limit. Maybe > that's the number they are aiming for? I don't know. I haven't heard > from WDC yet. > >> I cannot accept, that it should be a warranty issue, because this >> reduces the lifetime _after_ the warranty and increases the >> possibility to loose data, at least for those who don't use a raid. >> >> I would be happy to have a native linux utility to change this. > > Yeah, that will be nice but it's of very limited use. How many would > look that up, install it and use it to adjust the parameter? For it > to have meaningful effect, it should be applied automatically, and at > that point, I'm not sure it's a good idea because I don't want to > unconditionally disable power saving feature without a very good > rationale. > > If WDC thinks < 1.5 years of uptime is good enough for those products > in exchange of lowered power consumption, which I think might be > acceptable for certain products considering that most people don't use > their computers 24/7 and the load/unload cycle limit isn't exactly an > accurate timebomb like limit. Well, then, that's the trade off WDC > made and the consumers can choose accordingly. > > And, if that's the case, I think we can and probably should try to let > people know about the particular tradeoff of those drives and if > possible provide a utility to adjust that but I'm still kind of > against automatically disabling it because it doesn't help solving the > situation in the long run while forcing us to apply a sub-optimal > workaround without knowing whether it's really necessary. > > Daniel, I think we really need some clarification from WDC at this > point. I'm sure WDC wouldn't want Linux distros to go ahead and > disable powersaving feature unconditionally, so please let us know. > > Thanks. > -- tejun