GreenPower disk drives - ironic and false

[Rich Braun]

As part of my entertainment-server project, I bought two different brands of
consumer-grade terabyte drives.

The one being pushed the most at the local MicroCenter is the Western Digital
GreenPower model.

I've had a problem trying to save electricity with this unit.  Other brands of
drives stay spun down when I set the standby parameter (hdparm -S xxx) but
this model doesn't: the smartctl command reports Load_Cycle_Count of 5680
after a few weeks of operation--about one spinup per hour.  (By comparison,
the other drives in the array have a cycle count around 350 since purchase.)

Why does this matter--because head-loading is hard on drives and not
particularly "green".  One drive has already failed.

Googling for a resolution on this the only answer I can find is to turn off
the standby parameter...i.e. leave my "green" drives (that I only use for
brief periods a couple times a week) spun up eating 10 watts each 24/7.

I'm posting this to either (a) get suggestions on fixing this, or (b) to warn
others away from buying this model of drive if you're buying it based on the
"green" marketing blurb.

I bought another "green" device this week:  a D-Link 24-port gigE switch. None
of its marketing tells you how much electricity it burns at idle.  My
measurement:  7 watts.  Nice, aside from the vaguely annoying cooling fan.

-rich