GreenPower disk drives - ironic and false

[Tom Metro]

Rich Braun wrote:
> 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.)

On my WD "green" drives that have essentially sat idle for the past 3 or 
4 weeks aside from some burn-in tests, I see:

Load_Cycle_Count ...       4380
Load_Cycle_Count ...       4442

So not as frequent of cycling as you observed, probably because the 
drives haven't been doing anything for most of that time.

My Seagate drives don't seem to report a Load_Cycle_Count attribute, so 
I can't compare.


> Why does this matter--because head-loading is hard on drives...  One
> drive has already failed.

Who's to say the failure wasn't coincidental. You'd think a drive 
designed to do this would have the mechanics to handle it.


> Googling for a resolution on this the only answer I can find is to
> turn off the standby parameter...
> 
> I'm posting this to either (a) get suggestions on fixing this...

Ran across any better solutions?

  -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/