Ultimate Boot CD with WDIDLE3 Util included.Home article
boxPublished by zab on December 19th, 2010 in programming, nas,
linux, howto One thing thats annoying at my selfmade nas is, that
the harddisk driveskeep park thier heads. Any recent hdds do this
to save power, and somesystems even have motion detectors, that
will park the head atforthcoming crashes, to prevent damage.The
manufacturer set this value very low. In my notebook, my hdd
clicksevery 2-5 seconds, if there is no disk usage.As a matter of
facts, you can see in detail here (below), that one of my
drivesalready parked its head 11.040 times in 283hours. Since the
hdd isdesigned to do about 300.000 parking processes, you would
reach thelimit in a few months.WD offers a tool (WDIDLE3.exe) to
increase the idle value till the headparks, or you can completely
disable it. The bad, this tool only worksunder dos.Ultimate Boot CD
(UBCD) is a set of systemtools for partitioning yourharddisks,
check mainmemory and get information about your system. It'salso a
FreeDos live disk.So, I've made a custom iso image of the recent
UBCD with the WDIDLE3from WD included.UBCD v503 with wdidle v1.05
(~301mb) $ md5sum ubcd503custom.iso
73580cad670e4aa83d9014311e105361 ubcd503custom.iso
The Usage:Boot up freedos, at the first prompt, choose:->
UBCD FreeDos R1.39 After the bootup, a screen with 3 options pops
up, here you pick and then enter the following: -> BROWSE
(Volkov Commander)# T:# cd ubcd\dosapps\wdidle3# wdidle3.exe /dThis
will disable all parking and the click noise on all attached WD
drives on your system. This worked with my greenpower WD15EARS,
even if the homepage states, the drive won't be supported.To exit
the UCBD and reboot, enter:-> Press F10-> in the menu with 4
choices, pick "Exit", then type:# rebootA successful output looks
like this:WDILDE3 Version 1.05Copyright (C) 2005-2009 Western
Digital Corp.Configure Idle3.Model: WDC WD15EARS-00Z5B1Serial:
WD-WMAVU2721167idle3 Timer is disabled.
S.M.A.R.T output:before:[root@neon /home/xen]# smartctl -a
/dev/ada1Device Model: WDC WD15EARS-00Z5B1 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032
100 100 000 Old_age Always - 283193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 197 197
000 Old_age Always - 11040afterwards:[root@neon /home/xen]#
smartctl -a /dev/ada1Device Model: WDC WD15EARS-00Z5B1 9
Power_On_Hours 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 296193
Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 197 197 000 Old_age Always - 11040
The syntax and options for the WDIDLE3.exe are:WDILDE3 Version
1.05Copyright (C) 2005-2009 Western Digital Corp.Configure
Idle3.
Syntax:WDIDLE3 [/S[]] [/D] [/R] [/?]where:/S[] Set timer, units
in seconds. Default=8.0 (8.0 seconds). Resolution is 0.1 seconds
from 0.1 to 12.7 seconds. Resolution is 30 seconds from 30 seconds
to 300 seconds. Note, times between 12.8 and 30 seconds will be set
to 30 seconds./D Disable timer./R Report current timer./? This help
info.
Screenshot:
Selfmade NAS: Intel D510MO DualCore Atom as silent Storage
Server up Add new commentIsildur1 (not verified) on July 03rd
2011that's just great mate, I had a lot of trouble to use it and I
htought it might not be work with my WD20EARS, I made a big
mistake, I clicked through the wdidle3.exe in volkov commander and
started wdidle3.exethen it came up with the message "the timer is
set to 8 seconds", after that I tried to use "wdidle3.exe /d" and
it didn't work, I later realised it was wrong and had to use it
like you wrote in your descreptionthanks for all this m8gl replyzab
on July 06th 2011You're welcome. Good to hear it worked out for
you, even if it was a bit of a hassle. replyJohn (not verified) on
May 08th 2011Thank you - this was very helpful replyMick (not
verified) on May 01st 2011Thank you!Can I use this image for
Western Digital WD5000AADS Caviar Green? replyzab on May 05th
2011hi!Sorry for my late reply.It should work with your device
already (it does with most current WD hdds), and since WD didn't
update the WDIDLE utility since Okt. 2010, i couldn't even do a new
image. Did you try this one?! I think it'll work, .. replyMick (not
verified) on May 06th 2011Yes! Its really works, thank you again.
=) replySearinox (not verified) on August 28th 2011Another AADS
user here.I was randomly playing around looking at drive parameters
in SpeedFan out of boredom when I decided to click in-depth
analisys on my WD6400AADS acquired 9 months ago. I was already used
to a power-on hours warning since my computer runs around the clock
hardly ever stopping but googled the Load Cycle Count just for the
heck of it.I was alarmed to find out about this known WD Green
problem and how it meant the drive had used up little over 1/3 its
rated parking wear in such a short time! It was already at 112000+
cycles out of the rated 300000 on the manufacturer's specs page. I
immediately decided to act.I downloaded the ISO you have provided
here and after checking the tool's MD5 against the website's one
and finding it uncorrupted on the DVD(can never be too sure and
must exercise and proceed with maximum caution with this kind of
thing) I then booted DOS.My experience was a bit scarier. Upon
running wdidle3 /r to check if the drive was indeed set to 8
seconds, DOS froze. But here's the thing - it froze AFTER the tool
finished and the "Norton Commander-like" app tried re-loading,
indicating that the tool itself had successfully finished running.
I then restarted and did the actual /d switch, disabling the timer
with success. DOS again froze.I came back in Windows and everything
was absolutely fine. During the time I took prepping for the write
then reebooting, the drive's cycles went up to 116511, a full 4k in
some 30 minutes! I am honestly spooked to see how quickly this
thing was aging!Thanks to the tool and your provided download
package facilitating everything(I've not used DOS in a while, let
alone Linux-based software) my cycles are now going up by exactly 0
unless I power on/off the machine(I had idle drive poweroff
disabled for years now, I don't like hearing that spinup sound and
waiting when I re-access an idle HDD).I was scared since I have
another 3 drives in the computer - a WD800JB(80GB), a 320GB model
and a 160GB Maxtor - but the tool didn't damage anything. As I
understand it the tool doesn't even touch IDE/ATA drives(which is
what my 80GB and 160GB drives are).I don't have to be worried about
the head now crashing in the event of a power failure I hope right?
My 320GB already had it idle3 timer disabled and never suffered
from a power failure. And this is just "idle3" state timer, not a
global setting for ALL head states, right? replyzab on August 29th
2011hiya mate!That's strange, it never froze my system here. But as
long as it worked, it should be okay.If a harddisk's power is
interrupted and the heads are still loaded, the heads still park
without damaging the disk, called emergency unload. They can
because of the momentum they have and the air pad under the heads.
The manufacuters also have a minimum specification here that is
usually around 20,000. But however, that would be no difference if
your drive had the idle timer on or off, cause they don't matter in
that case.The SMART attributes lists a couple of information about
the device. There is also a "Power-Cycle Count" (only lists power
on/off state), which should now raise in common with your
"Load-Cycle Count" (lists all states of the head, i.e. emergency
off, idle off, ..). replyMatt (not verified) on February 09th
2011Thanks for this. Though when I get into Volkov Commander I'm
having trouble finding wdidle3. It isn't under T: or any of the
drives I have listed. Any idea what I may be doing wrong? replyzab
on February 09th 2011I've no clue. I've just downloaded the image
to verify that i haven't upped the wrong one ;)All i can tell you,
is, that the path to the wdilde3 file is 'ubcd/dosapps/WDIDLE3'.
Maybe the DeviceLetters differ at your system, even if my
understanding is, that T: stands for the Disc unter FreeDOS (see
the screenshot for a working example):Here, inside the
ubcd503custom.iso, you'll find the file: xen@ wl600
/Volumes/UBCD503/ubcd/dosapps/WDIDLE3 501 $ lswdidle3.exeYou can
open and verify that it's really there with any image tool.Sorry,
that i couldn't help you more. :/ replyMatt (not verified) on
February 10th 2011Thanks for your help. I still don't know what my
issue is, but I was able to get wdidle3 to work. My problem now is
that I can run wdidle3 /r, but wdidle3 /d gives me an error about
being write protected. Now it says this for a:\ which is my boot
cd, but when I try to switch over to the hard drive letter before
loading wdidle3 I can't because its on the cd. It is detected the
hard drive fine though it seems.Any thoughts? Sorry for all the
questions, but this is the only place I've got any sort of
feedback. replyzab on February 10th 2011No Problem, I'm happy to
help.You don't have to change to your hard disk, maybe it's better
to leave it untouched, so that it is not mounted. i don't know, if
there is any difference between an actually used device (mounted),
or not. I don't think so anyways.I've googled a bit, since that
never happend to me, and found a link.Here is a guy telling, that
you can set the timer also with wdidle3.exe /s 300 to 300 second
timeout. I guess, that will be more than enough. You can verify it
with wdidle3.exe /r.Quote: 6. Once in MS-DOS, type "wdidle3.exe"
without the quotes and press enter. The wdidle3.exe utility should
run. From there, you can use the following commands:
wdidle3.exe /r-this will provide you info on the drive including
the current timeout. Factory default is 8 seconds.
wdidle3.exe /s 300-this will change the autopark timer to 300
seconds (5 minutes) which is the maximum allowed.
You can also do another wdidle3.exe /r after you make the change
to see that the drive has accepted the new timer.
**DO NOT USE** the wdidle3.exe /d command. This turns the timer
off however many people have reported that the drives eventually
slow down to a crawl and/or generate errors using this command. The
best is to change the timer to 300 seconds.
Once done, shut your PC off and repeat step-6 for each WD Green
drive 4K drive. replyMatt (not verified) on February 10th 2011It's
not the command. Even "wdidle3 /s300" gives me the write protection
error too. I'm wondering though if I follow the USB stick
guidelines instead of CD that will help me deal with any problems.
replyzab on February 10th 2011Ah, i didn't get that, sorry.The only
thing that occurs to me is, that some BIOSes, commonly in
notebooks, have a write protection mode for locking the disk if the
device is stolen/lost. That works over some mechanism in the hdd
firmware.Maybe you have some option there to turn it off?Here is
some more info.You could also check for a jumper on the back of
your disc, maybe there is something.And as a general
recommendation, copy and paste the whole error message into google,
maybe that gives you some help. Thats, what i would do, after
looking into the bios. replyJean-Luc (not verified) on December
29th 2010Thank you very much for this image. I had tried to create
one myself following the customization instruction on the Ultimate
Bood CD site but without success. This will be very useful :)
replyzab on January 01st 2011You're Welcome. At least, my upload
wasn't pointless now. I've added a checksum, and because of i've
got a third WD EARS 1,5TB for my nas, i adjusted the steps a bit at
the walkthrough. My memory wasn't perfectly accurate with the steps
of hitting the keys ;) replyAboutI'm from Germany,
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