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I've powered off laptop and switched rotary hdd for another yesterday. BIOS was run immediately after pressing power on button. Probably reason was that BIOS boot has changed (!) from legacy to EFI. Is it because of low BIOS battery voltage ? It's old.
No apparent problem in smartctl with one exception:
That load cycle count looks like it's from one of those infamous Western Digital "Green" drives. They had a default of unloading the heads after just 8 seconds of inactivity. This can easily lead to 500 or more load/unload cycles per day, causing that counter to reach its rated maximum in under 2 years. You can look on the web for a program called WDIDLE3, which allows you to adjust or eliminate that timeout, but this drive is already well beyond its rated 300000 limit.
That load cycle count looks like it's from one of those infamous Western Digital "Green" drives. They had a default of unloading the heads after just 8 seconds of inactivity. This can easily lead to 500 or more load/unload cycles per day, causing that counter to reach its rated maximum in under 2 years. You can look on the web for a program called WDIDLE3, which allows you to adjust or eliminate that timeout, but this drive is already well beyond its rated 300000 limit.
Yes it's power saving mode. I'm using hdparm command to disable it. Unfortunately it does not work for external hdd (connected to usb port). Does please WDIDLE3 work in this case ?
I consider this hdd can die anytime so I make backups.
I hope there is no more similar surprise waiting for me when using pc / laptop.
Will WDIDLE3 work on a USB-connected drive? That depends on the interface chip in the enclosure. Only way to know is to try. An alternative is to remove the drive temporarily from the enclosure and connect it directly to a PC. You only have to run WDIDLE3 once -- the setting is sticky in the drive.
According to the folks at WD, that 300,000 limit just comes from "That's how many cycles we test for." The actual limit and wearout mechanism is not known.
Will WDIDLE3 work on a USB-connected drive? That depends on the interface chip in the enclosure. Only way to know is to try. An alternative is to remove the drive temporarily from the enclosure and connect it directly to a PC. You only have to run WDIDLE3 once -- the setting is sticky in the drive.
According to the folks at WD, that 300,000 limit just comes from "That's how many cycles we test for." The actual limit and wearout mechanism is not known.
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