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StableBit and Western Digital Load Cycle Count


GreenApple

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Hello,

I formatted my drives and moved them from a Windows Home Server v1 to Windows 8.1 running DrivePool and StableBit.

Soon after the moves, I received a SMART warning from StableBit for a high load cycle count.  I received the same warning for another drive today and decided to look a little deeper.

I have one Drive a WD 2TB (EARS) that is 3 years and 10 days old (per StableBit).  It was installed in WHS v1 for 33 months accumulated approximately 280,000 load cycle count.  In just under four (4) months in the new system I've accumulated approximately 140,000 load cycles.

 

I another drive that I installed new in the pool when I built the system and I've accumulated 143,000 load cycles in 103 days (WD 3TB Green (EZRX)).  I have also accumulated approximately 140,000 load cycles on a third WD 2TB (EARS) that is 1 years and 337 days old.  In summary all three WD drives have accumulated the same number of load cycles in just under four months.

 

I know that the WD Green drives have been criticized for the Load Cycle Count but the rate has increased significantly since I built the new system.  Both systems are left operating continuously and the load cycle accumulation rate is just over four times greater since moving to Windows 8.1.  It has increased from approximately 8500 per month to 35,000 per month.

I know that with StableBit at default values creates a lot of disk activity based on the observation of the hard drive LED light.  If I throttle SMART queries, the activity light remains off for longer intervals based on the setting.

 

Has anyone experienced this with StableBit and are there any settings I could/should change in StableBit?

 

I know there are some WD Green firmware flash options but I am cautious when updating firmware.  I will plan drive removals from the pool and replacements probably with WD Red but I wanted to check in the Forum Community for any other advice or observations.

I found two related posts in this forum and I included the links below.

http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/363-sb-scanner-smart-warning-high-load-cycle-count/?hl=%2Bload+%2Bcycle+%2Bcount

http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/284-scanner-seems-to-be-continually-pinging-drives/?hl=light

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I had 2 WD Greens that threw high LCC smart errors,  One died a horrible death (after watching it for 2 months), and I decommissioned the other (it was too risky as it had quite a bit of un-duplicated data on it).  Personally I would watch them very closely, but plan to replace them. That jump seems very high to me.. (8 to 35K)

 

PS: You may want to edit your post... "..lots of di** activity.." :D

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LCC .... argh.

 

Basically, if it's a WD green drive, and you haven't run wdidle3 on it, it's almost safe to ignore.

 

That, or definitely throttle the SMART queries for Scanner, to help prevent the rapid climb.

 

But anywhere between 300k and 600k is "normal" from what I've seen.

 

 

And you're right, avoiding flashing firmware is a good idea. The wdidle3 utility actually warns you about that, and to make sure there is no data on the drive (or that it's backed up already).

That, and I think the RED drives will be better anyways.

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