Critical Design Flaw Found in WD Caviar Green HDDs

Regeneration · 21 Apr 2011 at 18:46

Western Digital Comments on Caviar Green Critical Design Flaw Article

Garido · 21 Apr 2011 at 19:00

panyan said:
why would WD confirm the issue and release the bios utility to edit the settings if it wasnt true?

I agree with you entirely. If there wasn't a flaw, there wouldn't be a fix so to speak. While updates are common this seems more than an update to me.

CaptainCrash · 21 Apr 2011 at 19:05

Regeneration said:
Western Digital Comments on Caviar Green Critical Design Flaw Article

I don't see where he claims that the load cycling issue *only* appears on RAID configs, as you stated above...? :confused:

Razor-BladE · 21 Apr 2011 at 19:30

Hmmm, not directly.. but..

"What you have described as a “critical design flaw” in a recent article is rather a misuse of a drive, which was not designed for the referenced system type.....

The systems in which you are referencing that are reporting the issue has not been modified appropriately, and for these systems, the Idle 3 feature should be turned off.....

The WD Caviar Green drives are not recommended for and are not warranted for use in RAID environments..."

Perhaps? Idk..

Regeneration · 21 Apr 2011 at 19:46

CaptainCrash said:
I don't see where he claims that the load cycling issue *only* appears on RAID configs, as you stated above...?

"misuse of a drive, which was not designed for the referenced system type".

Regeneration · 21 Apr 2011 at 19:51

Razor-BladE said:
Nope. WD Black for my OS, apps and games, and Green for storage. Windows 7 x64 Ultimate.

You do realize in the current ratio (154,769 / 4393 is 35.2 cycles per hour), your WD15EARS is going to die in six or seven months (300,000 cycles).

Razor-BladE · 21 Apr 2011 at 20:04

Haha. Only if I hadn't already switched off Intellipark

Atom · 21 Apr 2011 at 20:11

It doesn't say they will fall after 300,000 cycles and warranty isn't affected by load count.

Old news and I don't see what the problem is.

sirlemonhead · 21 Apr 2011 at 20:26

I've had a 10EACS for about 2 years or more now, and my Load Cycle count is apparently only 2721 :\

s innes · 22 Apr 2011 at 04:46

just bought 2 of the WD20EARS drives a couple of weeks ago

both drives manafested faults within a couple of days

got 2 replacement drives one is now dead and the other is showing as faulty

the drives were not purchased from here (should have just paid the extra couple of quid)

i'm now waiting for the company that sold me them to give me an rma so i can send em back for a refund

to be honest i might have just been unlucky

but when i get my money back i wont buy these drives again

dan653 · 22 Apr 2011 at 09:24

definitely something up here...

1tb Green Power 20,000hrs uptime...

2tb Green Power in software Raid5 2,000hrs uptime...

...all three are roughly the same

Yet to have any of about 20 green power drives I bought over the last three years fail though, only one doa.

Bigpops · 22 Apr 2011 at 10:42

I don't like the sound of this. One of mine (1TB EADS Caviar green) has been running for 1.7 years, and the load count cycle is a whopping 380841! I have a 2TB one (EARS) that's been on for 48 days, and it's up to 5000 cycles already.

Both of these are in a machine running Ubuntu server.

I read they were only good for 300,000 cycles, so what's that about? I don't want it failing. Maybe I should buy another disk to back it up onto, then if it does fail, get a warranty replacement.

One thing's for sure, I'm turning idle3 off on both my disks.

DragonQ · 22 Apr 2011 at 10:47

Hmm the drive I've had a month is on 3344. Guess I'll be running this tool when I get home.

chippy08 · 22 Apr 2011 at 11:31

Apprently when it reaches 300,000 cycles it will fail funny there no mention of this problem before you buy these drives.

exia · 22 Apr 2011 at 12:33

chippy08 said:
Apprently when it reaches 300,000 cycles it will fail

Where did you read that?

As quoted from the article, as I doubt many here are actually reading it before posting:

Daniel Mauerhofer, Head of EMEA PR in Western Digital has commented on this article. "This issue is far from critical, does not impair normal functionality or place data at risk, can be mitigated with a utility for the small percentage of systems affected, and is a well understood industry standard."

panyan · 22 Apr 2011 at 12:50

what drive would you guys suggest to replace my wd20ears at around the same price?

wonko · 22 Apr 2011 at 14:27

I tend to believe WD on the (non) criticality of this one and can't really understand the panic as there don't seem to be mass reports of failures (whether from a high LCC or otherwise). They are still good drives, and if the application doesn't suit the default idle3 timer setting then it can be changed.

FWIW, I've bought quite a few of the WD EACS/EADS/EARS models over the years, and they are my preferred storage drive. A couple have clocked up an LCC above 300K and they are working fine, no explosions or anything. I'm not quite sure when / why this happened but have used WDIDLE3 successfully to set the timer to 300 seconds. It would be interesting to know how high the LCC count would need to be before it started to be a significant reliability issue.

Emlyn_Dewar · 22 Apr 2011 at 14:42

I've had my 1tb Green for about 2 years now, it's sees usage every day and it's not missed a beat.
I'll easy accept the "critical design flaw", been going alright so far.

DragonQ · 25 Apr 2011 at 10:49

I ran the tool as suggested and it seemed to work but the verification step ("wdidle3 /R") didn't work (I got Abort/Retry/Ignore after a few minutes of nothing) so I don't actually know if it worked or not.

wonko · 25 Apr 2011 at 11:32

DragonQ said:
I ran the tool as suggested and it seemed to work but the verification step ("wdidle3 /R") didn't work (I got Abort/Retry/Ignore after a few minutes of nothing) so I don't actually know if it worked or not.

What version of dos and wdidle3 are you using? It sounds like the tool isn't running properly for some reason.