how do I determine Load Cycle Counts

backtothefuture · 25 Apr 2011 at 13:20

How do I determine the LCC of my hard drives?

Currently got a couple of WD Greens and their apparent high LCC seem to be all over the internet...just want to take stock of where mine are at!

thanks

Craig321 · 25 Apr 2011 at 14:00

Any SMART reader.

HD Tune (not sure if the free version will do it), Speedfan, AIDA

backtothefuture · 25 Apr 2011 at 16:15

ok actually looks like my NAS has the option..

I clicked on the S.M.A.R.T. info tab for each HDD and under RAW data it shows LCC as 11,917 for the 1st HDD and 12,126 for the second HDD...

both are approx 10 days old and both are 2TB WD20EARs

!!!

Destination · 25 Apr 2011 at 18:22

Suggest maybe use the patch business. 12K on off cycles can't be good for anything electrical in 10 days.

Dinkas · 25 Apr 2011 at 18:47

I had this problem with a WD Green 1TB EARS HDD. I noticed almost immediately that it was spinning down after only 8 seconds of being idle. I checked the LCC and sure enough it was higher after 1 day than a 3yrs old WD HDD in the same computer.

I downloaded wdidle3.exe from WD and disabled this "feature" and let Windows decide when it's OK to power down the drive to save power.

You might want to use wdidle3 and set the timeout to something more reasonable for use in a NAS: http://forum.synology.com/enu/viewtopic.php?f=124&t=20907

panyan · 26 Apr 2011 at 00:08

backtothefuture said:
11,917 for the 1st HDD and 12,126 for the second HDD...

both are approx 10 days old and both are 2TB WD20EARs

errr, isnt the safe limit 300,000 for those drives?

at this rate, your drives will die by the end of May :eek:

(at least they will see the Royal Wedding

)

exia · 26 Apr 2011 at 00:13

Contrary to popular belief, at 300,000 LCC the drive will not suddenly blow up.

Follow the steps here to adjust the timer.

backtothefuture · 26 Apr 2011 at 04:28

thanks for the above link, saved me a great deal of hassle (spent much of yesterday evening trying to create a bootable USB, CD etc but couldn't get WDIDLE3 on it!)

just ran the utilitiy and it said that 'idle3 timer enabled and set to 5.0 minutes'

however the last message displayed on the screen was VSCSENDKEY CMD ERROR ....

not sure what the above means

is it safe to say that the timer is enabled?

EDIT: the guide above states to set SATA mode to IDE under Bios, however I don't have that option. My SATA ports are listed under IDE devices and the only option is to enable or disable the ports. Have an Asus A8N Sli Deluxe nForce4 mobo.

Dinkas · 26 Apr 2011 at 21:57

Use wdidle3 with the /r switch to report what settings the drives are currently using.

Code:

wdidle3.exe /r