WD GPs are dying? Really?

Silencing hard drives, optical drives and other storage devices

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whiic
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Post by whiic » Mon May 11, 2009 7:21 am

WD GP #1: 557937 cycles.
WD GP #2: 351112 cycles.
WD GP #3: hidden thanks to nerd rage

They were caused by SpeedFan, mostly, and 24/7 low-I/O fileserving. A horrible environment to use them in, NOT comparable to idling XP.

Then I reconfigured SpeedFan and the unload rate has divided to a small fraction of original. No problems with any of the GPs. Samsungs are giving me a harder time at the moment:
- my P4 system running Samsung laptop drive corrupted essential DLLs and OS suddenly became unbootable and unrepairable forcing me to restore a clean OS image.
- my F1 which is OS drive on my Quad core build failed offline data collection and extended SMART self-test.
- occasionally I'm starting to have bluescreening while booting that Quad core system.
- one other F1 vibrated too much to use in this computer, it seems to be OK otherwise.
- and F2 5400rpm has odd slow sectors right from the package.

So, I really am not worried about my WDs. Well, not more than any other HDD I use. They all die eventually but I see no reason why GPs would die younger. Nor should I probably be too worried about Samsungs. P4 system has loose SATA connectors on mobo and the cables have get detached by themselves before. Some electrical outage might have occured in middle of writing a sector, causing that single uncorrectable sector to for on my OS F1 on Quad core system. Also, I repeatedly get this eraseme***.exe troyan resurrected and spotted by AVG antivirus but not it, not Spybot S&D, nor a couple of other antivirs can find the actual troyan that keeps resurrecting the eraseme***.exe

So yeah, a bit of rationalizing and the Samsungs themselves don't appear to look too flaky either. I probably have to reinstall to get rid of the troyan. And I'll probably try 64-bit XP instead of this 32-bit. This troyan gives me a good excuse to act like a nerd and go through the trouble of installing a new OS.

zds
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Post by zds » Sun Jun 14, 2009 12:51 pm

whiic wrote: Why make HDDs for them dipshits who don't care about environment (= Linux users)? Sorry for the flaming but you're really asking for it. You claim Linux was not intended for desktop/laptop and only for server. So be it. Why should desktop and laptop HDDs be optimized for server OS then? It doesn't make any sense.
Because this kind of low-power high-capacity drives are best used in places where you need lot of storage space but not the very ultimate speed. Ie. in home media servers.

The another option for them are different kind of integrated media storage devices, like set top boxes with HDD storage.

In both of these *nix is what makes most sense to run, and that's what people are also doing. Almost any NAS box, intelligent set top box or dvd recorder runs some *nix-variant.

Seagate, in fact, has acknowledged this and even market their low power drives for all kinds of media storage server applications.

And back to WD GP: If WD would provide us a way to disable the parking, or lengthen the threshold time, I would be perfectly happy with it. The unfortunate truth is there is no way to fix this issue for WD10EACS drive. Even with the wdidle3.exe you can't turn off the parkings, and WD does not provide any firmware upgrade to fix it either.

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Post by Ksanderash » Sun Jun 14, 2009 1:39 pm

Found a WD Support answer (the author is unknown):

"Unfortunately The WDIdle Utility is no longer available from Western Digital. The problem here is that WDidle is a tool which was developed for older drives but still works on some new drives. It was not designed for this and so the outcome can be unpredictable, hence we do not support it. It can be found throughout the Internet but is no longer distributed by WD. By using WDIdle your drive's firmware is altered and the warranty will be voided. The reason why this feature (IntelliPark) was created and placed on the drives, was in order to lower power consumption in order to be more eco-friendly. The unit will not encounter a sudden death due to this feature."

...

I also have intercepted such talks in the same conference (summarized and translated to English by me):

There is no a "magic" vendor-specific ATA command that tells the drive either do the park, or do not, and he remembers all that. It happens in a more complicated way. The WDIDLE is sending a standard command of the overwrite a firmware module over the original, sends the module body, and a compatible drive becomes successfully patched. But these modules quite differs from model to model, so the WDIDLE utility can't overwrite the module correctly, cause there is simply an incompatible module inside! That means that you can damage your original module with non-working code. And that's why WD has finished the support of this utility. Now it is available (WDIDLE3 v1.03) only for the strict number of drives: WD RE2-GP WD1000FYPS-01ZKB0, WD7500AYPS-01ZKB0, and WD7501AYPS-01ZKB0 with the updated firmware.

...

It looks like vague rumours? Yeah, they actually are. Only WD knows what is going on indead, and we can only do more or less appropriate guesses :)

kal001
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Post by kal001 » Thu Jun 18, 2009 12:48 am

whiic wrote:WD GreenPower vs. Linux flame...
I have read this thread completely and I see you missed the point. Let me ask one simple question?

What is the purpose of parking drive heads each 8s even if great OS Windows, the only environment WD is considering, DO NOT ALLOW them to park?

OK. Whe have a feature, that Windows can't benefit from a other environments causes dramatically increase load_cycle_count. But that's not all. In addition Western Digital cripple it SMART to not show the real number of load_cycle_count. I have bought some WD GreePower 6400AACS drives and the parking activity approximately each 10s was evident. But load_cycle_count was only 2+ power_cycle_count (approximately time I powered up the PC). The only thing WD was able to do was to LIE its customers.

I found wdidle3.exe utility somewhere on the web and change the parking timer to 25s, gues what...? 10s click-click disappeared. :!:

After that, It is evident I was really "fucked up" by Western Digital and I will consider very deeply buying another GreenPower drive or maybe WD drive at all. :(

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Post by Vicotnik » Thu Jun 18, 2009 3:52 am

kal001 wrote:What is the purpose of parking drive heads each 8s even if great OS Windows, the only environment WD is considering, DO NOT ALLOW them to park?
Windows do allow them to park. Maybe not if you use the WD GP as a system drive, but as a storage drive I find the unloading a great feature.

I put most of the blame on the user. Don't use the WD GP in a environment where it will park the heads a lot - if the load/unload offends you in some way. How hard can it be, really? :)

I have six of these drives. They are very nice imho. I love the low power consumption and low noise. Unloading the heads gives me a slight decrease in idle power consumption. Great.

If you are disappointed because the WD GP behaves more like a 2.5" HDD than a 3.5" HDD, that sucks. But maybe you should have done a little more research? Educating yourself before making a purchase is always good.

kal001
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Post by kal001 » Thu Jun 18, 2009 5:20 am

Vicotnik wrote: Windows do allow them to park. Maybe not if you use the WD GP as a system drive, but as a storage drive I find the unloading a great feature.
Yes, thats true. But tell me, how can drive firmware know, when is a good time to park the heads? Drive itself has no idea of tasks done in operating system environment. It is far away better let the OS decide, when the drive will be useless and park it or make it sleep.
I put most of the blame on the user. Don't use the WD GP in a environment where it will park the heads a lot - if the load/unload offends you in some way. How hard can it be, really? :)
You can't blame user. This parking issue is the problem of firmware. And there is no information provided by WD about this, whether you call it "the bug" or "the feature"... Not many customers read forums like this one to discover this "feature" before purchase.
I have six of these drives. They are very nice imho. I love the low power consumption and low noise. Unloading the heads gives me a slight decrease in idle power consumption. Great.
As u mentioned above, parking heads has a sense at non-system drives. Why do you need a label "greenpower" on your HDD to power down every drive you don't need? I dont need a GP drive for that.
If you are disappointed because the WD GP behaves more like a 2.5" HDD than a 3.5" HDD, that sucks. But maybe you should have done a little more research? Educating yourself before making a purchase is always good.
Oh yeah. That is exactly what I have done. But one thing I could not imagine: that WD would be so insiduous crippling SMART information by lies!

Because this topic is not spoken very often. and you can find really different information I decided to buy one drive to test that. Checking the load_cycle_count was OK and everything worked fine, another week I bought more of GP. The fact, SMART table is fake, i discovered lately. :(

zds
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Post by zds » Thu Jun 18, 2009 12:05 pm

kal001 wrote: What is the purpose of parking drive heads each 8s even if great OS Windows, the only environment WD is considering, DO NOT ALLOW them to park?
This might be true for system drives, but for a drive used solely for storage and without indexing enabled it might not be.

This is the only real "point" I find for the whole functionality here. I'm glad other manufacturers providing us quiet drives have decided to drop this altogether.

kal001
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Post by kal001 » Thu Jun 18, 2009 12:59 pm

zds wrote:I'm glad other manufacturers providing us quiet drives have decided to drop this altogether.
Yes. Thats why I'm considering Samsung F2 EcoGreen, Seagate LP, or even Seagate 7200.12 - which is 7200 rpm drive, but slow, quiet and energy efficient - like 5400rpm HDD, but with high STR.

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Post by Vicotnik » Thu Jun 18, 2009 1:18 pm

kal001 wrote:Yes, thats true. But tell me, how can drive firmware know, when is a good time to park the heads? Drive itself has no idea of tasks done in operating system environment. It is far away better let the OS decide, when the drive will be useless and park it or make it sleep.
After some time of inactivity it's reasonable to assume that the drive is idle. What's the big deal? Unloading of the heads is not something the OS can do on it's own. If it could then great, but for now that's a feature controlled by the drive itself. Not all drives can unload its heads during operation.
kal001 wrote:You can't blame user. This parking issue is the problem of firmware. And there is no information provided by WD about this, whether you call it "the bug" or "the feature"... Not many customers read forums like this one to discover this "feature" before purchase.
But is it really an issue? The drives aren't dying. The only "issue" here is paranoia and people getting annoyed by the sound of the unloading heads. Perhaps it's a stuttering issue as well as it takes a little while for the heads to load once they're unloaded.

If the feature/issue isn't causing any real problems (ie dead drives) then what's the problem?
kal001 wrote:As u mentioned above, parking heads has a sense at non-system drives. Why do you need a label "greenpower" on your HDD to power down every drive you don't need? I dont need a GP drive for that.
I don't understand. What has the label to do with anything? Are you saying that good old spin down is good enough? Sure, I can see why you might feel that way. But please understand that not all share your opinion. I prefer unloading heads since drives takes forever to spin up and that feature is flaky at best in my experience.
kal001 wrote:Oh yeah. That is exactly what I have done. But one thing I could not imagine: that WD would be so insiduous crippling SMART information by lies!

Because this topic is not spoken very often. and you can find really different information I decided to buy one drive to test that. Checking the load_cycle_count was OK and everything worked fine, another week I bought more of GP. The fact, SMART table is fake, i discovered lately. :(
Sure. WD isn't a saint. They are masking the unload count, probably in an effort to minimize the paranoia of the users. If it isn't a "real" issue (dead drives) then why scare people. I don't agree with what they are doing but I can understand why they are doing it. Many manufacturers do similar stuff to avoid "unnecessary" support calls.

It's also the issue of WD basicly calling these drives 7200RPM drives when they clearly are 5400RPM drives. I don't understand that at all since to me 5400RPM is actually a good thing for these drives. But WDs marketing department is like most other marketing departments I guess. Not much to get worked up about imho. We have reliable data from other sources (SPCR for example) and we don't really need to rely on any biased manufacturer bs.

kal001
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Post by kal001 » Thu Jun 18, 2009 1:49 pm

Vicotnik wrote:But is it really an issue? The drives aren't dying. The only "issue" here is paranoia and people getting annoyed by the sound of the unloading heads. If the feature/issue isn't causing any real problems (ie dead drives) then what's the problem?
Manufaturer guarantee 300 000 loads/unloads (not sure about the number, but that is not important). With this beautiful feature, I can get this number during few month? Then what? Drive can work, drive can die. nobody knows. But, what if the drive dies for another reason? Exceeded number of load_cycle_count indicates unusual usage of the product and what about sales return after that? (this differs according country you live).

Why should I sit and wait watching the drive doing something it's manufaturer (WD) calls undesirable = WD claims functionality with load_cycle_count under 300 000. :wink:
But please understand that not all share your opinion. I prefer unloading heads since drives takes forever to spin up and that feature is flaky at best in my experience.
Agreed :wink:
Sure. WD isn't a saint. They are masking the unload count, probably in an effort to minimize the paranoia of the users. If it isn't a "real" issue (dead drives) then why scare people. I don't agree with what they are doing but I can understand why they are doing it. Many manufacturers do similar stuff to avoid "unnecessary" support calls.
I don't think typical Linux user is like average US customer, who has to have 20 page how-to for everything and spam customer support with simple questions he can solve solely reading technical specs (but there is nothing about unload timer). If this issue had showed in Windows, I would have understood. But this is real camouflage targeted against experienced users (minority of users). My right to choose best solution was stolen.

What is the outcome? I bought some drives I did not want to. WD is happy, he got his money. This is the worst thing, not the parameters of the drive, no matter what kind the are...

PS: solution: I sold these drives.
Last edited by kal001 on Thu Jun 18, 2009 1:52 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Post by nutball » Thu Jun 18, 2009 11:22 pm

kal001 wrote:Manufaturer guarantee 300 000 loads/unloads (not sure about the number, but that is not important). With this beautiful feature, I can get this number during few month? Then what? Drive can work, drive can die. nobody knows.
WD knows.

Thing is folks seem to be assuming that what's happening when the GP heads park is a "head load/unload cycle". They assume this because a) that's what the SMART values indicated (before the firmware update), and b) that's how laptop drives work.

Very few seem to be willing to entertain the idea had what's happens on GP drives *isn't* like a head load/unload on other drives.

kal001
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Post by kal001 » Thu Jun 18, 2009 11:45 pm

nutball wrote:WD knows.
I don't care about that.

- Reaching 300 000 could be dangerous - according to WD.
- Using WDidle3 voids warranty - acording to WD
- In addition, that DOS nonsense is usable only on x86 but server architecture si often different.

I think this Linux kernel mailing list is very descriptive (usability of this "feature", WD approach to "unsolve" this problem, etc...)

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Post by LodeHacker » Thu Jun 18, 2009 11:51 pm

kal001 wrote:
nutball wrote:WD knows.
I don't care about that.

- Reaching 300 000 could be dangerous - according to WD.
- Using WDidle3 voids warranty - acording to WD
- In addition, that DOS nonsense is usable only on x86 but server architecture si often different.

I think this Linux kernel mailing list is very descriptive (usability of this "feature", WD approach to "unsolve" this problem, etc...)
In other words it is easier to boycott than fix, or what are you trying to say?

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Post by nutball » Fri Jun 19, 2009 12:07 am

kal001 wrote:- Reaching 300 000 could be dangerous - according to WD.
Really?
WD wrote:The reason why this feature (IntelliPark) was created and placed on the drives, was in order to lower power consumption in order to be more eco-friendly. The unit will not encounter a sudden death due to this feature.

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Post by kal001 » Fri Jun 19, 2009 12:35 am

LodeHacker wrote:In other words it is easier to boycott than fix, or what are you trying to say?
It's up to every customer himself and can not be generalized.

Using the wdidle3 voids the warranty and according to this thread:

viewtopic.php?t=51401&start=180&postday ... highlight=

It is designed for some GP models, not all. Officially supported are WD RE2-GP WD1000FYPS-01ZKB0, WD7500AYPS-01ZKB0, and WD7501AYPS-01ZKB0, so on the other models you can't know whether you fix this issue or cripple the drive completely. So what "fix" do you mean?
nutball wrote:
kal001 wrote:- Reaching 300 000 could be dangerous - according to WD.
Really?
Oh Yeah! This is official :!:

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Post by nutball » Fri Jun 19, 2009 12:51 am

kal001 wrote:Oh Yeah! This is official :!:
Sure, I've seen that too.

Where is the definitive evidence that IntelliPark == head load/unload? The SMART counter (since disabled)... and ??? While we're at it where are the threads and threads full of posters reporting their GPs failing?

Seems to me that on one side we have a corporation being evasive, giving out insufficient information, but a corporation which nevertheless has no interest in putting out a product which it knows a priori will fail in vast numbers. On the other hand we have the Internet hive mind, skilled in filling in information gaps with assumptions and presumptions, especially if the end result smells like a conspiracy. Eveyone loves a conspiracy, it gets the adrenaline going, it's almost as good as exercise.

A bit of honesty and openness all round would help in this saga I think. Right now, neither side is being either.

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Post by pfft » Sat Jun 27, 2009 2:26 pm

Well if the drives have failed then maybe they can't access the net? :evil:

If after this long period it is still cloudy as to exactly what this WD feature does then I believe that is a flaw in the marketer's actions.

CONSUMER DEVICE. I am not enthused by a manufacturer selecting a particular bit of verbage and calling it a spec without clear prior lucidation as to the meaning both in narrow tech terms AND in terms of the implications for the CONSUMER. In a wide array of products there are manufacturers that go out of their way to clarify the weaknesses and strengths of their offerings. Working with customers is also an observable action. I leave it to others to asses what WD has done in this matter.

I think that options for sensibly using the WD GP are very limited. This drive pulls a lot of watts on spinup which can require a larger power supply which may result in the system operating in a less efficient part of the power range for that larger supply which may more than negate the higher efficiency that this drive no longer offers over other drives that you simply plug in and use.

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Post by PartEleven » Mon Jun 29, 2009 8:34 am

pfft wrote:This drive pulls a lot of watts on spinup which can require a larger power supply which may result in the system operating in a less efficient part of the power range for that larger supply which may more than negate the higher efficiency that this drive no longer offers over other drives that you simply plug in and use.
Really? Have you measured it? I've found that GreenPower drives require very little power on start up. At least compared to Seagate drives. I replaced a Seagate drive with a WD GP precisely for this reason. My system would have difficulty spinning up the drives with the Seagate installed. Replacing with WD solved this problem. All other drives were kept the same.

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Post by Kepakko » Mon Jun 29, 2009 10:15 am

I have 10 of these drives under linux. Some of them have 70 to 80 and some between 60k to 70k. Almost all of them have been in use for over 1 year. However, what does Raw Read Error mean? It's considerably higher on one of the disks:

Code: Select all

 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   197   197   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       19411

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Post by pfft » Mon Jul 06, 2009 12:40 am

PartEleven,

That info hurts. I was hoping to use a seagate next but if it draws more than the WD on spinup, that's a no go.

It was "common knowledge" on these forums a while back. I have no means to measure but a reviewer did and WD GP did draw more than its contemporaries at that time. It may have even been SPCR that did the comparison. I may have a particularly cranky GP in that regard as it has caused power supplies to fall down when I would not have expected such.

Since many motherboards have many SATA ports, I believe there is a case to be made for the inclusion of staggered spin up in motherboard features as a standard efficiency measure.

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Post by yacoub » Mon Jul 13, 2009 10:47 am

So for someone running SpeedFan in Windows XP, is this issue avoided by simply disabling SpeedFan monitoring the HD temp polling?

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Post by PartEleven » Mon Jul 13, 2009 10:55 am

pfft wrote:PartEleven,

That info hurts. I was hoping to use a seagate next but if it draws more than the WD on spinup, that's a no go.

It was "common knowledge" on these forums a while back. I have no means to measure but a reviewer did and WD GP did draw more than its contemporaries at that time. It may have even been SPCR that did the comparison. I may have a particularly cranky GP in that regard as it has caused power supplies to fall down when I would not have expected such.

Since many motherboards have many SATA ports, I believe there is a case to be made for the inclusion of staggered spin up in motherboard features as a standard efficiency measure.
Then would you please direct me to where you got this "common knowledge"? I've been following WD GP drives since they came out, and absolutely nowhere did I get the impression that they had higher than normal spin up power requirements. In fact, these drives has shown me just how power hungry and loud Seagate drives are. I don't know about their latest 7200.11 and 7200.12 models, but they're 7200.10 line has absolutely NO AAM support at all. I found out the hard way.

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Post by whiic » Mon Jul 13, 2009 12:34 pm

"Then would you please direct me to where you got this "common knowledge"?"

Maybe here: http://www.storagereview.com/1000.sr

There's even more data in Performance Database. I selected a few drives for COMPARISON

Note: during spin-up 1st generation (4-platter) Greenpower 1TB uses 28.1 watts from 12V rail alone. This may be a watt short from record high score, but it's still pretty f'ing high current draw for a 5400rpm drive that has load-unload (LUL) technology.

And what has LUL have to do with spin-up power consumption? Well, it eliminates stiction between platters and heads, for starters. It means, that less force it required to make the very first turn of the platter. Obviously WD engineers never even thought they could slow down the spin-up process when LUL was used... but obviously they can. Hitachi knows it: Kurofune drive series 7K400, 7K500, 7K1000... the 5-platter monsters they've been building, they only use 14...16 watts during spin-up to 7200rpm. They just take it slow... nearly half a minute to become operational. There's no hurry, as LUL prevents slider wear during spin-up procedure. And that lack of stiction as well...

From more recent measurements taken with WD20EACS, it appears WD has finally realized what Hitachi has been doing for years: spin-up power savings with LUL can be dramatic. 2TB Greenpower (3rd generation) uses 11.5 watts compared to 1TB (1st generation)'s 28.1 watts. That's like one f'ing third of original power consumption.

Note: LUL, load-unload technology, ramp unload, IntelliPark, they're all the same thing. It's all about lifting R/W heads "up" from the platter surfaces, then moving them outside the platters' outer diameter and parking them there.

Conventional parking is done just by moving the heads to inner diamater and landing the heads on platters themselves while platter is still moving (albeit at slower speed than operational velocity). Landing occur on a "landing zone" which is kinda like sand paper. Why sand paper? Doesn't it damage the heads? Yeah. But the alternative is smooth surface, which, in addition of minute amounts of lubricant or condensed moisture could glue the heads onto platter and jam the HDD non-operational, even sand paper is a better alternative.

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Post by PartEleven » Mon Jul 13, 2009 12:58 pm

Wow, that's quite shocking. But perhaps that monstrous spin up power is only in the first revisions of the GP line. I purchased the WD7500AACS about three months ago, and there's no way it has 28.1 W at spin-up. My system runs off a 100W laptop power brick and prior to adding the drive I was at 80+ W at boot.

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Post by whiic » Mon Jul 13, 2009 1:07 pm

Another COMPARISON
...this time a bit off-topic. Featuring all the drives measured by StorageReview with capacity of 1TB and upward. Includes 2TB Greenpower. (Unfortunately does not include any variant of F2 Ecogreen.)

5400rpm drives aren't that much behind. Especially when compared to Seagates... well, ES-series is enterprise, not really optimized for desktop performance but, hey, even the "desktop optimized" Seagates pretty much suck in real-life tests. (ES = 7200.10, ES.2 = 7200.11. The only difference is firmware. And the fact that ES.2 is also available with SAS (Serially Attached SCSI))

Note: do not trust noise measurements made by SR. Measurement taken at 3mm distance is utter rubbish. For example: SAS interfaced ES.2 got 10 dB(A) when all other HDDs got ~40 dB(A) (give or take a few dB).

Their power measurements should be accurate and the results so far have been consistent with SPCR's power consumption measurements.

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Post by whiic » Mon Jul 13, 2009 1:19 pm

"Wow, that's quite shocking. But perhaps that monstrous spin up power is only in the first revisions of the GP line."

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Can't tell. All we can tell is that Storagereview got a hungry sample, and that if I don't remember incorrectly, a few other sites did as well. It could be limiter to all 1st gen GP, or to only 1TB variant, or maybe only to first few batches within 1st gen. We just don't have enough data to draw conclusions.

"I purchased the WD7500AACS about three months ago, and there's no way it has 28.1 W at spin-up. My system runs off a 100W laptop power brick and prior to adding the drive I was at 80+ W at boot."

How fast is your wattage meter capable of responding? The current spike is there only for a fraction of a second. SR measures the current draw in a much more accurate way than measuring the total power consumption of the computer from wall outlet.

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Post by PartEleven » Mon Jul 13, 2009 10:28 pm

I'm just using a standard kill-a-watt, so not fast enough to detect brief peaks at the fraction-of-a-second timescale. My conclusion was based on the fact that if my drive really did have ~30W of spin-up, then that would mean my power brick is capable of going over spec. It's only rated at 100W, and my system goes into the high 80's without the GP drive plugged in.

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Post by dhanson865 » Tue Jul 14, 2009 4:55 am

PartEleven wrote:I'm just using a standard kill-a-watt, so not fast enough to detect brief peaks at the fraction-of-a-second timescale. My conclusion was based on the fact that if my drive really did have ~30W of spin-up, then that would mean my power brick is capable of going over spec. It's only rated at 100W, and my system goes into the high 80's without the GP drive plugged in.
You're power brick is rated for continuous load. A short spike can exceed the rated wattage. The same goes for pretty much any other component (normal PSUs, CPUs, video cards).

Think of it more like a suggestion than a law.

See http://www.jonnyguru.com/forums/showthread.php?p=32261 for notes on Dell power supplies taking something like 9 times their rated load for a few ms.

PartEleven
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Post by PartEleven » Tue Jul 14, 2009 8:12 am

Is there any long term damage then from going over spec at start up? If most PSUs can go over spec for milliseconds at a time, then not then knowing the magnitude of the spin up power peak may not be as important as the duration of this power peak.

dhanson865
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Post by dhanson865 » Tue Jul 14, 2009 1:17 pm

So long as the computer boots you are OK.

If it goes too far over or lasts too long the circuitry in the PSU will shut it off or reset it (causing the PC to shut off completely or reboot again possibly in an infinite loop). Worst case scenario if the PSU isn't able to provide stable power but doesn't cause a power down the boot process could halt/lock up.

So long as you don't leave it hung at that point for prolonged periods you are OK.

If it finishes the boot process and makes it to Windows or Linux or whatever then the transient load is long gone and wasn't an issue.

Of course I've never used a PicoPSU to power a high end system I'm basing all this on experience with traditional PSUs. I expect the engineers that designed the Pico PSU thought of these issues just as traditional PSU designers do or that the laws of physics take care of it for them.

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