On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 9:20 AM, Norman Invasion <invasivenor...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 9 May 2012 04:47, Dale <rdalek1...@gmail.com> wrote: >> Hi, >> >> As some know, I'm planning to buy me a LARGE hard drive to put all my >> videos on, eventually. The prices are coming down now. I keep seeing >> these "green" drives that are made by just about every company nowadays. >> When comparing them to a non "green" drive, do they hold up as good? >> Are they as dependable as a plain drive? I guess they are more >> efficient and I get that but do they break quicker, more often or no >> difference? >> >> I have noticed that they tend to spin slower and are cheaper. That much >> I have figured out. Other than that, I can't see any other difference. >> Data speeds seem to be about the same. >> > > They have an ugly tendency to nod off at 6 second intervals. > This runs up "193 Load_Cycle_Count" unacceptably: as many > as a few hundred thousand in a year & a million cycles is > getting close to the lifetime limit on most hard drives. I end > up running some iteration of > # hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda > every boot. >
Very true about the 193 count. Here's a drive in a system that was built in Jan., 2010 so it's a bit over 2 years old at this point. It's on 24/7 and not rebooted except for more major updates, etc. My tests say the drive spins down and starts back up every 2 minutes and has been doing so for about 28 months. IIRC the 193 spec on this drive was something like 300000 max with the drive currently clocking in at 700488. I don't see any evidence that it's going to fail but I am trying to make sure it's backed up often. Being that it's gone >2x at this point I will swap the drive out in the early summer no matter what. This week I'll be visiting where the machine is so I'm going to put a backup drive in the box to get ready. - Mark gandalf ~ # smartctl -a /dev/sda smartctl 5.42 2011-10-20 r3458 [x86_64-linux-3.2.12-gentoo] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-11 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net === START OF INFORMATION SECTION === Model Family: Western Digital Caviar Green (Adv. Format) Device Model: WDC WD10EARS-00Y5B1 Serial Number: WD-WCAV55464493 LU WWN Device Id: 5 0014ee 2ae6b5ffe Firmware Version: 80.00A80 User Capacity: 1,000,204,886,016 bytes [1.00 TB] Sector Size: 512 bytes logical/physical Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show] ATA Version is: 8 ATA Standard is: Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated Local Time is: Thu May 10 10:53:59 2012 PDT SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability. SMART support is: Enabled === START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION === SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED General SMART Values: Offline data collection status: (0x82) Offline data collection activity was completed without error. Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled. Self-test execution status: ( 0) The previous self-test routine completed without error or no self-test has ever been run. Total time to complete Offline data collection: (19800) seconds. Offline data collection capabilities: (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate. Auto Offline data collection on/off support. Suspend Offline collection upon new command. Offline surface scan supported. Self-test supported. Conveyance Self-test supported. Selective Self-test supported. SMART capabilities: (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering power-saving mode. Supports SMART auto save timer. Error logging capability: (0x01) Error logging supported. General Purpose Logging supported. Short self-test routine recommended polling time: ( 2) minutes. Extended self-test routine recommended polling time: ( 228) minutes. Conveyance self-test routine recommended polling time: ( 5) minutes. SCT capabilities: (0x3031) SCT Status supported. SCT Feature Control supported. SCT Data Table supported. SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16 Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds: ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f 200 200 051 Pre-fail Always - 0 3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0027 131 128 021 Pre-fail Always - 6441 4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 65 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 200 200 140 Pre-fail Always - 0 7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x002e 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 074 074 000 Old_age Always - 19316 10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0 12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 63 192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 14 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 001 001 000 Old_age Always - 700488 194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 120 113 000 Old_age Always - 27 196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0030 200 200 000 Old_age Offline - 0 199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0008 200 200 000 Old_age Offline - 0 SMART Error Log Version: 1 No Errors Logged SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1 Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error # 1 Short offline Completed without error 00% 11655 - # 2 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 8797 - # 3 Short offline Completed without error 00% 8794 - # 4 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 1009 - # 5 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 388 - # 6 Short offline Completed without error 00% 376 - SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1 SPAN MIN_LBA MAX_LBA CURRENT_TEST_STATUS 1 0 0 Not_testing 2 0 0 Not_testing 3 0 0 Not_testing 4 0 0 Not_testing 5 0 0 Not_testing Selective self-test flags (0x0): After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk. If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay. gandalf ~ #
