# Western Digital Caviar Green HDDs.

## dlmalloc

I read on kerneltrap a while back that these drives don't play well with Linux. Apparently the Intellitpark feature has a much lower time out than the Kernel flush timer... as a result it parks the seeker too often and exceeds how often it should be parked in a year. 

Is this still a problem? I can't find much info about it (maybe I'm not looking hard enough...). Supposedly a firmware patch would fix the issue, has such a patch been released?

Is there anything Gentoo specific I should know about these 'green' drives? Anyone got one?

Sorry for all the questions.

----------

## cdstealer

Hi,

I have one. 

```
Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00

  Vendor: ATA      Model: WDC WD10EVDS-63N Rev: 01.0

  Type:   Direct-Access                    ANSI  SCSI revision: 05
```

I can't say I've noticed anything bad.  Obviously the drive performs slower than a 7200rpm, but I didn't go for speed.  If you need any further info or stats, let me know.

CD

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## shazeal

I had 2 of them for our home server. Really bad performance, which lead to high i/o wait. Swapped them out for a pair of samsung drives and the problems went away instantly, but I do notice the noise difference, the green drives were pretty quiet, but the massive performance hit was not worth it.

I had tried everything to get the performance upto scratch, jumpers/no jumper, sector realignment etc etc.

----------

## yzg

I have one. It is quite and does not become as hot as seagate disks. I'm using it as a long-term data store so I do not

care about the i/o performance and I did not notice it is slower either. Overall it is perfect for what I want it to do.

----------

## Akkara

I use quite a few, some on-line and some off-line backup.  Oldest ones from around 2 years ago.

I like them a lot because of their lower power consumption and cooler operation.

They are a little slower but it depends what you use them for.  Lots of seeking, they will definitely be slower than the 7200 rpm drives.  (In other words, don't put portage on them and expect fast syncs.)  But for large files using xfs (because of its on-line defragging) they work great.  I recently got a batch of the 1.5TB 4K sector ones, and I'm getting close to 100MB/s when a file is stored near an outer track, and around 70MB/s on a slower inner track.  (If you do get the 4K sector ones, refer to this bug before partitioning.)

As far as the "too many head parks", I haven't noticed anything unusual.  But it may be that I keep them spun down when not being used, so they might not have seen the level of cycling that they otherwise would have.

----------

## dmpogo

 *shazeal wrote:*   

> I had 2 of them for our home server. Really bad performance, which lead to high i/o wait. Swapped them out for a pair of samsung drives and the problems went away instantly, but I do notice the noise difference, the green drives were pretty quiet, but the massive performance hit was not worth it.
> 
> I had tried everything to get the performance upto scratch, jumpers/no jumper, sector realignment etc etc.

 

They are even advertised as being best of external data storage/backup, especially in external enclosures. If you want perforamnce, you should have gone for Black series

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## dlmalloc

Aha, thanks for the replies guys.

Apparently there is a tool on WD's site which lets you turn off Intellipark (it's DOS only though, boo!), so I think I'll get a few of these since I'm only using them for storage!  :Smile: 

----------

## beandog

 *dmpogo wrote:*   

> They are even advertised as being best of external data storage/backup, especially in external enclosures. If you want perforamnce, you should have gone for Black series

 

That's exactly what I'm doing with mine ... just using it for external storage of media files.  They are slow, though.  If I had to use one as my dekstop drive, I think I'd stab myself in the face with an AOL CD.

----------

## Mousee

I have a Green and a Black. The Green is for general, long-term storage with mostly small files (music, docs, etc). The Black for large files - which only makes sense as I'd prefer those to be transferred quicker.

WDC WD10EACS-00D6B0 - 1TB  (Green)

WDC WD1001FALS-00J7B1 - 1TB (Black)

Just transferred a 4gig file to the Green and got:

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> Transferred 1 File (4,076,961,792 bytes) in 2 minutes 43 seconds (23.94 MB/s)
> 
> 

 

Download from it was ~8.3 MB/s. I imagine if I tweaked it and its file system for performance I could probably double both speeds (at least).

The Black drive averages ~80-120 MB/s (both ways). That one's filesystem is ext4, I believe the Green one's is ext3 with some tweaks.

I haven't noticed any issues with the Intellitpark feature though. Seek times and general performance are average with the two drives it replaced.

----------

## dmpogo

[quote="Mousee"]I have a Green and a Black. 

WDC WD10EACS-00D6B0 - 1TB  (Green)

WDC WD1001FALS-00J7B1 - 1TB (Black)

Just transferred a 4gig file to the Green and got:

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> Transferred 1 File (4,076,961,792 bytes) in 2 minutes 43 seconds (23.94 MB/s)
> 
> 

 

Transferred with what and from where ? How are the disks connected ?

----------

## dmpogo

 *beandog wrote:*   

>  *dmpogo wrote:*   They are even advertised as being best of external data storage/backup, especially in external enclosures. If you want perforamnce, you should have gone for Black series 
> 
> That's exactly what I'm doing with mine ... just using it for external storage of media files.  They are slow, though.  If I had to use one as my dekstop drive, I think I'd stab myself in the face with an AOL CD.

 

Well, the question is - are you limited by disk or by interface.   If one is using usb2 enclosure, one can't hope for more that 60MB/sec even theoretically.

----------

## Mousee

 *dmpogo wrote:*   

> 
> 
> Transferred with what and from where ? How are the disks connected ?

 

Using FlashFXP from an Intel Q6600 Windows Vista 64bit machine (running a raid10) - to an AMD Athlon 3800+ 64bit Gentoo server that currently houses 3 other drives besides the ones mentioned, none of which are connected in any form of raid array currently.

The transfer was done over a gigabit network of course. The file itself was just a dummy file (dd).

EDIT: Sorry guess I should have added - all drives are connected via internal SATA connectors. No eSATA or USB here.Last edited by Mousee on Thu Apr 22, 2010 8:58 pm; edited 1 time in total

----------

## beandog

 *dmpogo wrote:*   

>  *beandog wrote:*    *dmpogo wrote:*   They are even advertised as being best of external data storage/backup, especially in external enclosures. If you want perforamnce, you should have gone for Black series 
> 
> That's exactly what I'm doing with mine ... just using it for external storage of media files.  They are slow, though.  If I had to use one as my dekstop drive, I think I'd stab myself in the face with an AOL CD. 
> 
> Well, the question is - are you limited by disk or by interface.   If one is using usb2 enclosure, one can't hope for more that 60MB/sec even theoretically.

 

No, I'm using eSATA.  It seems like mine is slow to speed up when I really need to write a lot of stuff to it, though I haven't really gathered any empirical evidence.  It just feels sluggish though.  I don't mind for storage, of course.

What I really like is that it runs really cool.

Don't get me wrong, I really like mine.  I'm planning on getting another 2TB Green drive pretty soon.

----------

## yther

I've got two 1 TB drives in a Synology NAS, in a RAID-1 configuration.  They are used to store multi-gigabyte Ghost images which are infrequently accessed.  They do take a long time to spin up when accessed, but this is to be expected, so I have no problems with them.  Load cycle count is about 2600 per drive, but viewed over 432 days of operation that's only 6 per day, which is reasonable considering that half of their lifespan was in a much more active role (and in a different NAS).   :Smile: 

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## dmpogo

 *beandog wrote:*   

> 
> 
> No, I'm using eSATA.  It seems like mine is slow to speed up when I really need to write a lot of stuff to it, though I haven't really gathered any empirical evidence.  It just feels sluggish though.  I don't mind for storage, of course.
> 
> What I really like is that it runs really cool.
> ...

 

I don't  :Smile:  I plan to get one for my wife's Time Mаchine pretty soon. So am also collecting accurate opinions.  Sluggish is not an issue - quietness, temperature and power usage is (many enclosres are underpowered, and quiet means fanless)

So what read/write speed are you getting ? (Up in the list one see's the range from 100 MB/s to 8 MB/s read  :Smile:  )

----------

## shazeal

 *dmpogo wrote:*   

>  *shazeal wrote:*   I had 2 of them for our home server. Really bad performance, which lead to high i/o wait. Swapped them out for a pair of samsung drives and the problems went away instantly, but I do notice the noise difference, the green drives were pretty quiet, but the massive performance hit was not worth it.
> 
> I had tried everything to get the performance upto scratch, jumpers/no jumper, sector realignment etc etc. 
> 
> They are even advertised as being best of external data storage/backup, especially in external enclosures. If you want perforamnce, you should have gone for Black series

 

I never wanted high performance, just what you would normally expect from a HDD. I did not want I/O wait of around 50 on mild HDD access or ~80 on heavy. Anyway I did pretty much as you suggested the second time round and pleased I did, didnt cost me a cent to try them out either  :Wink: 

----------

## dmpogo

 *shazeal wrote:*   

>  *dmpogo wrote:*    *shazeal wrote:*   I had 2 of them for our home server. Really bad performance, which lead to high i/o wait. Swapped them out for a pair of samsung drives and the problems went away instantly, but I do notice the noise difference, the green drives were pretty quiet, but the massive performance hit was not worth it.
> 
> I had tried everything to get the performance upto scratch, jumpers/no jumper, sector realignment etc etc. 
> 
> They are even advertised as being best of external data storage/backup, especially in external enclosures. If you want perforamnce, you should have gone for Black series 
> ...

 

50,80 - in which units ?

----------

## shazeal

 *dmpogo wrote:*   

>  *shazeal wrote:*    *dmpogo wrote:*    *shazeal wrote:*   I had 2 of them for our home server. Really bad performance, which lead to high i/o wait. Swapped them out for a pair of samsung drives and the problems went away instantly, but I do notice the noise difference, the green drives were pretty quiet, but the massive performance hit was not worth it.
> 
> I had tried everything to get the performance upto scratch, jumpers/no jumper, sector realignment etc etc. 
> 
> They are even advertised as being best of external data storage/backup, especially in external enclosures. If you want perforamnce, you should have gone for Black series 
> ...

 

Percent... from top.

----------

## Cyker

I've got 4 WD GP hard disks, love 'em to bits. Much quieter and cooler than anything else I've used.

Been running continuously 24/7 for about 2 years in an mdadm software RAID array and never missed a beat (Unlike the Seagate 7200.10s they replaced -Unreliable, hot and much slower!!)

Here's a SMART dump from 2 of them...

```
smartctl -a /dev/sda

smartctl 5.39.1 2010-01-28 r3054 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] (local build)

Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===

Model Family:     Western Digital RE2-GP family

Device Model:     WDC WD1000FYPS-01ZKB0

Serial Number:    WD-WCASJ1243155

Firmware Version: 02.01B01

User Capacity:    1,000,204,886,016 bytes

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:    Mon Apr 26 19:56:37 2010 BST

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:  (0x84)   Offline data collection activity

               was suspended by an interrupting command from host.

               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:        (27180) 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:     ( 255) minutes.

Conveyance self-test routine

recommended polling time:     (   5) minutes.

SCT capabilities:           (0x303f)   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     0x000f   200   200   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0

  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0003   189   187   021    Pre-fail  Always       -       7525

  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       62

  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail  Always       -       0

  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   076   076   000    Old_age   Always       -       17524

 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0012   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0012   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       56

192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       36

193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   085   085   000    Old_age   Always       -       347681

194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   110   103   000    Old_age   Always       -       42

196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0010   200   200   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0

199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x003e   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

No self-tests have been logged.  [To run self-tests, use: smartctl -t]

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.
```

```
smartctl -a /dev/sdc

smartctl 5.39.1 2010-01-28 r3054 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] (local build)

Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===

Model Family:     Western Digital RE2-GP family

Device Model:     WDC WD1000FYPS-01ZKB0

Serial Number:    WD-WCASJ1180654

Firmware Version: 02.01B01

User Capacity:    1,000,204,886,016 bytes

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:    Mon Apr 26 19:59:06 2010 BST

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:  (0x84)   Offline data collection activity

               was suspended by an interrupting command from host.

               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:        (27180) 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:     ( 255) minutes.

Conveyance self-test routine

recommended polling time:     (   5) minutes.

SCT capabilities:           (0x303f)   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     0x000f   200   200   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0

  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0003   177   175   021    Pre-fail  Always       -       8116

  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       68

  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail  Always       -       0

  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   076   076   000    Old_age   Always       -       17541

 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0012   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0012   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       62

192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       34

193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   084   084   000    Old_age   Always       -       350105

194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   107   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       45

196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0010   200   200   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0

199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x003e   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

No self-tests have been logged.  [To run self-tests, use: smartctl -t]

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.
```

You will notice that the load cycle count is pretty darn high, but I suspect it is a bit deceptive, like the SMART readings on certain models of Seagate drives. It certainly doesn't seem to be indicative of any problems as the drives have been rock solid.

----------

