Is this true?: early predicted failure of WD5000AACS due to high load cycle count?

[mshan]

"The energy-saving feature of this drive causes the Load Cycle Count to increase VERY RAPIDLY (up to several times per minute!) under certain operating systems (e.g. Linux) and applications. As hard drives can undergo a finite number of LCCs, this problem can dramatically shorten the lifespan of this drive, perhaps killing it in under a year of use.
Other drives with this problem can often be fixed by having their hibernation time altered (or turned off) by programs like hdparm. This drive, however, has the hibernation time set at 8 seconds in the firmware, and that time cannot be altered by software." Link

I have this Green Power hard drive as sole system hard drive in one of my rigs, and it is also sole system hard drive in my dad's computer (both run XP Pro, and are basically web surfing and general purpose computers).

If so, is what is described above specific to the Linux operating system? And are there any types of Windows programs that would also produce the described early failure of this hard drive?

 

[brblx]

i generally try and dissociate myself from the stupid 'green' fad, so i'm not too familiar with these drives. but a quick googling yield that they do indeed unload after only eight seconds, and have a projected lifetime of about 300000 load/unload cycles. that means with some linux distros you could DEFINATELY kill a drive in under a year. the problem is that they regularly poll the hard drive as often as every ten seconds. that can mean multiple load cycles per minute- and even at ONE per minute, that's a little over two hundred days until the drive shits the bed. windows doesn't (shouldn't) do this, but other apps may.

HDD's consume so little power compared to other modern PC components that i wouldn't bother with a 'green' drive. but it does appear WD has released a fix-
http://support.wdc.com/product...id=609&sid=113&lang=en

but your model number is not listed.

 

[taltamir]

well... the advantage of the GP drives is that they are 5400 RPM and as such the CHEAPEST and coolest running drive WD makes.
The power consumption difference is neglible, but the price difference isn't.

the models affected are: WD1000FYPS-01ZKB0, WD7500AYPS-01ZKB0, WD7501AYPS-01ZKB0

mmm, my fileserver has the 7500AACS model, so either I am not affected by the problem, or I am and they didn't bother making a fix because its not a RE drive.

 

[nobb]

My WD10EADS 1tb WD green has this problem. With the newer WD Green series, they still unload after 8 seconds, but the load cycle is not recorded in SMART. So the only way to tell is to listen to it. However, I still have yet to come across anyone claiming to have a hard drive fail because of this.

 

[mshan]

"the models affected are: WD1000FYPS-01ZKB0, WD7500AYPS-01ZKB0, WD7501AYPS-01ZKB0"

Does that mean my WD5000AACS does not have that energy saving feature, and can be safely used as a Windows system hard drive?