Hard Drive slows down and stops

[Daniel - Sydney]

Hi

I have Windows 7 x64 and have a hard drive attached to an eSata port on my
PC.

When I have not been using my PC for a few minutes the attached drive seems
to go to sleep, and if I copy large folder (>20Gig)
from my main (C) hard drive to my eSata drive the speed starts okay then
slows to virtually nothing after 20 minutes.

If I try to access the drive in explorer it takes a few seconds after I
click on the drive to show the contents, this does not happen if I click on
my C: drive.

I have my Power settings set to High Performance and my Hard Drive "Sleep"
settings set to Never.

How do I keep my attached eSata drive from going to sleep (or whatever the
problem is)

Thanks

Daniel

 

[Paul]

Hi

I have Windows 7 x64 and have a hard drive attached to an eSata port on my
PC.

When I have not been using my PC for a few minutes the attached drive seems
to go to sleep, and if I copy large folder (>20Gig)
from my main (C) hard drive to my eSata drive the speed starts okay then
slows to virtually nothing after 20 minutes.

If I try to access the drive in explorer it takes a few seconds after I
click on the drive to show the contents, this does not happen if I click on
my C: drive.

I have my Power settings set to High Performance and my Hard Drive "Sleep"
settings set to Never.

How do I keep my attached eSata drive from going to sleep (or whatever the
problem is)

Thanks

Daniel

This can be a function of the hard drive inside the enclosure. A couple
models of Seagate drives (1TB and 2TB drives), have a too aggressive
power saving feature. Some users report the drives go to sleep, about
400 times per day.

You should include drive model information in your posting.

You can use Device Manager (start : run : devmgmt.msc) to get the drive
information. In Device Manager, look for "Disk drives" and click the
plus sign next to that. The disk drives will be listed. Mine shows:

ST3120026A
ST3500418AS
ST500DM002-1BD142

and I have three hard drives with a total of 11 partitions.

The last of those drives, is the newest one. The bigger brothers
of that drive (DM family), are the ones with the sleep issue. If
you have that particular problem, every once in a while you'll
also hear a "chirp" come from the drive.

Seagate offers a replacement firmware for those drives, but
user reports don't indicate it was fixed completely properly.
It's possible the replacement firmware was rushed through the
design process too quickly.

It's not clear to me, whether it's possible to change the power
policy, by using "ATA command set" commands. I don't know
if the people with the "chirping drives" tried that or not.

If you look at the instructions for Hitachi Feature Tool,
you can see on page 12 that drives have "Advanced Power Management".
And setting that to 0x00, is supposed to disable it. That in theory,
should keep a drive at full power at all times, ready to work. But I
can't really be sure that is the only control involved. Or, that
the OS won't go right back in there, and write some other number
after I'm finished.

http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/downloads/FTool_User_Guide_215.pdf

This is particularly a problem on some of the USB hard drives
you can buy. They were having this sleep problem, even several
years ago. And in that case, again, I couldn't be sure whether
the USB controller chip in the enclosure, had its own set of
power management features or not. Or whether this was purely
a function of the ATA command set features.

Paul

 

[Daniel - Sydney]

Hi

I have not heard any chirps from my drives.

I actually have two eSata attached Hard Drives, and I have the same problem with both.

Both are WDC,
a 2TB WDC WD20 EARS-00MWBO SCSI Disk (four equal partitions)
and a 600 GB WDC WD64 00AACS-00G8B SCSI Disk (two equal partitions)

My main Hard Drive is 1TB Hitachi HDT721010SLA SCSI Disk

Hopefully that will show what the problem could be.

Regards

Daniel

 

[Paul]

Hi

I have not heard any chirps from my drives.

I actually have two eSata attached Hard Drives, and I have the same problem with both.

Both are WDC,
a 2TB WDC WD20 EARS-00MWBO SCSI Disk (four equal partitions)
and a 600 GB WDC WD64 00AACS-00G8B SCSI Disk (two equal partitions)

My main Hard Drive is 1TB Hitachi HDT721010SLA SCSI Disk

Hopefully that will show what the problem could be.

Regards

Daniel

A hard drive "slowing down and stopping", can be a hardware
issue with the drive. You can use the Western Digital disk
drive test software, to determine if the drive is still
healthy.

Another source of performance issues, is actually WinXP. I've
had problems here, where after about 1TB of writes, NTFS becomes
so slow I got a "Delayed Write failure". This seems to be a function
of memory management in WinXP, but I don't have a cure for it. I
had a failure like that, when I left something running overnight.
I've also had similar symptoms, while recording from a VCR with
a WinTV card (NTFS uses more and more CPU as time goes by).

*******

The following assumes nothing in the previous paragraphs apply.

The WD20EARS is a Caviar Green. Using the feedback tab here...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=22-136-514

"d4nguy 1/9/2012 6:06:29 AM

It took months to figure out that it was the fact that these "economical"
drives spin down when not in use to save power. This causes lag when a
file is accessed and slows everythign down."

The WD6400AACS is a Caviar Green as well.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136298

Found this.

http://community.wdc.com/t5/Desktop-Portable-Drives/Attempting-to-disable-APM-failed/td-p/417006

I can find a copy of the utility here. The deceiving part, is
they make it look like the utility only works on certain drives.

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=609&sid=113&lang=en

OK, got some different info at the top of this page.

http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=233472#p233472

"Sorry, but our agent didn't know that this policy was just changed.

Current WDIDLE3 works with the RE and GP drives listed below.

RE Drives - WD1000FYPS-01ZKB0, WD7500AYPS-01ZKB0, WD7501AYPS-01ZKB0
GP Drives - WD20EADS, WD20EARS, WD15EADS, WD15EARS, WD10EADS, WD10EARS,
WD8000AARS, WD7500AADS, WD7500AARS, WD6400AADS,
WD6400AARS, WD5000AADS, WD5000AARS

WDIDLE3 http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=609&sid=113&lang=en
refers to the WD Tool

RE2GP Idle Mode Update Utility
File Name: wdidle3_1_05.zip
File Size: 170 KB
Version: N/A
Publish Date: 4/2010"

Now, that's a DOS utility, and with a DOS utility, you have to
figure out whether it'll work in a Command Prompt window,
or will only work by actually booting MSDOS. (MSDOS equivalents
exist, such as FreeDOS, so that's not as outlandish as it sounds.)

I presume what that'll do, is change the spin-down policy. Whether
they're spinning down to protect the platters, is anyone's guess.
In the past, spindown was a cheesy way to control drive temperature,
such as when a Caviar Green is used in an external enclosure without
a cooling fan. But if for some reason the platters weren't rated
for continuous service, spindown might be another solution for
that. If they allow that utility to work on a Green drive,
I'm guessing they're willing to support any extra warranty claims
that might result.

*******

If you were having problems with the Hitachi, you could use the Hitachi
Feature Tool to try changing APM. But there's no point attacking
the Caviar drives that way, unless someone else has succeeded
by using that approach.

*******

And even with all of that, you'd first want to verify it
wasn't a Power control panel setting that was spinning
down the drive. In Windows 8, when I installed Release Preview,
I had to disable the spindown feature there, in the Power schema,
because it was actually damaging data contents (causing
unnecessary CHKDSK automatic runs). Preventing spindown
in Windows 8 RP, stopped that from happening. I haven't had a
CHKDSK autorun since then.

*******

As for the reference to "SCSI" drives, you know they're not
SCSI drives. In the old days, some drivers used the pseudo-SCSI
stack on Windows, to implement a storage driver. And then, you'd
see references in Device Manager to SCSI. Windows would send a
SCSI CDB (command/data block) to the third-party storage driver,
and the driver would convert it to an ATA command of some sort.

A second reference to SCSI, can come about from SAS equipment.
As in Serial Attached SCSI. SAS uses the same cabling as SATA,
but the protocol has differences. In the article here, it
suggests a SAS hardware controller, can work with SATA drives.
But such a thing on desktop systems isn't too common, so I'll
assume the reference is instead coming from the way the driver
is designed (pseudo-SCSI). Perhaps even, a side effect of selecting
AHCI mode ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_attached_SCSI

"SAS controllers may connect to SATA devices, either directly
connected using native SATA protocol or through SAS expanders
using SATA Tunneled Protocol (STP)."

In any case, your drives aren't the "old fashioned, fat cable SCSI".

Paul

 

[philo]

Hi

I have Windows 7 x64 and have a hard drive attached to an eSata port on my
PC.

When I have not been using my PC for a few minutes the attached drive
seems
to go to sleep, and if I copy large folder (>20Gig)
from my main (C) hard drive to my eSata drive the speed starts okay then
slows to virtually nothing after 20 minutes.

<snip>

Definately run the mfg's diagnostic.

The only time I've seen such problems was if a drive was failing

 

[Daniel - Sydney]

A hard drive "slowing down and stopping", can be a hardware

issue with the drive. You can use the Western Digital disk

drive test software, to determine if the drive is still

healthy.



Another source of performance issues, is actually WinXP. I've

had problems here, where after about 1TB of writes, NTFS becomes

so slow I got a "Delayed Write failure". This seems to be a function

of memory management in WinXP, but I don't have a cure for it. I

had a failure like that, when I left something running overnight.

I've also had similar symptoms, while recording from a VCR with

a WinTV card (NTFS uses more and more CPU as time goes by).



*******



The following assumes nothing in the previous paragraphs apply.



The WD20EARS is a Caviar Green. Using the feedback tab here...



http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=22-136-514



"d4nguy 1/9/2012 6:06:29 AM



It took months to figure out that it was the fact that these "economical"

drives spin down when not in use to save power. This causes lag when a

file is accessed and slows everythign down."



The WD6400AACS is a Caviar Green as well.



http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136298



Found this.



http://community.wdc.com/t5/Desktop-Portable-Drives/Attempting-to-disable-APM-failed/td-p/417006



I can find a copy of the utility here. The deceiving part, is

they make it look like the utility only works on certain drives.



http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=609&sid=113&lang=en



OK, got some different info at the top of this page.



http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=233472#p233472



"Sorry, but our agent didn't know that this policy was just changed.



Current WDIDLE3 works with the RE and GP drives listed below.



RE Drives - WD1000FYPS-01ZKB0, WD7500AYPS-01ZKB0, WD7501AYPS-01ZKB0

GP Drives - WD20EADS, WD20EARS, WD15EADS, WD15EARS, WD10EADS, WD10EARS,

WD8000AARS, WD7500AADS, WD7500AARS, WD6400AADS,

WD6400AARS, WD5000AADS, WD5000AARS



WDIDLE3 http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=609&sid=113&lang=en

refers to the WD Tool



RE2GP Idle Mode Update Utility

File Name: wdidle3_1_05.zip

File Size: 170 KB

Version: N/A

Publish Date: 4/2010"



Now, that's a DOS utility, and with a DOS utility, you have to

figure out whether it'll work in a Command Prompt window,

or will only work by actually booting MSDOS. (MSDOS equivalents

exist, such as FreeDOS, so that's not as outlandish as it sounds.)



I presume what that'll do, is change the spin-down policy. Whether

they're spinning down to protect the platters, is anyone's guess.

In the past, spindown was a cheesy way to control drive temperature,

such as when a Caviar Green is used in an external enclosure without

a cooling fan. But if for some reason the platters weren't rated

for continuous service, spindown might be another solution for

that. If they allow that utility to work on a Green drive,

I'm guessing they're willing to support any extra warranty claims

that might result.



*******



If you were having problems with the Hitachi, you could use the Hitachi

Feature Tool to try changing APM. But there's no point attacking

the Caviar drives that way, unless someone else has succeeded

by using that approach.



*******



And even with all of that, you'd first want to verify it

wasn't a Power control panel setting that was spinning

down the drive. In Windows 8, when I installed Release Preview,

I had to disable the spindown feature there, in the Power schema,

because it was actually damaging data contents (causing

unnecessary CHKDSK automatic runs). Preventing spindown

in Windows 8 RP, stopped that from happening. I haven't had a

CHKDSK autorun since then.



*******



As for the reference to "SCSI" drives, you know they're not

SCSI drives. In the old days, some drivers used the pseudo-SCSI

stack on Windows, to implement a storage driver. And then, you'd

see references in Device Manager to SCSI. Windows would send a

SCSI CDB (command/data block) to the third-party storage driver,

and the driver would convert it to an ATA command of some sort.



A second reference to SCSI, can come about from SAS equipment.

As in Serial Attached SCSI. SAS uses the same cabling as SATA,

but the protocol has differences. In the article here, it

suggests a SAS hardware controller, can work with SATA drives.

But such a thing on desktop systems isn't too common, so I'll

assume the reference is instead coming from the way the driver

is designed (pseudo-SCSI). Perhaps even, a side effect of selecting

AHCI mode ?



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_attached_SCSI



"SAS controllers may connect to SATA devices, either directly

connected using native SATA protocol or through SAS expanders

using SATA Tunneled Protocol (STP)."



In any case, your drives aren't the "old fashioned, fat cable SCSI".



Paul

Thanks,

I will go through this in a couple of days, I am working at the moment.

Cheers

Daniel

 

[John McGaw]

A hard drive "slowing down and stopping", can be a hardware
issue with the drive. You can use the Western Digital disk
drive test software, to determine if the drive is still
healthy.

Another source of performance issues, is actually WinXP. I've
had problems here, where after about 1TB of writes, NTFS becomes
so slow I got a "Delayed Write failure". This seems to be a function
of memory management in WinXP, but I don't have a cure for it. I
had a failure like that, when I left something running overnight.
I've also had similar symptoms, while recording from a VCR with
a WinTV card (NTFS uses more and more CPU as time goes by).

*******

The following assumes nothing in the previous paragraphs apply.

The WD20EARS is a Caviar Green. Using the feedback tab here...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=22-136-514

"d4nguy 1/9/2012 6:06:29 AM

It took months to figure out that it was the fact that these "economical"
drives spin down when not in use to save power. This causes lag when a
file is accessed and slows everythign down."

The WD6400AACS is a Caviar Green as well.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136298

Found this.

http://community.wdc.com/t5/Desktop-Portable-Drives/Attempting-to-disable-APM-failed/td-p/417006


I can find a copy of the utility here. The deceiving part, is
they make it look like the utility only works on certain drives.

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=609&sid=113&lang=en

OK, got some different info at the top of this page.

http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=233472#p233472

"Sorry, but our agent didn't know that this policy was just changed.

Current WDIDLE3 works with the RE and GP drives listed below.

RE Drives - WD1000FYPS-01ZKB0, WD7500AYPS-01ZKB0, WD7501AYPS-01ZKB0
GP Drives - WD20EADS, WD20EARS, WD15EADS, WD15EARS, WD10EADS, WD10EARS,
WD8000AARS, WD7500AADS, WD7500AARS, WD6400AADS,
WD6400AARS, WD5000AADS, WD5000AARS

WDIDLE3
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=609&sid=113&lang=en
refers to the WD Tool

RE2GP Idle Mode Update Utility
File Name: wdidle3_1_05.zip
File Size: 170 KB
Version: N/A
Publish Date: 4/2010"

Now, that's a DOS utility, and with a DOS utility, you have to
figure out whether it'll work in a Command Prompt window,
or will only work by actually booting MSDOS. (MSDOS equivalents
exist, such as FreeDOS, so that's not as outlandish as it sounds.)

I presume what that'll do, is change the spin-down policy. Whether
they're spinning down to protect the platters, is anyone's guess.
In the past, spindown was a cheesy way to control drive temperature,
such as when a Caviar Green is used in an external enclosure without
a cooling fan. But if for some reason the platters weren't rated
for continuous service, spindown might be another solution for
that. If they allow that utility to work on a Green drive,
I'm guessing they're willing to support any extra warranty claims
that might result.

*******

If you were having problems with the Hitachi, you could use the Hitachi
Feature Tool to try changing APM. But there's no point attacking
the Caviar drives that way, unless someone else has succeeded
by using that approach.

*******

And even with all of that, you'd first want to verify it
wasn't a Power control panel setting that was spinning
down the drive. In Windows 8, when I installed Release Preview,
I had to disable the spindown feature there, in the Power schema,
because it was actually damaging data contents (causing
unnecessary CHKDSK automatic runs). Preventing spindown
in Windows 8 RP, stopped that from happening. I haven't had a
CHKDSK autorun since then.

*******

As for the reference to "SCSI" drives, you know they're not
SCSI drives. In the old days, some drivers used the pseudo-SCSI
stack on Windows, to implement a storage driver. And then, you'd
see references in Device Manager to SCSI. Windows would send a
SCSI CDB (command/data block) to the third-party storage driver,
and the driver would convert it to an ATA command of some sort.

A second reference to SCSI, can come about from SAS equipment.
As in Serial Attached SCSI. SAS uses the same cabling as SATA,
but the protocol has differences. In the article here, it
suggests a SAS hardware controller, can work with SATA drives.
But such a thing on desktop systems isn't too common, so I'll
assume the reference is instead coming from the way the driver
is designed (pseudo-SCSI). Perhaps even, a side effect of selecting
AHCI mode ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_attached_SCSI

"SAS controllers may connect to SATA devices, either directly
connected using native SATA protocol or through SAS expanders
using SATA Tunneled Protocol (STP)."

In any case, your drives aren't the "old fashioned, fat cable SCSI".

Paul

I'll step in here with a few ideas since I've been suffering from a weird
"slow-drive" problem with a WD 2tB drive on an XP system for the last week.
First off, if one wishes to run the WDIDLE3 utility, the easiest way is to
download the ISO for the latest version of Ultimate Boot CD and burn it to
CD. It makes it easy to run the WD utility (and dozens of others which come
with it). It is insanely useful for many tasks.

Second, my problem, which I took to be my WD going into power saving mode
proved to be something else entirely. Then I though that it might be a heat
problem kicking the drive into some sort of self-protection mode. In my
case the real problem was that the SATA channel was dropping out of fast
DMA mode and into PIO mode which, for all practical purposes, is a
standstill. I verified by the old shotgun method and swapped drives and
cables and power supply and case fan and drivers. Since I don't have a
spare motherboard handy I'm going to install an accessory card with two
SATA III ports as soon as Amazon delivers it and have some confidence that
it will fix the problem. There is some chatter online about the WD green
drives being very touchy about the controller and cables and refusing to
work with some random selection of both. If this is not a fix, there is
really nothing else left but the motherboard and I can't afford a new one
right now.

 

[Paul]

I'll step in here with a few ideas since I've been suffering from a
weird "slow-drive" problem with a WD 2tB drive on an XP system for the
last week. First off, if one wishes to run the WDIDLE3 utility, the
easiest way is to download the ISO for the latest version of Ultimate
Boot CD and burn it to CD. It makes it easy to run the WD utility (and
dozens of others which come with it). It is insanely useful for many tasks.

Second, my problem, which I took to be my WD going into power saving
mode proved to be something else entirely. Then I though that it might
be a heat problem kicking the drive into some sort of self-protection
mode. In my case the real problem was that the SATA channel was dropping
out of fast DMA mode and into PIO mode which, for all practical
purposes, is a standstill. I verified by the old shotgun method and
swapped drives and cables and power supply and case fan and drivers.
Since I don't have a spare motherboard handy I'm going to install an
accessory card with two SATA III ports as soon as Amazon delivers it and
have some confidence that it will fix the problem. There is some chatter
online about the WD green drives being very touchy about the controller
and cables and refusing to work with some random selection of both. If
this is not a fix, there is really nothing else left but the motherboard
and I can't afford a new one right now.

You can "jumper down" a SATA III drive to SATA II. Unfortunately,
they didn't select the jumper speed to be SATA I, so the new drives
could work with old VIA based motherboards. Check to see if the
drive has a jumper position for changing the cable speed. Alternately,
cable speed can also be programmed - the Hitachi Feature Tool had
the capability to command a speed change. (I know your
drive isn't Hitachi - it's to show that changing the speed
seems to be a part of the command set. Another utility might
support such a command.)

(Feature Tool - page 22)
http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/downloads/FTool_User_Guide_215.pdf

As well, I thought there was at least one SMART parameter, that
notes transmission errors. And the error counter does not
get reset. If you move a drive, from an unreliable motherboard
to a reliable one, you'd want to write down the error count as
a baseline value. To see much later, whether the counter was
moving any more or not.

Paul

 

[John McGaw]

John McGaw wrote: snip...

You can "jumper down" a SATA III drive to SATA II. Unfortunately,
they didn't select the jumper speed to be SATA I, so the new drives
could work with old VIA based motherboards. Check to see if the
drive has a jumper position for changing the cable speed. Alternately,
cable speed can also be programmed - the Hitachi Feature Tool had
the capability to command a speed change. (I know your
drive isn't Hitachi - it's to show that changing the speed
seems to be a part of the command set. Another utility might
support such a command.)

(Feature Tool - page 22)
http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/downloads/FTool_User_Guide_215.pdf

As well, I thought there was at least one SMART parameter, that
notes transmission errors. And the error counter does not
get reset. If you move a drive, from an unreliable motherboard
to a reliable one, you'd want to write down the error count as
a baseline value. To see much later, whether the counter was
moving any more or not.

Paul

I'm just going to wait a couple of days and see what happens with the
replacement controller. Testing for the problem is a real PITA since the
only way to catch it in the act, so to speak, is to repeatedly trigger the
HDTune (free version) benchmark. When it goes it goes quite visibly, with
the graph plummeting from ~100mB/s to ~4mB/s and staying stubbornly there
until the controller channel or the disk drive (occasionally both) is
uninstalled under management console and the OS goes through rediscovery.
Then the drive goes back to where it was until the test is run anything up
to 20 more times.

I've been having a run of bad luck with computers all of a sudden. My
newest build, an i7-2600K mini-itx box popped its power supply last week
too. It had a supposedly great 450W SFX supply which was never called upon
to put out more than 150W but it lasted just a year. Totally unexpected and
SFX supplies don't just show up on every store shelf and there were
certainly none in the junk closet. On that subject I really do need to go
through the stack in there and weed out the living power supplies and send
the rest off to the recycler -- I'm getting sick of wading through them.

 

[Daniel]

"Paul" wrote in message

Hi

I have not heard any chirps from my drives.

I actually have two eSata attached Hard Drives, and I have the same
problem with both.
Both are WDC, a 2TB WDC WD20 EARS-00MWBO SCSI Disk (four equal partitions)
and a 600 GB WDC WD64 00AACS-00G8B SCSI Disk (two equal partitions)

My main Hard Drive is 1TB Hitachi HDT721010SLA SCSI Disk
Hopefully that will show what the problem could be.

Regards

Daniel

A hard drive "slowing down and stopping", can be a hardware
issue with the drive. You can use the Western Digital disk
drive test software, to determine if the drive is still
healthy.

Another source of performance issues, is actually WinXP. I've
had problems here, where after about 1TB of writes, NTFS becomes
so slow I got a "Delayed Write failure". This seems to be a function
of memory management in WinXP, but I don't have a cure for it. I
had a failure like that, when I left something running overnight.
I've also had similar symptoms, while recording from a VCR with
a WinTV card (NTFS uses more and more CPU as time goes by).

*******

The following assumes nothing in the previous paragraphs apply.

The WD20EARS is a Caviar Green. Using the feedback tab here...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=22-136-514

"d4nguy 1/9/2012 6:06:29 AM

It took months to figure out that it was the fact that these
"economical"
drives spin down when not in use to save power. This causes lag when a
file is accessed and slows everythign down."

The WD6400AACS is a Caviar Green as well.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136298

Found this.

http://community.wdc.com/t5/Desktop-Portable-Drives/Attempting-to-disable-APM-failed/td-p/417006

I can find a copy of the utility here. The deceiving part, is
they make it look like the utility only works on certain drives.

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=609&sid=113&lang=en

OK, got some different info at the top of this page.

http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=233472#p233472

"Sorry, but our agent didn't know that this policy was just changed.

Current WDIDLE3 works with the RE and GP drives listed below.

RE Drives - WD1000FYPS-01ZKB0, WD7500AYPS-01ZKB0, WD7501AYPS-01ZKB0
GP Drives - WD20EADS, WD20EARS, WD15EADS, WD15EARS, WD10EADS, WD10EARS,
WD8000AARS, WD7500AADS, WD7500AARS, WD6400AADS,
WD6400AARS, WD5000AADS, WD5000AARS

WDIDLE3
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=609&sid=113&lang=en
refers to the WD Tool

RE2GP Idle Mode Update Utility
File Name: wdidle3_1_05.zip
File Size: 170 KB
Version: N/A
Publish Date: 4/2010"

Now, that's a DOS utility, and with a DOS utility, you have to
figure out whether it'll work in a Command Prompt window,
or will only work by actually booting MSDOS. (MSDOS equivalents
exist, such as FreeDOS, so that's not as outlandish as it sounds.)

I presume what that'll do, is change the spin-down policy. Whether
they're spinning down to protect the platters, is anyone's guess.
In the past, spindown was a cheesy way to control drive temperature,
such as when a Caviar Green is used in an external enclosure without
a cooling fan. But if for some reason the platters weren't rated
for continuous service, spindown might be another solution for
that. If they allow that utility to work on a Green drive,
I'm guessing they're willing to support any extra warranty claims
that might result.

*******

If you were having problems with the Hitachi, you could use the Hitachi
Feature Tool to try changing APM. But there's no point attacking
the Caviar drives that way, unless someone else has succeeded
by using that approach.

*******

And even with all of that, you'd first want to verify it
wasn't a Power control panel setting that was spinning
down the drive. In Windows 8, when I installed Release Preview,
I had to disable the spindown feature there, in the Power schema,
because it was actually damaging data contents (causing
unnecessary CHKDSK automatic runs). Preventing spindown
in Windows 8 RP, stopped that from happening. I haven't had a
CHKDSK autorun since then.

*******

As for the reference to "SCSI" drives, you know they're not
SCSI drives. In the old days, some drivers used the pseudo-SCSI
stack on Windows, to implement a storage driver. And then, you'd
see references in Device Manager to SCSI. Windows would send a
SCSI CDB (command/data block) to the third-party storage driver,
and the driver would convert it to an ATA command of some sort.

A second reference to SCSI, can come about from SAS equipment.
As in Serial Attached SCSI. SAS uses the same cabling as SATA,
but the protocol has differences. In the article here, it
suggests a SAS hardware controller, can work with SATA drives.
But such a thing on desktop systems isn't too common, so I'll
assume the reference is instead coming from the way the driver
is designed (pseudo-SCSI). Perhaps even, a side effect of selecting
AHCI mode ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_attached_SCSI

"SAS controllers may connect to SATA devices, either directly
connected using native SATA protocol or through SAS expanders
using SATA Tunneled Protocol (STP)."

In any case, your drives aren't the "old fashioned, fat cable SCSI".

Paul

Hi Paul, I did post this on Google Groups but it did not seem to come
through on my reader, so in case you did not get the message. here it is.

Thanks,

I will go through this in a couple of days, I am working at the moment.

Cheers

Daniel

 

[Daniel]

Hi

How do I create a Bootable CD-RW that contains WDIDLE3.exe

I know how to burn a CD but do not know how to make it Bootable.

Thanks

Daniel

 

[John McGaw]

Hi

How do I create a Bootable CD-RW that contains WDIDLE3.exe

I know how to burn a CD but do not know how to make it Bootable.

Thanks

Daniel

From my reply of the 19th:

"First off, if one wishes to run the WDIDLE3 utility, the easiest way is to
download the ISO for the latest version of Ultimate Boot CD and burn it to
CD. It makes it easy to run the WD utility (and dozens of others which come
with it). It is insanely useful for many tasks."

This is really a very easy thing to do and should take maybe 15 minutes
from start to finish. You can download the ISO file from
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html (about 370mb IIRC) and then use
your burning software to put the file on a CD. What you will have is a
bare-bones Linux OS running out of CD and memory which is able to do things
that a Windows setup cannot accomplish. Just boot your system from the CD
and you have access to WDIDLE3 and probably 100 more useful things for
fixing screwed up computers. (but be a bit selective because some of the
useful things can cause you problems if used willy-nilly).

I'll warn you right up front, I doubt that this is going to be a fix for
your problem. The utility was put out for those worried that all of the
head parking that the default firmware in the WD green drives was doing was
somehow wearing them out prematurely and this seems a specious argument. In
any case, once the heads are unparked on one of these drives they remain
that way for a while as long as the drive is being accessed and will not
contribute to slow performance.

If you look at my reply you will see what my problem turned to be and it
was an insidious one -- the SATA channel was dropping from normal DMA mode
down to PIO mode which is maybe 25 times slower. This sounds more like what
you described but it is easy to check from inside Device Manager by looking
at the details of what mode each "IDE ATA/ATAPI" controller is running it.
If you find that the channel for your problem drive says PIO mode then
you've got your problem identified. Fixing it may not be so easy. Mine
surely wasn't...

 

[Paul]

Hi

How do I create a Bootable CD-RW that contains WDIDLE3.exe

I know how to burn a CD but do not know how to make it Bootable.

Thanks

Daniel

They used a USB flash key here. As far as I can remember, if
you use a USB key, and the formatter tool insists on some FAT12
or FAT16 file system, there is a 2GB limit. It's one of the
reasons, years ago, I had to drive off to the computer store
and buy a 1GB flash key (just try and find one of those now!).
Apparently it's not possible for the clever programmers, to
just ignore any space above 2GB.

http://www.storagereview.com/how_to...igital_2tb_caviar_green_wd20ears_with_wdidle3

There are several versions of the HP Formatter. Some
come with DOS files. This is a relatively large download,
to get a formatter. But still, a worthwhile tool. Inside
is SP33221.

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsuppor...D=1093&swLang=13&taskId=135&swItem=wk-41329-1

The useful bits from that, ended up like this on my hard drive.
You install the HPFOrmatter, and that creates the drivekey folder,
and then I moved over the FREEDOS folder I think, so they'd be close
together.

C:\drivekey
FREEDOS
COMMAND.COM 86KB
KERNEL.SYS 44KB
HPUSBF.EXE
HPUSBFW.EXE
EULA_SP33221.doc
Readme.txt --->

"To make an HP Flash Disk bootable, install the "HP USB Disk
Storage Format Tool", HPUSBFormatter.exe. After the Format Tool
has been installed execute the application; by default it is
located in c:\DriveKey\HPUSBFW.EXE. Choose to "Create a DOS
startup disk" and select the FREEDOS folder from this Softpaq
as the location in the field "using DOS system files located at".
After the format has completed and the disk is bootable, copy
the contents of the DOSFLASH folder onto the Flash drive and follow
the DOSFLASH instructions to flash the video BIOS."

Those instructions, are because that package is actually a video card
flasher, and making a DOS disk is part of supporting the DOSFLASH
package. But a person can still use the USB formatter, for making
FAT12 or FAT16 small bootable USB flash keys. Note that the StorageReview
article claims FreeDOS doesn't work for WDIDLE3, for whatever that's
worth. So while you'd add SP33221 from HP to your collection, it
might not be the best choice based on feedback from the storagereview
article.

If you want a boot CD, there's this one.

http://www.infocellar.com/CD/Boot-CD.htm
( http://www.infocellar.com/CD/files/Win98-BootCD.zip )

(Virustotal scans clean...)
https://www.virustotal.com/file/0df...50177515b0f65ab62599faa6/analysis/1348362583/

And Seatools For DOS, I think there is a CD version of
that as well, and it has a DOS core. That might be FreeDOS
based.

Other choices include things like DRDOS. I think I have
at least one floppy with that on it here, but I don't
remember what package it came from.

To be able to execute the WDIDLE3 program, you arrange it
to be sitting on a FAT32 partition on the hard drive. I have
several FAT32 partitions. They're visible, for example,
from my Win98 prepared boot floppy, and I can change
directories to another partition (as long s it's not NTFS)
and then run a program from there.

Putting the WDIDLE3 program on a FAT32 partition, is so
you don't have to "edit" an ISO9660 file and add the program
to the boot disc image. You don't really want to do that.
Too much work.

There are probably versions of DOS kicking around, which do not
have support for FAT32, and in such a case, you'd need some
tool which can format a storage device in FAT12 or FAT16.
The HP Formatter was one example, for USB keys.

If the DOS boot disk you end up with, understands FAT32,
then you can leave a copy of WDIDLE3.exe on some FAT32 partition
and change drive letters so you can run it when the DOS prompt
shows up.

A perfect project, to waste a Saturday on...

Paul

 

[Daniel]

"Paul" wrote in message

Hi

How do I create a Bootable CD-RW that contains WDIDLE3.exe

I know how to burn a CD but do not know how to make it Bootable.

Thanks

Daniel

They used a USB flash key here. As far as I can remember, if
you use a USB key, and the formatter tool insists on some FAT12
or FAT16 file system, there is a 2GB limit. It's one of the
reasons, years ago, I had to drive off to the computer store
and buy a 1GB flash key (just try and find one of those now!).
Apparently it's not possible for the clever programmers, to
just ignore any space above 2GB.

http://www.storagereview.com/how_to...igital_2tb_caviar_green_wd20ears_with_wdidle3

There are several versions of the HP Formatter. Some
come with DOS files. This is a relatively large download,
to get a formatter. But still, a worthwhile tool. Inside
is SP33221.

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsuppor...D=1093&swLang=13&taskId=135&swItem=wk-41329-1

The useful bits from that, ended up like this on my hard drive.
You install the HPFOrmatter, and that creates the drivekey folder,
and then I moved over the FREEDOS folder I think, so they'd be close
together.

C:\drivekey
FREEDOS
COMMAND.COM 86KB
KERNEL.SYS 44KB
HPUSBF.EXE
HPUSBFW.EXE
EULA_SP33221.doc
Readme.txt --->

"To make an HP Flash Disk bootable, install the "HP USB Disk
Storage Format Tool", HPUSBFormatter.exe. After the Format Tool
has been installed execute the application; by default it is
located in c:\DriveKey\HPUSBFW.EXE. Choose to "Create a DOS
startup disk" and select the FREEDOS folder from this Softpaq
as the location in the field "using DOS system files located at".
After the format has completed and the disk is bootable, copy
the contents of the DOSFLASH folder onto the Flash drive and follow
the DOSFLASH instructions to flash the video BIOS."

Those instructions, are because that package is actually a video card
flasher, and making a DOS disk is part of supporting the DOSFLASH
package. But a person can still use the USB formatter, for making
FAT12 or FAT16 small bootable USB flash keys. Note that the StorageReview
article claims FreeDOS doesn't work for WDIDLE3, for whatever that's
worth. So while you'd add SP33221 from HP to your collection, it
might not be the best choice based on feedback from the storagereview
article.

If you want a boot CD, there's this one.

http://www.infocellar.com/CD/Boot-CD.htm
( http://www.infocellar.com/CD/files/Win98-BootCD.zip )

(Virustotal scans clean...)
https://www.virustotal.com/file/0df...50177515b0f65ab62599faa6/analysis/1348362583/

And Seatools For DOS, I think there is a CD version of
that as well, and it has a DOS core. That might be FreeDOS
based.

Other choices include things like DRDOS. I think I have
at least one floppy with that on it here, but I don't
remember what package it came from.

To be able to execute the WDIDLE3 program, you arrange it
to be sitting on a FAT32 partition on the hard drive. I have
several FAT32 partitions. They're visible, for example,
from my Win98 prepared boot floppy, and I can change
directories to another partition (as long s it's not NTFS)
and then run a program from there.

Putting the WDIDLE3 program on a FAT32 partition, is so
you don't have to "edit" an ISO9660 file and add the program
to the boot disc image. You don't really want to do that.
Too much work.

There are probably versions of DOS kicking around, which do not
have support for FAT32, and in such a case, you'd need some
tool which can format a storage device in FAT12 or FAT16.
The HP Formatter was one example, for USB keys.

If the DOS boot disk you end up with, understands FAT32,
then you can leave a copy of WDIDLE3.exe on some FAT32 partition
and change drive letters so you can run it when the DOS prompt
shows up.

A perfect project, to waste a Saturday on...

Paul

Okay, thanks so much for all your help, there is a lot to digest and
I have to go away for four six days, I will get back to it as soon as I am
back.

Regards

Daniel

 

[GMAN]

They used a USB flash key here. As far as I can remember, if
you use a USB key, and the formatter tool insists on some FAT12
or FAT16 file system, there is a 2GB limit. It's one of the
reasons, years ago, I had to drive off to the computer store
and buy a 1GB flash key (just try and find one of those now!).
Apparently it's not possible for the clever programmers, to
just ignore any space above 2GB.

No, you dont need a flash drive smaller than 2GB, you just need to keep the
partiion you are going to use to boot at 2GB


I use a 32GB flash drive for a utilities drive and i have a small 2GB
partition setup to boot for this very reason.

 

[Paul]

No, you dont need a flash drive smaller than 2GB, you just need to keep the
partiion you are going to use to boot at 2GB


I use a 32GB flash drive for a utilities drive and i have a small 2GB
partition setup to boot for this very reason.

I'm saying the HP Formatter (quite popular in some circles),
when it sees a USB flash drive, it erases everything, and then
freaks out if the drive capacity is above 2GB.

It's possible to do formatting at least, in Linux, and achieve
a small partition on a large storage device. So that part of it,
isn't a challenge.

But then, part of what the HP Formatter does, is install
some kind of boot block. Exactly what, I haven't checked to
see. Presumably something intended to make a DOS OS boot.

Paul

 

[GMAN]

I'm saying the HP Formatter (quite popular in some circles),
when it sees a USB flash drive, it erases everything, and then
freaks out if the drive capacity is above 2GB.

It's possible to do formatting at least, in Linux, and achieve
a small partition on a large storage device. So that part of it,
isn't a challenge.

But then, part of what the HP Formatter does, is install
some kind of boot block. Exactly what, I haven't checked to
see. Presumably something intended to make a DOS OS boot.

Paul

Although i have used the HP formatter for flash drives, theyre are lots of
other utilities that are out there for flash drive formatting do not freak
out on large sizes