[Tfug] WD "green"

[Harry McGregor]

Hi,

There are some known issues with the WD Green line.

In many releases the firmware is too eager to spin down the drive for
power savings.  There are some utilities to run that can "fix" the
firmware setting.

That being said, I don't see many of them, as I don't use them myself. 
If I need a low speed bulk drive, I try and use the HGST 5K series (now
owned by WD).

I have friends that have had >50% failure rates on the WD greens over
the course of 3 years with default configuration.

Also a lot of the green drives are 4K "Advanced format" drives, that
require you to be extra careful on your partition alignment.

-Harry

On 2/21/14 6:41 PM, Bexley Hall wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Any (bad) experience with WD "green power" drives?
> I've got a 500G SATA that seems to be having issues.
> This will be my first experience with a 3" drive
> going south (if that proves to be the case) so I
> am reluctant to *assume* the drive is at fault
> (I'll move it into another machine and take a few pokes
> at it)
>
> Thx,
> --don
>
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