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Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2010 20:11:27 +0100
From: Michiel Boland <michiel@boland.org>
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To: "Aravind K. Mikkilineni" <amikkili@ecn.purdue.edu>
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Cc: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: intellipark leads to high load cycle count
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Aravind K. Mikkilineni wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Mar 2010 Michiel Boland <michiel@boland.org> wrote
> 
>> Hi. I have one of those new green WD HDs with Intellipark, that is, they  
>> like to park their heads every 8 seconds. As a result the load cycle count 
>> grows at an alarming rate. (If I understand correctly this number should not 
>> exceed about 300k or so.)
>>
>> Is there any way to turn off or increase the 8-second timeout? Or do I have 
>> to bin the disk and use something better?
> 
> I have some older GP drives which do not seem to ever park their heads. The 
> newer GP drives I have behave as you described.
> 
> I have had success either turning off the head parking or greatly reducing it 
> by doing 'hdparm -S 0 -B 254 <device>'. Either '-B 254' or -B 255' depending 
> on the drive.

I guess 'hdparm -B' is equivalent to 'ataidle -P'? In this case I'm out of luck:

# ataidle -P 254 /dev/ad4
ataidle: the device does not support advanced power management

Cheers
Michiel