Hello World! :-)
I chose to write my post (and the
future posts too) in English due to the fact that quite most of the
readers aren't from Italy.
This time I'm writing how to save
(almost a bit!) the life of our precious WD Caviar Green HDs.
The main issue is the Western Digital choice to park the disk's heads every 8 seconds: it is good for the energy saving task but it will short the life of the disk too!
To avoid it all you need:
- to be root (log-in as root or execute the command sudo su)
- the hdparm program installed (as root: apt-get install hdparm)
The first solution is from Western Digital and act to disable
permanently the Advanced Power Management:
# echo “hdparm -B 255 /dev/sdX”
>> /etc/rc.local
Personally I don't like this solution
because even if results in no load/unload cycles the hd will use more
power (it means more heat!)
The second solution is to disable
only the time-parking function:
# ech “hdparm -S 242
/dev/sdX” >> /etc/rc.local
I'm using the second one together with the noatime option in etc/fstab
Repeat it (with the right letter instead ox X - sda, sdb, sdc, ...) for every WD Green drive you have.
You have to do only once because every boot the system will execute the rc.local list of commands.