How to read LCC (Load Cycle Count) of your hard drive: click
Power consumption is one of the hot topics currently being discussed in today’s hard drive market. Manufacturers are looking at many ways to cut down on power draw; either by decreasing spindle speed or in some cases having aggressive head parking (about every 8 seconds). Drives that support these newer power modes, may have excessive head parking. I will describe now how to disable this power profile on Western Digital hard drives.
1 Download WDidle3
2 Download Rufus
3 Run Rufus, to make a bootable USB Key (to boot into a DOS environment).
Your computer must support booting from a USB device in order to boot from the USB Memory Key.
4 When you're finished, copy wdidle3.exe to your bootable USB key.
5 Enter BIOS and change boot priority to USB device.
The system should boot directly into the DOS prompt from that key you've just made.
6 Type wdidle.exe /r
This will give you a readout of the drive model, serial and the current timer if the drive is supported
7 Type wdidle3 /s300
to set the timer to 300 seconds (5 Minutes)
.. or ..
Type wdidle.exe /d
to completely disable the timer
Restart your system and enjoy your quiet hard drive(s)
Thanks very much to Rey for his help solving this annoying issue
- WD30EZRX and aggressive head parking
- The better hard drive: WD Red - WD10EFRX, WD20EFRX & WD30EFRX
By the way, with the WD SpinUp Utility you can configure the spin up current of your Western Digital Green Power drive(s) to low or super low.
1 Please ensure that any important data is backed up from the hard drive
2 Download the wdspinup firmware for the update
3 copy wdspinup.exe onto your bootable USB key
4 Boot the system with the hard drive to be updated to the USB key
5 Run the file by typing wdspinup.exe at the command prompt and press enter
6 The screen will bring up the WD Spinup Options:7 Type in the Option you want and press Enter. When it has successfully completed, it will show that it has been updated to the new mode
- R Report spinup mode
- L Set to low current spinup mode
- S Set to super low current spinup mode
- ? This help info
8 Once completed, remove your boot media and reboot your system.