Western Digital Gold appears to go to sleep minutes after last use

[c627627]

I own a WD 16TB SATA 7200 RPM mechanical hard drive WD161KRYZ.

A short time after last activity on the drive, I click to access it, and instead of instantaneous access, I hear it start to spin, as if it spinned down to sleep.
I tried WD official support who told me that WD Gold drives are enterprise class SATA HDD, specifically designed for use in enterprise-class storage systems and data centers and optimize your storage for your business with a full portfolio in capacities up to 22TB. I don't think my using it on a personal desktop means it should exhibit these symptoms?

How can you tell if a drive goes to sleep minutes after last activity?
Do constant spin downs / spin ups reduce the lifetime of my drive?

 

[EarthDog]

Curious, how long is 'a short time after last activity on the drive'?

With the information we have, it seems like normal behavior. I've only dealt with WD Black, Green, and Blue drives though. AFAIK, all(?) drives (maybe not those 'surveillance' ones?) are designed spin down after XX amount of time. But it depends on your Windows power plan settings. For the High Performance plan, the default setting (W11) is 20 mins for a HDD to sleep. Check in w/e power plan your using and raise the time for HDDs to sleep. Not sure what the maximum is, but my OS accepted 9999 minutes which is something like 166 hours/several days if I mathed right.

As far as constant spin down/up, I don't know. Logic tells me the less start/stop cycles there are, the better off you'll be... but on the other hand, running '24/7' would increase the stress on a motor that isn't supposed to be running constantly too.

And, LOL @ WD...that's a line from the webpage, not an answer to a question, lol! What, exactly, did you ask them to get that response?!!

 

[WhitehawkEQ]

Your HDD's will last longer if you put them to sleep after so many mins of non use, like Earthdog said check your OS power settings and set it for a longer time to go to sleep. I use 15 mis before my HDD's go to sleep.

Do constant spin downs / spin ups reduce the lifetime of my drive? No

 

[c627627]

I was not able to attach this screen shot to my post originally, it was a problem which ATMINSIDE fixed.
For which I thank him.

Is there another place where it is determined if Hard Drives spin down, other than this:




Before posting, I of course researched the issue, and the OS power setting was to blame in some other cases.
But as you can see above, it is set to Never, I turn the PC off every night.

Elsewhere it was frequently mentioned that physical SPIN DOWN and SPIN UP, in other words HD off/on frequency does affect the expected lifetime before failure.


I described the problem to Western Digital as I did in my original post.
WD also told me that "WD Gold drive does not have sleep setting ON out of the box."

Since my system has a WD Black which is always instantaneously accessible, we have a control HD in my case, which proves that Windows is not putting the HDs to sleep.

Since WD Gold waits a few seconds [I hear it start to spin] after which everything is accessible instantaneously, we clearly have a situation where ONLY WD GOLD is affected.
I did try different SATA cable/ports of course.


This is not normal, correct? This has NOTHING to do with this drive being "enterprise class SATA HDD, specifically designed for use in enterprise-class storage systems and data centers" - correct?

 

[EarthDog]

Thanks for the additional information. It's certainly helpful in troubleshooting this issue.

This is not normal, correct? This has NOTHING to do with this drive being "enterprise class SATA HDD, specifically designed for use in enterprise-class storage systems and data centers" - correct?

With the new details above/since it's not the power settings/time out, I'd have WD explain what that actually means. Be direct - ask them if the Golds are supposed to spin down and ignore Windows power plans for the hard disk. The disk itself may have some logic to spin down... but, that seems counterintuitive?

"enterprise-class storage systems and data centers" is pretty generic. Working in DCs for almost 20 years prior to what I do now, there were various drives in various machines, it just depends on what the function of the machine was as to what drives could go in them. So, yes, I'd reach out to WD again with more pointed questions to see if you can get an actual answer (assuming someone here doesn't randomly know, of course).

 

[freakdiablo]

I did some quick looking too. Found one post where WD replied saying RMA the drive...? That doesn't make much sense either. Almost makes me think firmware version comes into play, with some versions having a spindown time hardcoded in so it ignores the OS settings.

 

[unsafesteagle]

This reminds me of TrueNAS Operating System with HDD's remain spinning. They can be heard with the naked ear constantly spinning.

Another issue is a dozen or so sectors fail health check. HDD remains usable years altho a dozen sectors failed, remain in the logs/notifications.

Low end HDD's

 

[c627627]

After several days, a WD Level-2 technician got involved, and said:

"Please let us know if you have you tried taking backup of the data and formatting the drive and then checking drive if it shows same behaviour?"


Erm.... it's a 16 TB drive, they want me to nuke it just to see if it'll fix a spindown issue.

 

[freakdiablo]

"Yeah sure. Just send me another 16tb drive to back up to and I'll let you know in a week or so."

 

[c627627]

Yheah, really.


Level 2 tech said [get this]:

"Also, If possible could you check with computer manufacture if the 16TB drive is compatible with your computer specification as WD GOLD 16TB is a very high capacity drive and may require higher RAM or require power to RUN smoothly.

As in many cases higher capacity drive tend to spin down to save energy."


To which I thought of asking wuutt!?


But instead I asked more clearly:


Could you please escalate to higher level support and investigate to give me an answer to my question, is there anything inside my WD Gold telling my WD Gold when to spin down, other than Windows OS power settings, which are operating system settings that affect every hard drive. In other words, what do you mean by "higher capacity drive tend to spin down to save energy."

Are you saying that if Windows is set to Turn off hard disk after: NEVER
even then, Western Digital 16TB Gold Drive will spin down to save energy?
So again, is there anything inside my WD Gold Firmware that tells the drive to spin down. If yes, after how long? How can I tell? Where is this setting telling my WD Gold to spin down and ignore my Windows power setting set to NEVER?

 

[=XAF=AfterShock]

I have a 2TB WD gold and it does the same thing, a few minutes after boot you can hear the drive spin down, tried it in a synology nas that was set to never sleep and 4 min of no activity the drive would spin down but the disk light was still illuminated. I found the only thing this drive is useful for is in an external enclosure for backups and off otherwise.

 

[c627627]

I know. I am not alone.
I just turned down Western Digital's offer for a replacement and decided to push instead to talk to the higher ups about why this is happening.
This is their response:

Since you wish to get the case escalated, please help us with the below details for our team to get to root cause of the issue.

MSinfo

1) Please press Windows Key + the letter "R" on your keyboard to bring up the to open the Run command window
2) Type "msinfo32" in the Open field and left-click OK
3) While viewing the Microsoft System Information summary, go to File then choose Save (Please do not use Export)
4) Save your MSINFO32 report as "msinfo32.nfo" on your desktop to easily locate it after. It can take up to a minute to generate a report.

Event Viewer Log


Also, provide us the Event Viewer Log. To get the event viewer log please refer to the steps below:
1. Open the Start Menu, type eventvwr.msc, and press Enter.
2. If you are logged in as an administrator and prompted by UAC, then click on Yes.
3. In the left pane, expand the Windows Logs and Left click on Application. The log will be visible in Middle Pane.
4. You can click on Save Selected Events in the Right Pane and choose the destination to save the file.
Below is the link attached to Collect Logs Microsoft Event Viewer
https://support-en.wd.com/app/answers/detailweb/a_id/15195/kw/Event%20Viewer%20Log

Please upload the logs to the online account like Google drive, drop box or One Drive and make sure the link is not password protected and share the link with us so that we can forward the case to our to review it further.

We will waiting for an update. Thank you for your kind cooperation.

If I were a hiring IT boss, this would be my interview question today:
I would look a job applicant straight in the eye and tell them they have 5 (five) seconds to answer a true or false question:

"Western Digital hd require higher RAM or require power to RUN smoothly."

TRUE!? Or FALSE?!
Then I would make this sound: tick-tock-tick-tock.
TRUE OR FALSE!!?


[If HR complained I would show them the screen shot from Western Digital.]

 

[freakdiablo]

Should write them back - "where's the Windows button on a TRS-80?"

Apparently that's what they think you're running...

 

[c627627]

If the Windows Key-less IBM 42H1292 didn't go out on me I would still be using it, I actually bought two or three 20+ years ago which I used until relatively recently. For real.

I replaced it with one of the best keyboards money can buy, the Das Keyboard X50Q.

Edit: I just saw they released a new Das Keyboard 6. Wow $200 with USB-C ports. Nice.


Overclockers said https://www.overclockers.com/a-real-keyboard/ is a REAL Keyboard.

 

[WhitehawkEQ]

Should write them back - "where's the Windows button on a TRS-80?"

Apparently that's what they think you're running...

Hey, that was my 1st computer

 

[c627627]

Woe, you got me beat, mine was Commodore 64.

What did you use it for?

 

[WhitehawkEQ]

Woe, you got me beat, mine was Commodore 64.

What did you use it for?

Mostly games, did a little programing, hardware hacking/mods I have the schematics for it.

 

[ssjwizard]

My first was also a TRS-80 but a different model.
I had this one

 

[unsafesteagle]

If i remember correct truenas has more specific smart test options and also noise n power states.

Playing around with those I believe I was able to correct the hdd spinning issue.
The dozen or so corrupt sectors I was not able to locate a solution.

That was my experience.

 

[c627627]

I look forward to pursuing this with Western Digital advanced level of support, since this has been reported sporadically, but no one has ever pushed this with the manufacturer.

I will, and will post progress here.