Let the numbers speak for themselves, from what I read the Load_Cycle_Count which is very high (more than 500,000/half a million times) is the number of head parks.  What a stupid "Green" design and design flaw which will probably mean an early life for the drive.

This is almost as silly as Seagate's new reputation for BSY/poor quality disks since the 7200.11 series.

To make it worse this is also when Western Digital introduced "Advanced Format" or short for "big pain/slow performance" feature that no one asked for.

Why should a special utility/specific sector be required for the disc to work properly?

I have several of these 2TB EARS Western Digitals and it's not easy or practical for most to update the firmware either, nor is it easy or practical to reformat so many systems.

I'll spend the extra money and go Hitachi from now on, this is a big blunder from Western Digital.  It has seriously affected my work with all the lag these drives have.

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model:     WDC WD20EARS-00S8B1
Serial Number:    WD-WCAVY
Firmware Version: 80.00A80
User Capacity:    2,000,398,934,016 bytes
Device is:        Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is:   8
ATA Standard is:  Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is:    Tue Nov 30 09:21:54 2010 CST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x82)    Offline data collection activity
                    was completed without error.
                    Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.
Self-test execution status:      (   0)    The previous self-test routine completed
                    without error or no self-test has ever
                    been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection:          (43200) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities:              (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
                    Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
                    Suspend Offline collection upon new
                    command.
                    Offline surface scan supported.
                    Self-test supported.
                    Conveyance Self-test supported.
                    Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:            (0x0003)    Saves SMART data before entering
                    power-saving mode.
                    Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:        (0x01)    Error logging supported.
                    General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time:      (   2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time:      ( 255) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time:      (   5) minutes.
SCT capabilities:            (0x3031)    SCT Status supported.
                    SCT Feature Control supported.
                    SCT Data Table supported.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   200   200   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   168   164   021    Pre-fail  Always       -       8566
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       15
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x002e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   094   094   000    Old_age   Always       -       4808
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0032   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       13
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       12
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   015   015   000    Old_age   Always       -       555565
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   109   101   000    Old_age   Always       -       43
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   200   200   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0008   200   200   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0

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