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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