MyBook Essential - Green Inside?

WD External and Portable SSD External SSD for Windows
1

I’m wondering whether the hard drive inside a MyBook Essential comes from the WD green family of drives.

I’m concerned about this because I’ve been using my MyBook as the main storage drive for an ARM based Linux server (a Sheevaplug, if you’ve heard of them), and SMART utilities are showing that, in less than a year, I have logged 262,000 Load/Unload Cycles. My understanding is that a standard hard drive has a design life of 300,000 to 600,000 Load/Unload Cycles, so getting that many in less than a year is a significant problem. However, I’ve also read that the WD Green drives can log around 1.5 million cycles, in which case this wouldn’t be something to worry about.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

2

After some more research, I haven’t been able to find the 1.5 million cycles figure anywhere else, so I’m not sure whether that’s valid. It seems like I should be using ‘hdparm’ to adjust the APM settings and keep my drive from parking the heads so much whether it’s a WD Green drive or not.

3

Well, to answer your original question, at least one of my 3 1TB MyBook Essentials drives is a Caviar Green inside, but don’t tell WD I said that. :wink:

… not that one’s had it’s case popped open or anything like that. :smileyvery-happy:

Ok, so I’m the kind of guy for whom “no user servicable parts inside” is a dare.