Originally Posted By: mlord

All I can say on this, is that WD likes to "unload the heads" after 8-seconds of inactivity, and then place the drives into a lower power state. They call this the "Idle 3" state.
(...)
I googled for it here, and found wdidle3-1.03.zip for my 1.5TB drive. I used this to reset the "idle 3" timeout from 8-seconds to 30-seconds on my own drive, at my own risk.

WDIDLE3 /S30

There's a help file in the .zip archive explaining the various command options.

Cheers

Mark,

I've now also bought one of those WD20EARS drives, as per you recommendation. I now need to change this idle head park default. I've found the wdidle3 program (a newer version than the one you're mentioning even, the wdidle3-1_05.zip, new since last month).

Now, I've noticed this utility also give you the option to disable the timer completely. Would you recommend this? Or would you still prefer having it changed to 30 seconds instead? What are the benefits of using this timer? Less risk of disk damage when an idle pc is bumped into? Less power consumption? Or something else?
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