Idle3-tools provides a linux/unix utility that can disable, get and set the value of the infamous idle3 timer found on recent Western Digital Hard Disk Drives.

It can be used as an alternative to the official wdidle3.exe proprietary utility, without the need to reboot in a DOS environment.

A power off/on cycle of the drive will still be mandatory for new settings to be taken into account.

Modern Western Digital "Green" Drives include the Intellipark feature that stops the disk when not in use.

Unfortunately, the default timer setting is not perfect on linux/unix systems, including many NAS, and leads to a dramatic increase of the Load Cycle Count value (SMART attribute #193). With the default timer setting, the drive will spin down *every eight seconds* if idle and this may get the spindle motor to burn out in a few months or so.

If you have a Western Digital EADS or EARS drive, please check you SMART information before it's too late by running the following command:

sudo smartctl -A /dev/sda | grep "^193"

If the Load cycle count (which is in the last column) exceeds 1000, you're probably affected by the idle3 timer problem.