Subj : Preventative Wear Leveling
To   : All
From : poindexter FORTRAN
Date : Sun Aug 17 2025 07:58:03

My Synology NAS has made an annoying clunk every 5 seconds, associated
with all of the drive activity lights flickering. I thought cache writes
were causing it, but after disabling write caching, it still happens.

Doing some research, it sounds like WD drives and some other brands to
something called PWL, or preventative wear leveling.

Apparently, when the drives are idle, the firmware moves the head across
the disk to keep the lubrication spread and avoid a stiction issue.

That's an admirable effort, but every 5 seconds? Come on...


 
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