ZoneMinder Forums

Recently i upgrade a zoneminder installation with a 1.0 terabyte harddisk (WD10EARS) and added 2 more cameras. The performance became horrible so i bought a new motherboard and a faster processor (Dual core) but same thing.
I installed Pclos and zoneminder 1.24.1 and the performance was worst. The CPU usage went to 12.0 sometimes and the hardisk was constantly running.
I did a "updatedb" and after 15 minutes it had not finished so i aborted it.
Then installed Mandriva 2009 and zoneminder 1.23.3. The performance was better but never like the one i had with the older computer with Mandriva 2007 and ZM 1.22.
Yesterday i tried to copy from a old sata disk drive 100gb of data to another WD10EARS (1 terabyte) and this morning it had copied only 50gb. Then i asked myself. Why so slow?
Then wrote on Google "Slow performance WD 10 EARS" and there was the cause.
This harddisk are energy savers so they suspend after a few second of inativity also the way they has to be partitioned is unusual.
If anyone has a similar drive should read this http://www.linuxconfig.org/linux-wd-ear ... ced-format and http://community.wdc.com/t5/Desktop/Pro ... 395/page/2.

That's quite interesting, and enough for me to strike WD off my manufacturer list for the time being. Thanks for posting.

had a simmaler problem with a seagate external drive.

power save can be disable though hdpram comand.
I don't remember the full command.

just found that Western Digital has released a CD iso thta is bootable and has the needed utilities to align the partitions.

Look for it here

http://support.wdc.com/product/downloadsw.asp?sid=122

The utility to align heads is only for W$ndows. I DO NOT USE WINDOWS AT ALL. A few weeks ago i reformat the HD following guides that found on Internet for Linux but same thing. Also the harddisk light of the computer spend a lot of time on and the cpu load raised over 6.0 frequently. I experiences lost of data and sometimes the computer freezed.
Today i decided to replace the HD with a Hitachi 1TB. Copied evething except events because it took more than a hour to copy 7gb. So this is not a new installation. Every thing is the same except the HD.
The difference in performance is amaizing. CPU load less than 2.0 (this is a dual core) and no more large periods of HD activity.
DO NOT BUY WD10EARS.