idle3ctl (8)

idle3ctl [ flags ] [device] ..

idle3ctl can disable, get and set the value of the infamous idle3 timer found on recent Western Digital Hard Disk Drives. Idle3ctl can be used as an alternative to the official wdidle3.exe proprietary utility, without the need to reboot in a DOS environement. Idle3ctl is an independant project, unrelated in any way to Western Digital Corp.

THIS SOFTWARE IS EXPERIMENTAL, NOT WELL TESTED AND ACCESSES LOW LEVEL INFORMATION OF YOUR HARDDRIVE. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

When no flags are given, -g is assumed.

-h

Display help

-V

Show version and exit

-v

activate verbose output, mainly useful for debugging.

--force

force execution even if no Western Digital HDD are detected

-g

get raw idle3 timer value

-g100

get idle3 timer value as wdidle3 v1.00 would display it

-g103

get idle3 timer value as wdidle3 v1.03 would display it

-d

disable idle3 timer

-s<value>

set idle3 timer raw value. Value must be an integer between 1 and 255. The idle3 timer is set in 0.1s for the 1-128 range, and in 30s for the 129-255 range.

Please report any bugs on the sourceforge tracker at https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=329372&atid=1381968

idle3ctl will return zero on success and non zero on failure.

idle3ctl has been written by Christophe Bothamy <cbothamy at users.sf.net>.

http://idle3-tools.sourceforce.net Idle3-tools website

http://www.wdc.com/

Western Digital website