The firewalls here are in the sitting room as that is where the two internet modems are sited - ADSL 2+ and Cable. Both systems are small and use laptop size drives to reduce heat and noise - one master system having an SSD and a slave system with a WDC 2.5" Scorpio Blue.

Was aware of the retract problem with WDC Green drives - should have occurred to me that a laptop drive would have the same method of power saving - advantageous in a laptop to extend battery life.

Since the drive has been running for several years - decided to check it out with the smart long test...

It has now run close to 6 years
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 029 029 000 Old_age Always - 52199

and this is good :-

196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0

199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0009   200   200   051    Pre-fail  Offline      -       0

and the long test Completed without error

However... this came as a shock
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 001 001 000 Old_age Always - 817094

The drive is only rated for 600000 according to the WDC specification...

The solution?
As all my systems have the development tools installed...
1. Downloaded idle3-tools source from http://idle3-tools.sourceforge.net/ and compiled/installed
2. Ran "idle3ctl -d /dev/sda" to disable the automatic retract
3. Powered down the system (necessary for the change to activate)
4. Powered up and checked using "idle3ctl -g /dev/sda"

Happily the result was "Idle3 timer is disabled" - let's see if we can squeeze a few more years from this drive