ST2000DL003 Compatibility?

The ST2000DL003 is on the Ultra plus compatibility list now.

Just picked up two for my forth-coming Ultra 4 Plus! I like the idea of having a newer drive model (vs. the EADS) for future availability when one inevitably fails!

jbaum wrote:
The ST2000DL003 is on the Ultra plus compatibility list now.

The ultra plus series does not appear on the compatibility list yet??? Am I missing something?

I guess they must be looking at the Ultra list and assuming it applies to the Ultra Plus as well.

djsloan wrote:
jbaum wrote: The ST2000DL003 is on the Ultra plus compatibility list now. The ultra plus series does not appear on the compatibility list yet??? Am I missing something?

Good question. I will take a look for everyone.

I have a netgear readynas NV+ with 4 x 2TB ST32000542AS in Raid X

In the past month or so i've had Smart errors on one of them specifically:

"Sun Feb 13 04:00:04 EST 2011 Reallocated sector count has increased in the last day. Disk 2: Previous count: 18 Current count: 21 Growing SMART errors indicate a disk that may fail soon. If the errors continue to increase, you should be prepared to replace the disk."

So rather then face a total disk failure later, i tried looking for the past month in Australia for a replacement ST32000542AS, well none could be found. I've been keeping my eye out on this thread and saw the ST2000DL003 made it on the HCL so i took the risk and bought one (ST2000DL003). Last night I pulled out disk2 (failing one), and swapped with ST2000DL003. It immediate saw the drive, it matched the "usable GB" count and corresponding resynced. Its now finished resyncing and all is good. (according to the readynas anyway).

I believe the ST2000DL003 is a 4k sector disk. If partitions are not aligned properly you may notice poor write performance. On Sparc ReadyNAS (e.g. NV+) to get 4k sector alignment you need to backup all data, upgrade to RAIDiator 4.1.7 and do a factory default. See http://www.readynas.com/RAIDiator_4_1_7_Notes

Recommended procedure is:
1. Backup all data
2. Verify backup is good
3. Upgrade to latest RAIDiator (currently 4.1.7: http://www.readynas.com/RAIDiator_4_1_7_Notes)
4. Do a System > Config Backup
5. Power down
6. Put new disks in the NAS (if removing all the disks installed in the ReadyNAS before inserting new disks, label the order of the old disks)
7. Factory default: http://www.readynas.com/forum/faq.php#How_do_I_reset_the_ReadyNAS_to_factory_default%3F
8. Restore Config Backup
9. Restore data from backup

This paper by Seagate on their Smart Align technology may help. Apparently the disks do not have to be aligned as others do. (According to Seagate).

Would be interesting to see how they actually work in the field.

That's good news. I guess keep an eye on the write performance and decide whether or not to factory default based on that then.

What's a good pragmatic way to test the write performance.

I have one windows xp laptop and one mac osx box.