Warning: WD20EADS Unreliable

I have been using the WD20EADS drives for about a year and a half with no problems. I did have to use a DOS program to set the parameters to the following-TLER ON & WDIDLE /D. I did this to eliminate escalating LLCs and as best I can tell the only difference between these drives is these settings and of course a 2 to 2.5 premium for the enterprise drives. I think most of the differences are marketing hype but to each his own.
hope this helps.
bigbearf

mdgm wrote:

merc4a2, your running a very different NAS. For one thing NetGear recommends enterprise disks for rackmount devices not cheap green disks. The WD20EADS is not on the compatibility list for the 1100. The 1100 is a Sparc ReadyNAS and so runs different firmware to the Ultra. What version of RAIDiator firmware are you running on your 1100 and if you got SMART errors before the disk failures what were they?

I have the latest firmware, and did not capture any SMART errors before the failures. I realize it's not the best drive to use. When I bought the drives, I was actually planning on buying an Ultra, but the wife shot that upgrade down and I didn't think to check the different HCL for the 1100. The 1100 was previously a remote backup location, but I'm now just using it for media storage, so price per GB was my primary driver over reliability.

After testing one drive is completely dead, so once I get a replacement I'll make BigBearf's recommended config changes and start over.

Yes, run the WD utility and use WDIDLE /D; that will disable the head parking. The heads on my drives parked thousands of times in three days of use.

nixlimited wrote:

@akeiler: I did not, and I am not sure how I would do that. Is that something enabled by jumpers on the drive, or is it through the Frontview interface? I would be interested to know. Anyway, my RMA drives have arrived and I am getting ready to rebuild the array, however I am mixing in some seagate drives as well. I will not rely on all WD drives again, at least not in this class. Notably, none of my drives failed SMART tests even though they failed the WD diagnostic test for too many bad sectors. Also notable, all of my drives failed right at the 4 month mark, which is similar to other posters.

Well, BigBearf already summed it up nicely (I was away a bit, so I couldn't answer earlier) - but essentially that's what I did as well. Using (I think two) DOS utilities from WD packed on a Universal Boot CD I applied both settings to my six green drives and they are running smoothly ever since.

akeiler wrote:

nixlimited wrote: @akeiler: I did not, and I am not sure how I would do that. Is that something enabled by jumpers on the drive, or is it through the Frontview interface? I would be interested to know. Anyway, my RMA drives have arrived and I am getting ready to rebuild the array, however I am mixing in some seagate drives as well. I will not rely on all WD drives again, at least not in this class. Notably, none of my drives failed SMART tests even though they failed the WD diagnostic test for too many bad sectors. Also notable, all of my drives failed right at the 4 month mark, which is similar to other posters. Well, BigBearf already summed it up nicely (I was away a bit, so I couldn't answer earlier) - but essentially that's what I did as well. Using (I think two) DOS utilities from WD packed on a Universal Boot CD I applied both settings to my six green drives and they are running smoothly ever since.

Any idea if this can be done after I have data on the drives? I have already rebuilt my array and started loading data on and I don't want to have to undo that. Any idea what these utilities are called? I haven't seen them on the WD site, but then again, I haven't been looking for them.

Yes it can be done at any time: 100% sure because I did !

atz6975 wrote:
Yes it can be done at any time: 100% sure because I did !

Next question--does it have to be done with a boot disc? I am an all-Mac house, but I do have bootcamp with Windows. A simple EXE would be easier.

WD utility is a "dos only" exe...So you need a DOS bootable machine + the drive attached through SATA (NOT USB).
Mac only won't work is my guess...
...once you bit the apple...

Hope for you: after much, much reading I decided NOT to use WDIdle on my WD20EADS. What I do is to RMA them on HIGH LLC count charges every year (5€ per disk with advanced RMA).

As for reliability, I use Seagate Enterprise on customers and WD on home users : THEY BOTH FAIL SPECTACULARLY....and many times over!
Readynas is reliable (pretty much), but ReadyNAS+today's quality of disks = hazard!!!
As much as I hate that backup speech (served on this very forum ) because it is very unrealistic for home users (budget anybody?), I have to admit that I'm forced to adhere to it.

I don't really like Apple, but I've not witness so many failures on their hardware (specifically server+disks) as I have on the ReadyNAS+HD combination...but then again the cost is not the same.

My long 2 cents.

Edit: The EARS model is now approved for use. I have no idea if it more reliable though.[/quote]

EARS drives are as unreliable as EADS. They are low cost drives that should only be used in pc's but not in RAID. They are on the compatibility list but should be removed from the list.
Many of the installed WD20EARS disks are crash, sometimes 2 from the same NAS in a matter of days.

Better stay away from EARS/EADS. Pay a little more for a decent drive and you will sleep better.

Well, I bought 3 seagate drives so I now have 3 Seagate + 3 WD ... actually I have a 4th WD, which was the source of the original problem when I tried to add it. Anyway, if another WD fails, I will RMA it (again) and replace it with a different brand. I currently have it set up to have 2 disk overhead so I should be able to withstand the loss of two disks. Just hope I don't have to test it. And this time I am backing up, even though I have to do it piecemeal with a variety of 1TB USB drives.

If it were a matter of paying a little more for an appreciable quality jump I would, but it's more like 4x the price, and I can't tell if the enterprise drives are any more reliable.