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Forum Discussion
WD20EARS just added on the official HCL - mistake and issues
The official HCL has (quietly !) been updated for Sparc based machines with a 2TB WD desktop class drive: the WD20EARS (http://www.readynas.com/?page_id=82). This is in principle good news as the WD20EADS which might have been a candidate (if not discontinued in a near future) seems to have a lot a quality and compatibility issues.
But ... :
1) The HCL mentions the exact version to be used: WD20EARS-00R6B0. Googling the reference does not provide any answer (but the WD20EADS-00R6B0 which is well known). AFAIK, the current available version of the drive is the WD20EARS-00S8B1.
There should be an error in the HCL or the new entry is useless !
2) No restriction appears on the RAIDiator version to be used meaning by the way that the new 4K sector size, which implementation starts in high capacity drives such as the EARS, is fully supported since the beginning. It's amazing as other vendors have delivered updated firmwares for that specific purpose (and keep partitions aligned or performance may degrade significantly).
Or will the 4K sector size be supported by RAIDiator 4.1.7 as current beta "adds support for WD drives that don’t support TLER" (= WD desktop drives) ?
And does this new entry in the offical HCL mean that LCC issues are now fully tackled by RAIDiator 4.1.7 (since the EARS has the same green features as the EADS and WDIDLE is not supported by WD on newer drives), even though some users report recent WD firmwares do not count any more Intellipark related LCC in the Smart infos ?
Please Jedis clarify and thanks to still supporting early (Infrant ...) adopters !
Regards.
But ... :
1) The HCL mentions the exact version to be used: WD20EARS-00R6B0. Googling the reference does not provide any answer (but the WD20EADS-00R6B0 which is well known). AFAIK, the current available version of the drive is the WD20EARS-00S8B1.
There should be an error in the HCL or the new entry is useless !
2) No restriction appears on the RAIDiator version to be used meaning by the way that the new 4K sector size, which implementation starts in high capacity drives such as the EARS, is fully supported since the beginning. It's amazing as other vendors have delivered updated firmwares for that specific purpose (and keep partitions aligned or performance may degrade significantly).
Or will the 4K sector size be supported by RAIDiator 4.1.7 as current beta "adds support for WD drives that don’t support TLER" (= WD desktop drives) ?
And does this new entry in the offical HCL mean that LCC issues are now fully tackled by RAIDiator 4.1.7 (since the EARS has the same green features as the EADS and WDIDLE is not supported by WD on newer drives), even though some users report recent WD firmwares do not count any more Intellipark related LCC in the Smart infos ?
Please Jedis clarify and thanks to still supporting early (Infrant ...) adopters !
Regards.
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- Congrats. Please make sure you backup your NAS share data just in case compatibility is not quite perfect (yet). Also for the next couple months I recommend you closely watch the SMART data in Frontview.
- Hello all, newbie here. I've been playing with the ReadyNAS DUO for the past couple of weeks and found out quickly that 500Gb is not a whole lot of space when you're trying to back up your dvd collection. So when the WD20EARS showed up on the HCL, I jumped on a deal @ ZZF (only $134 or so). First time I installed it, nothing happened. I frantically searched this forum for some answers, so I did what robUx4 did. I installed RAIDiator 4.1.7beta. I have never used anything beta. But after ~20 hours of initializing, I finally have my 2 WD20EARS in redundant X-RAID. Too bad I can use only 1.862 Tb of the full 2 Tb. I'll be searching around some more for ways to increase the hard drive capacity, unless someone here can tell me how. Anyways, just wanted to thank people for great support.
Saiyan Prince wrote: Too bad I can use only 1.862 Tb of the full 2 Tb.
That's good. Drives are advertised using 1000 bytes per kilobyte, but measured by your computer and NAS as 1024 bytes per kilobyte which largely explains why the amount available is less than 2TB (there are a few other reasons mentioned in the link below).Saiyan Prince wrote:
I'll be searching around some more for ways to increase the hard drive capacity, unless someone here can tell me how. Anyways, just wanted to thank people for great support.
You've got all you can get if you want redundancy. See http://www.readynas.com/forum/faq.php#Why_is_my_volume_capacity_is_lower_than_expected%3F.- mdgm, Thanks for the input, you've confirmed my suspicion.
- Hi All,
finally given up on WDxxEADS and have purchased 2x WD20EARS-00S8B1 for my DUO.
As it is supported (hopefully no problem with newer HDD firmware) do I need to run WDIDLE3 and/or WDTLER?
Like most of us I have circled around this and other vendor forums for quite a long time.
Although I understand what these WD utilities do, I am in the dark as far as whether 4.1.6 or 4.1.7 beta cater for these problems or whether the WD have fixed these problems.
Grateful if the Jedi council would clarify
regards
Jim - Hey the new info sounds good! :D
As claykin warns one has to be careful with such new products and I will try to get along with my old disks as long as possible.
I just hope that meanwhile the final 4.17 will be ready and first smart report infos are posted here...
To all who bought the drives: Thank you for doing testwork!
(In my case it's about 4 disks in RAID-X filled with business data, therefore testing isn't possible and I try to avoid bad surprises) - Hi again,
just installed 2x WD20EARS-00S8B1 into my DUO.
I had to upgrade to the 4.1.7 beta to accept the second disk.
Still not sure if I need to run WDIDLE3 and/or WDTLER?
Here is some of the smarts from both drives:
SMART Information for Disk 1
Model: WDC WD20EARS-00S8B1
Serial: WD-WCAVY2539820
Firmware: 80.00A80
Power On Hours 12
Power Cycle Count 8
Power-Off Retract Count 7
Load Cycle Count 151
Temperature Celsius 44
ATA Error Count 12
SMART Information for Disk 2
Model: WDC WD20EARS-00S8B1
Serial: WD-WCAVY2558231
Firmware: 80.00A80
Power On Hours 11
Power Cycle Count 10
Power-Off Retract Count 9
Load Cycle Count 84
Temperature Celsius 43
ATA Error Count 12
regards
Jim - WDIDLE3 maybe if the drive supports it (if you need this you will notice the Load Cycle Count increasing in SMART stats). 4.1.7 beta should mean that WDTLER isn't required I think (as 4.1.7 is supposed to fix the TLER issue), but if you can use it on the drive it shouldn't hurt.
Han Solo wrote: mattseattle wrote: So what is the deal with Load Cycle count that I keep reading about on here?
This has to do with WD desktop class drives showing a high number of load/unloads. WD has a program called "wdidle3" I think that allows you to change the default value on the drive to a longer time. I asked WD what would be the recommend time interval to change it to and they said 5 minutes. - First post! I bought an NV+ yesterday and bought 3 WD20EARS from amazon, Firmware 80.00A80, WDC WD20EARS-00S8B1. I bought the fourth (had to wait because amazon only lets you buy 3 for a short period of time).
I just wanted to share my thoughts that all three drives are working A-OK. Online, X-RAID, 3 disks, 1% of 3701 GB used - So, is the consensus here that you need the 4.1.7 beta to run the WD20EARS?
I'm a little hesitant to install a beta firmware.
But I bought 2 of the EARS drives, and the first one comes up as "dead". Did that happen to anyone else?
If I install the beta firmware, there's no guarantee it won't be "dead" again. So I could return the drives and eat a $20 restocking fee, and get something else.
I do want a 2TB drive, and there don't seem to be many options at all. Although maybe I should get 3 1TB drives. I had 3 250GB drives and didn't realize you can't upgrade from 3 drives to 2 larger drives.
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