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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.
124 Replies
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- Seems like I will be in the same boat and agree about the HCL.
They were willing to take back the WD20EARS you had tested? - I agree the suffix is different but you can't order based on the suffix. It is a bad customer dilema effecting more than just ReadyNAS
- Yes it's unfortunate. That's why you need to ask the supplier to confirm you are getting what's on the list or you won't buy. If they're not willing to check then don't buy from them.
- I thought i would chime in as i recently bought a WD20EARS for my ReadyNAS DUO.
First up, my DUO is just for home use and therefore have it running Flex-RAID to maximize capacity, so no redundancy but i do have the important stuff backed up separately anyway.
I originally had 1x WD10EADS installed which worked perfectly, no increasing LCCs and no ATA errors but i ran out of space. So now i have added a WD20EARS based on the HCL. It recognised the drive with no issues running 4.1.6 firmware (remember, i am running Flex-RAID) and i was able to use it straight away. However i noticed that the ATA errors were increasing with every reboot. So i have installed the 4.1.7 beta firmware and the ATA errors have stopped increasing. I did notice that the LCC does increase but i'm not too fussed about that as i do not have my DUO on all the time.
Anyway, if i see anything out of the ordinary, i will post back. - mdgm,
disaster has struck. I ran wdidle3 and wdtler on both the WD20EARS as the counters were about 1000 / day. Now the DUO won't recognise either of my drives. What do I do? Please help.
-Jim - Did you check (e.g. via google) to make sure your drives support those utilities before using them? Also WDTLER should not have been necessary with the latest RAIDiator beta.
You'll need to contact Western Digital if your disks have failed.
I said earlier in the thread:mdgm wrote: if the drive supports it
I perhaps could have been a bit clearer, but WD's started to release new disks that won't work with the utilities so it's important to check to make sure the disks support the use of the utilities before using WDIDLE3 and/or WDTLER.
I presume you backed up the data on your disks? If so, hopefully a factory default will get you back up and running and you can then restore your data from backup. If not, you may need to try and RMA your disks. - Hi mdgm,
I was waiting for these problems to clear before putting data on the volume.
As mentioned in previous posts, I had put on the 4.1.7 beta and the load counters were still increasing at a great rate.
The wdidle3 program was able to set and read the timeout parameters without an issue.
The TLER program did not communicate with the HDDs and has probably caused the problem.
Googling on TLER and WD20EARS yields a mixture of information - hence why I asked the Jedi Council if their Beta has addressed the TLER/WDIDLE3 issues.
I'll try a factory reset. If that doesn't work, how should I phrase the problem in the RMA to WD?
-jim OzzyJim wrote: If that doesn't work, how should I phrase the problem in the RMA to WD?
Well you should probably see if you can run vendor tools on them using a PC. If they fail those tests or if they aren't recognised at all by the PC you can mention that.
It's possible the disks were already dying by the time you used the utilities.- mdgm,
the factory reset worked on the second attempt. Currently sync'n the 2nd drive. Not sure whether the problem was WDTLER or possibly putting the drives back in the wrong bay. (What does happen if you swap the drives after shutdown?)
So it seems that to use WD20EARS on ReadyNAS Duo, the following is required in the order given:
1. Change the idle timeout on both drives from 8 seconds to 5 minutes using "wdidle3.exe /s300"
2. Place only 1 drive in DUO and complete installation
3. Upgrade to 4.1.7 (beta for now)
4. Place 2nd drive in and let it sync.
NOTE: Do not use WDTLER as it is not supported on these drives.
REQUEST: Jedi please indicate whether the TLER has been addressed by WD firmware or 4.1.7.
regards
Jim
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