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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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- I think all the WDxxEARS and WDxxxxAARS HDD are all 4K Block size.
The simplest way to confirm is to look at the HDD for info,
if there is the WinXP compatability jumper (DO NOT USE THIS JUMPER)
for advanced format you have your answer. - Thanks MrCyberdude, but FYI not all WD20EARS are 4K. Mine in fact are, as the jumper settings for XP are on the label - A clear indication. I think what I was after was if any ReadyNAS guru's could hypothesize why write speeds were high while I was copying +500GB of data over several hours until I rebooted the NAS, at which point it A): Took an extra 20 minutes to reboot over normal and B): write speeds dropped off significantly. I think is is due to the 4K sectors on my drives, but why after copying copius ammounts of data? The NAS was rebooted a few times after the drive setup but before coping data - what changed? I hope NetGear lights a fire under the 4K sector support beta FW....
- I agree since the drive is on the HCL...
- @ddomnick, can you give more info about which models are not 4KB Sectors or a link.
The 4k sector issue has allegedly been addressed for x86 models in 4.2.12:T9 firmware and I am removing each HDD for a minute and re-inserting one at a time and letting them individually re-sync.
At around 30Hrs each I will report back in a few days after it is done, probably in the beta firmware section.
My suggestion to you would be to backup your files and do a Factory install with this firmware as it will also give you ext4 and most importantly 4K aligned sectors. ddomnick wrote: Thanks MrCyberdude, but FYI not all WD20EARS are 4K. Mine in fact are, as the jumper settings for XP are on the label - A clear indication. I think what I was after was if any ReadyNAS guru's could hypothesize why write speeds were high while I was copying +500GB of data over several hours until I rebooted the NAS, at which point it A): Took an extra 20 minutes to reboot over normal and B): write speeds dropped off significantly. I think is is due to the 4K sectors on my drives, but why after copying copius ammounts of data? The NAS was rebooted a few times after the drive setup but before coping data - what changed? I hope NetGear lights a fire under the 4K sector support beta FW....
Not sure of what you or the nas did.
Is it possible you only had say 1 HDD installed(or non-redundancy), as then files would copy quite fast.
As soon as you have redundancy working the NAS would then have to write to multiple HDD with the XOR calculation and then all HDD come into the equation with the compounding 4KB overlap causing issues?
Just a guess as I'm only an end user.MrCyberdude wrote: @ddomnick, can you give more info about which models are not 4KB Sectors or a link.
The 4k sector issue has allegedly been addressed for x86 models in 4.2.12:T9 firmware...My suggestion to you would be to backup your files and do a Factory install with this firmware as it will also give you ext4 and most importantly 4K aligned sectors.
ddomnick is using the 1100 which is a Sparc ReadyNas so he can't run that firmware.- Roger that, reading too many posts and was thinking Pro and I stated x86 as a warning for others.
BTW any eta rumors on the SPARC version as it looks like the x86 version is working as I'm part way through 4.2.12:T9 conversion. - I don't know. At this stage 4.1.7 final is expected sometime in July (hopefully). As far as I know, NetGear hasn't said whether they intend it to put it in 4.1.7 or not. If it doesn't make 4.1.7, hopefully it will make 4.1.8.
- I'm coming pretty late to the party on this thread. I'm a total newbie buying the ReadyNAS Duo for home use, and I bought 2 x WD20EARS-00S8B1 drives - I didn't get to specify the full model no from the supplier, so I guess I was lucky getting the ones which are now on the ReadyNAS HCL.
Unfortunately, one of the drives was DOA, and I've now received as a replacement, a WD20EARS-00J2GB0.
I've experienced the same problems as others on this thread, which is what eventually led me here - so I am planning on following what I now hope is the well-trodden path of upgrading to the RADIator 4.1.7 beta and keeping my fingers firmly crossed.
Has anyone succesfully used a WD20EARS-00J2GB0 alongside a WD20EARS-00S8B1? Is that likely to be an issue?
And is using the WDIDLE3 utility essential to get these working? As a real newbie I'm a little intimidated by the process of cracking open my PC box to run that process. However, I'll try it if necessary as I doubt my supplier will accept a return of the HDDs and it will have been an expensive mistake to just buy new drives.
Thanks in anticipation.
UPDATE: installed RAIDiator 4.1.7-T29 beta as per CommanderQ's excellent post, and it seems to have done the trick. I'd still value the opinion of the forums as to whether its worth my doing the WDIDLE3 update, bearing in mind I'm a home user who is only using my NAS to store and access music, photos and digital music production files rather than heavy business usage. Ta. ddomnick wrote: I purchased 4 WD20EARS-00J2GB0 drives from NewEgg. Followed CommanderQ's procedure exactly except used WD3IDLE to change the LCC value BEFORE starting to 5 seconds. Using latest -T29 beta firmware on 1100.
Everything went perfectly, reboots were normal, no issues at all. Copied several hundred gig of data in several batches back to the NAS. Write speeds were an acceptable 25MBS (CIFS + Jumbo Frames + large movie files). Just before bed I rebooted NAS - it did not come right back up and I thought I had a problem. When I woke, I found the NAS up and no errors. Log did not state that it had to resync, but it did take 26 minutes between shutdown and power up entries. The problem now is that writes are painfully slow at ~7MBS. I am assuming that I am bitten by the 4K sector misalignment issue, but my question is why were writes fast to begin with and now so slow? What may have technically happend during that reboot after copying data to the drive? Anyone have a clue? CommanderQ - Have you rebooted YOUR setup after you posted the success story and do you know if your -00S8B1's are 512 or 4K? TIA!
Hi ddomnick,
Sorry I haven't been replying more promptly, but I'm here now. :D I can definitely confirm that I've rebooted my NV+ several times now since the install. I never had any long delays when mine rebooted - if there were any delays, they were scheduled disk checks or other diagnostics or updates that I initiated. My drives are 4K models, though I haven't seen any write performance degradation.
I've recently been ripping whole DVDs to my NV+ (amounting to nearly 1TB) and noticed no problems with the transfers. I've seen both read and write performance in the range of 25MB/s+. That transfer was sustained whether I ripped the DVDs to my local hard drive and then copied them over (3 parallel copy operations), or if I ripped them directly to the storage server. I have noticed that smaller file groups write more slowly than they used to, but it always seems transient - it lasts only a few moments when it occurs, then the write performance picks back up.
Much like Coxy117, I'm a home user so my daily demands are relatively light, though I do like testing it from time to time with a lot of data transfers and video streaming to other rooms. It's quite possible that I'm not accessing it such that the problem is apparent - most of my files are large. The only consolation I can offer is that Netgear seems committed to resolving this, and if I figure out a solution (I'll keep tinkering to improve performance) I'll post it. :D
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