WD20EARS just added on the official HCL - mistake and issues

I wish I discovered this forum and topic a couple of weeks ago.

I didn't so I bought the readynas duo plus two WD20EARS drives. I checked the compatability list and noticed the reference to "Firmware 80.00A80, Model # WD20EARS-00S8B1", but as one can not specify part numbers to that level online I assumed things would be ok.

My device arrived 3 days ago and I started setting it up. All fine till I installed the second drive. It failed, and any attempt to get the second drive recognised always failed. It says "The disk attached to channel 1 could not be used. The most common reasons are RAID resync in progress, faulty drives, and disks that are too small to be added to the array." Nonsense obviously.

I tried ringing Netgear support, what a waste of time that is. Several times the phone goes dead. It took 3 attempts to reach the point of getting a case number.

Anyway to cut to the chase, I was eventually advised to reinstall the firmware. I don't think it helped but I noticed that led 2 was lit when there was just one disk in slot 1! I decided to do a factory reset (System/Update/Factory Default)

When I did this I got the option on the RAIDar screen to click on Setup. This i did and was presented with two options, either use RAID-X or "Flexible RAID", i.e. normal RAID in anyone else's language. FIrst I tried RAID-X, same result.
I repeated the process and chose "Flexible RAID". This worked, with one proviso. It said it was going to take 5 hours. After a couple of hours it froze completely and I had to force it to shutdown with the blue button. After this it came up saying it was fine. It has been working happily since then. I forced a file system check just in case.

I rang Netgear back and they then decided to tell me that the hardware was incompatible. Note that this was the first time they said this even though I had spoken to them half a dozen times before. Of course it is purely random who you get to talk to,

Now I have just found this thread and I am wondering whether to stick with what I have or try updating the firmware to this beta version - once I find out where to download it from. I am worried about this talk of performance issues, how can i measure it, and what should I expect?

From my experience and what I've read here, you have to use the beta firmware

I can only speak for the pro, In the x86 firmware my speed is 10x what it was with the 4KB fix, that is not an exaggeration I got that from testing it.

Read someone else's experience here. viewtopic.php?f=17&t=39470
There is Beta firmware here that may help. viewtopic.php?f=17&t=39470

Summary is it should work fine... but until the 4KB sector fix is added performance may be down,
the Jedi say it will come and they have always been true to their word.

Remember...... Yoda may be less than 900 years old ..... he didn't there by doing things fast, :lol: but by doing things properly.

I just began the process of adding my WD20EARS earlier tonight and all looks well. Three drives are in (I followed Commander's exacting steps above, and I'm using the same drives as him, with the beta firmware) and everything looks great thus far. 3.6tb available space. The third disk is resyncing and I'm copying data back via USB. It would probably have been advisable to wait on restoring data back until the resync was finished, but I'm too lazy to stop it now, so oh well.

Overall, I think I'm getting better speed with these disks than I did with four of the stock 500gb Seagates (8mb cache) that came with the unit. I'm optimistic that all will work out for the best with these new drives. I say keep yours, upgrade to the beta firmware, perform a reset, and try again. Just my opinion..

-Jordan

Hi again!

I've seen a few posts asking how to use WDIDLE3 and had a question regarding how I used it, so I thought I might post something to help people along. In retrospect, this was a step that I squandered a bit of time on before I got everything I needed together and figured it out, so hopefully this will ease any upgrade pains others might encounter. I can't guarantee that it will stay here forever, but I have posted an ISO of the bootable CD that I created using FreeDOS to run WDIDLE3 here: http://www.mikerosoft.org/Utilities/FreeDOS%20WDIDLE3.iso (mirror on readynas.com). It's my website, so it shouldn't be going anywhere any time soon. :)

As long as you have CD or bootable flash drive creating software, you can write this image to a CD, allowing you to boot directly to a "DOS" prompt and run WDIDLE3. If there are any questions, issues, or requests to update it, just let me know and I'll do what I can. I hope this helps!

Update:
Part of the reason I provided the ISO file was because the tools required to create it can only execute under a 32-bit OS (that was hard to find for me). However, should anybody like to make their own bootable ISO for WDIDLE3 (or, really, anything that needs a DOS boot disk), here are the steps:

1. Download the FreeDOS Ripcord BootDisk OEM CD-ROM disc builder assistant from http://www.fdos.org/bootdisks/. You want the disc builder assistant because it's designed to let you create a customized ISO with very little trouble. It is named "FDOEMCD.builder.zip" and can be directly downloaded at http://www.mikerosoft.org/Utilities/FDOEMCD.builder.zip (the original website is apparently down as of September 19, 2010 or so).


2. Extract the contents of the CD-ROM builder to a folder on your computer. You should have a rood folder named "FDOEMCD" containing other folders (e.g. "CDROOT" and "CDBTDKS") and some scripts / files (e.g. "makeiso.bat" and "mkbtdsk.bat").


3. Place any files that you want available when a computer boots from this disk in the "CDROOT" folder under the main "FDOEMCD" folder. Do not put them in the "isolinux" folder inside "CDROOT". You want your files (and folders) in the same location as the "autoexec.bat" file (which you can optionally modify if you want things to automatically run). In this case, you want to copy "WDIDLE3.EXE" to the "CDROOT" folder.


4. Return to the root "FDOEMCD" folder and double-click "makeiso.bat". You can also do this from a command prompt, if you like. :) This will create the ISO file "fdoem.iso" in the same directory ("FDOEMCD").


5. Burn this ISO to a flash drive or (more easily) CD-ROM/RW and use it as you see fit. :D


As I said, the major caveat with this method is that it's limited to running on a 32-bit OS. I've tried running it on one of my 64-bit systems with no success at all. However, this is a very clean method for making customized, usable DOS boot disks that I hope you'll all find useful. :D

Additional Update:

Thanks to the work of kd4z, there is now an ISO using FreeDOS that combines the WDIDLE3 and TLER utilities. kd4z has incorporated an autoexec.bat file and other support batch files to automate the application of the utilities. This ISO can be downloaded at http://www.mikerosoft.org/Utilities/FreeDOS%20WDIDLE3%20and%20TLER.iso. Enjoy!

Hi,

appreciate your provision of the ISO file. However, is it possible to use the WDIDLE from a notebook and the WD15EARS attached via USB? I don't own a "normal" PC.
Furthermore it would be nice if you could include in your post a link to your "How-to" for WDIDLE..

Andreas wrote:
...However, is it possible to use the WDIDLE from a notebook and the WD15EARS attached via USB? I don't own a "normal" PC. Furthermore it would be nice if you could include in your post a link to your "How-to" for WDIDLE..

Hi Andreas,

Specifically for you, the "How-to" is updated. :) If anything is amiss or needs to be updated, please let me know and I'll take care of it. :)

If you want to use WDIDLE3 from a notebook, you may be very limited, unfortunately. Western Digital states that the WDIDLE3 utility scans - specifically - the SATA bus for hard drives. It's not the global scan you might be hoping for that would allow you use use USB or other adapters to utilize a notebook. :(
However, what that should mean (and note that I haven't tested this) is that if you have eSATA ports on your laptop and can utilize those, that the utility should work. My inclination is that the utility should work on any drive/connection combination that is directly visible to the system from BIOS. What I mean is that if the drive is recognized by BIOS in some way, WDIDLE3 should see it if it's on a SATA bus (which ought to include an eSATA port). If it worked with a USB adapter, I would be most pleasantly surprised, but I'd expect it to work on an eSATA connection. :)

Hey, thanks a lot for your kind response! :D

My new, but rather small laptop doesn't provide an eSATA port.
One of my two drives I believe to be bad since the very beginning (post). So, today I sent them back to the retailer and hoping to be able to switch to non-4K drives. I'm not an expert on the hardware level. Reading all about the 4K drives vs 512b drives, having to use a tool like WDIDLE and so on, it makes me wonder if I want to spend all that time (which none of us have).. I'm hoping that the others drives will fit in, and all goes well. :D

Having booted into FreeDos on a burnt CD-ROM (using F12 key to select from CD-ROM drive) I had trouble with the autoexec batch file. It did not seem to work properly on my PC, it hung at the last of the "Press key to continue..." prompts.

The way round this was to hit Control+C to exit the batch file to a DOS prompt after which I could run WDIDLE3.

Many thanks to all who provided this solution.

Thanks CommanderQ, have followed your post to the letter. All looks well in my new NV+ with WD 2TB drives. I'll report back after a bit of use.

Great postings.