Just checked with the i-store today - they have WD20EARS-00MVWB0 which seams the latest model (manufactured January 2011), although there are reference on the web (http://vr-zone.com/articles/667gb-per-p ... 335-2.html) going back to July 2010!?
Reading that reference I am more inclind to get WD20EARS-00MVWB0 (if on HCL which seems to never be able to chatch up with drive manufacturers) - 3 platter drive may be more reliable and better perfoming.
I should add that I got my brand new NV+ four (empty) bays on 1/1/2011 with intentions to place 4x2GB WD drives, thinking any 2TB under 4.1.7 would be OK. It has been extremly frustrating experience for me to get my NV+ going. In the process I managed to get the first two unit fail to boot at all after attempting to upgrade to 4.1.7 via TFTP and USB. I am having a bit more luck with the third unit - and imagine I've been in IT (somewhat different type) for many many years.
I never thought NV+ to be engineered to make life so hard - why would NV be so particular and precious about drives? cannot imagine having to do this kind of acrobatics placing any hard drive in any windows/linux pc? how difficult can the firmware process be? why this cannot be simply performed on the diskless unit (as I originally expected).
So far, I have an older 400GB drive installed, upgraded the unit to 4.1.7 installed additional HCL approved WD20EARS 00S8B1 to get usable just under 400GB across the two drives (as expected). I am unsure about the steps
Still not sure if am on on 512 or 4k sectors - is there a way to tell? I have done a factory default performed after upgrade via RAIDar/setup browser interface. The plan is to get all 2TB drives and WD20EARS-00MVWB0 seems like a good choice.
It has been previously suggested that I am "fixated on WD". <You seem to be fixated on the WD20EARS drives. Are these drives that you already have in hand?> <If not, why not consider other makes/models? >
WD served me very well over many years, 100% reliable and at this stage, specially reading this forum, I believe I have considerable risk by introducing NV+ into the equasion.
Please understand I am really appreciative for advice provided on this forum ... as long as it's polite and not patronising -
copy of my partition.log below Disk /dev/hde doesn't contain a valid partition table
Disk /dev/hdc: 400.0 GB, 400077971456 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 48640 cylinders, total 781402288 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00000000
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hdc1 32 4096031 2048000 83 Linux Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary. /dev/hdc2 4096032 4608031 256000 82 Linux swap / Solaris Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary. /dev/hdc3 4608032 781385935 388388952 5 Extended /dev/hdc5 4608040 781385935 388388948 8e Linux LVM
Disk /dev/hde: 2000.3 GB, 2000388448256 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243200 cylinders, total 3907008688 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00000000
many thanks for decifering ... looks like it's still 512? so would I move it to 4k?
so we all good. can I please ask you if the following approach is ok to insert more drives, having the 400GB and 2TB already in there - 1. insert another 2TB and sync 2. replace the 400GB with 2TB, (power down, remove 400GB, insert 2TB, power up, hope for the resync on the new 2TB) 3. inser the fourth 2TB to complete the set and resync
I don't know about the NV, but I can confirm the WD20EARS-OOMVWB0 does NOT work with the ReadyNAS Duo. However it should be possible to use the jumper settings on the disk to alter it from 4k block to 512byte. Anyone tried this already?
I have just bought a NV+ which came supplied with firmware 4.1.6. I put the drives in and it all seemed to work fine. The only problem I did encounter is when copying files from a win2k machine it would create a directory and then copy the file into it but report the share was longer available. It was as if after creating the directory it wasnt ready to be used immediately.
I wanted to upgrade to 4.1.7 anyway so I pulled the 2nd drive to stop the rebuild and then applied the firmware upgrade and let it boot afterwards. Then when I confirmed 4.1.7 was running I did a full factory reset and left it rebuilding overnight. This morning I started copying across 200GB from a usb drive using the win2k machine again without any problems.
gblades, are you saying you have a 4 bay NV+ with WD20EARS-00MVWB0 (fully populated, eg 4 drives) and it all worked at rel 4.1.6? I belive it is not supposed to work unless you get firmware up to 4.1.7.
I got mine upgraded to 4.1.7 using an older Seagate 400GB (HCL approved drive). I then inserted another HCL approved drive HCL 2TB WD20EARS 00S8B1 - all synced well and as expected I got fully redundant 384GB across the two drives (equivalent to the smaller drive)
All well up to this point.
Last night while powered down I removed the 400GB Seagate and replaced it with 2TB WD20EARS-00MVWB0 - so I had two bays with 2TB in each (WD20EARS-00MVWB0 + WD20EARS 00S8B1) after a long re-sync process all seems fine BUT I only got 384GB volume across the two 2TB drives!
You're supposed to factory default after upgrading to 4.1.7 or you may have poor write performance using the WD20EARS. 4k sector alignment requires a factory default after updating to 4.1.7.
There's also the adding support for drives that don't support TLER in 4.1.7.
As for expanding your volume have you tried a reboot?
I only had 2 drives when it worked in 4.1.6. The quickest way I found to upgrade to 4.1.7 with these drives is as follows and this is what I did after seeing that it was working in 4.1.6. I did this because of the fact it should have a factory reset after the 4.1.7 update
1) Put in 1 drive only and perform a factory reset. 2) As there is 1 drive after it boots there is no rebuild going on in the background so you can go straight ahead and install the update. 3) Let it reboot into 4.1.7 to make sure it has loaded ok. 4) Shutdown and fit the additional drives. 5) Perform a factory reset.
I need to report that after reboot my X-RAID picked up and expanded the second and third disk so my current config is: bay1: WD20EARS-00MVWB0 bay2: WD20EARS 00S8B1 bay3: WD20EARS-00MVWB0 bay4: WD20EARS-00MVWB0
My latest problem is the error I'm getting when adding the fourth disk: ------------- The disk attached to channel 4 could not be initialized. The most common reasons are RAID resync in progress, faulty drives, and disks that are too small to be added to the array. [Mon Feb 14 19:46:59 EST 2011] -------------- I have tried reboot a few times, I have also tried to init/format disk under XP - no problems. Still will not work under NV+ with the error as above.
Also I am not sure if I need to do anything about LCC
DISK1 Raw Read Error Rate 0 Spin Up Time 1000 Start Stop Count 16 Reallocated Sector Count 0 Seek Error Rate 0 Power On Hours 109 Spin Retry Count 0 Calibration Retry Count 0 Power Cycle Count 14 Power-Off Retract Count 13 Load Cycle Count 3051 Temperature Celsius 31 Reallocated Event Count 0 Current Pending Sector 0 Offline Uncorrectable 0 UDMA CRC Error Count 0 Multi Zone Error Rate 0
ATA Error Count 0
DISK2 Raw Read Error Rate 0 Spin Up Time 9308 Start Stop Count 43 Reallocated Sector Count 0 Seek Error Rate 0 Power On Hours 126 Spin Retry Count 0 Calibration Retry Count 0 Power Cycle Count 42 Power-Off Retract Count 41 Load Cycle Count 3667 Temperature Celsius 35 Reallocated Event Count 0 Current Pending Sector 0 Offline Uncorrectable 0 UDMA CRC Error Count 0 Multi Zone Error Rate 0
ATA Error Count 114
DISK1 Raw Read Error Rate 0 Spin Up Time 966 Start Stop Count 15 Reallocated Sector Count 0 Seek Error Rate 0 Power On Hours 94 Spin Retry Count 0 Calibration Retry Count 0 Power Cycle Count 13 Power-Off Retract Count 12 Load Cycle Count 2628 Temperature Celsius 33 Reallocated Event Count 0 Current Pending Sector 0 Offline Uncorrectable 0 UDMA CRC Error Count 0 Multi Zone Error Rate 0
8. Added support for WD drives that don’t support TLER.
The factory default on 4.1.7 is still needed to get the 4k sector alignment though.
Thanks mdgm, you're always one to help out here 🙂
The point #8 really didn't make much sense to me (and I'm sure others), it says it adds support for WD drives that DON'T support TLER...my English must be failing me since to me it means that it now supports those WD drives that don't have TLER?
A very good thread that clarifies some points is here (Netgear, you really need to update your FAQ about WD EARS/EADS drives and their revisions!)
The LCC issue is somewhat alarming, especially given the stock values that WD ships its drives with.
I read somewhere that the WD20EARS is designed for around 1,000,000 LCC and at the rate of around 3000 per day thats 1000000/3000=333.3' Days for design life failure.. A guesstimation forcast of less than a year before harddrive failures.
A very good thread that clarifies some points is here (Netgear, you really need to update your FAQ about WD EARS/EADS drives and their revisions!)
The LCC issue is somewhat alarming, especially given the stock values that WD ships its drives with.
I read somewhere that the WD20EARS is designed for around 1,000,000 LCC and at the rate of around 3000 per day thats 1000000/3000=333.3' Days for design life failure.. A guesstimation forcast of less than a year before harddrive failures.
Not at all something an end-user wants to hear!
A friend of mine just setup an identical NAS: WD20EARS-00MVWB0 x4 + an NV+, the LCC is at 9858 after 254 hours of operation.
I own a readynas DUO on 4.1.7 and have opened a case with netgear support... but with the same drives I have one that jumps to an unrealistic 239°C. the device doesn't seem to be catching fire so that must be misread... which is a bit worying about how these drives are reliable.
