WD20EARS just added on the official HCL - mistake and issues

[chano22000]

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.

[rockdj]

Would really like to know the same details about this specific hard drive. I'm about to consider buying an NV+ (cheapest option for me) and this would probably clinch it. But, I don't want to buy the NV+, and along with 4 of the current model of WD20EARS if it's actually not going to be supported on the HCL -- for obvious reasons.

Any info is appreciated!

[slingload]

Any confirmation yet if it is the WD20EARS or WD20EADS? I'm about to pull the trigger and buy two WD20EARS drives for my ReadyNAS Duo but want to make sure that's the correct drive since I'm ordering online.

[mdgm-ntgr]

chano22000 wrote:
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 !

Edit: I don't know if this is an error, but it would be good if a Jedi could clarify.

chano22000 wrote:
2) No restriction appears on the RAIDiator version to be used

Although it doesn't mention a RAIDiator version it is advisable to be on the latest RAIDiator version before inserting new disks. NetGear is most likely to have tested disks on the latest version of RAIDiator.

chano22000 wrote:
It might be maybe mandatory to use RAIDiator 4.1.7 (currently beta) which "adds support for WD drives that don’t support TLER" (=WD desktop drives).

It could be a good idea to use that beta or 4.1.7 when it is finally released. It shouldn't hurt, though it's not recommended in a production environment as betas can have issues that can result in loss of data and require a factory default to get a working system again.

It would be nice for a Jedi to comment, but with a bit of common sense you can come to a reasonable conclusion.

slingload wrote:
I'm about to pull the trigger and buy two WD20EARS drives for my ReadyNAS Duo but want to make sure that's the correct drive since I'm ordering online.

You should ask the online reseller if they can supply you with that disk with the firmware version mentioned on the compatibility list then.

[KennyKentucky]

Still no news here??
My NV+ is nearly full and the WD20EARS is good priced, big and quiet, so it could be the best option for me, too.
As I was concerned about the 4k fact I read along here but no final answer so far 😞

The question is not only if it runs, but also if it runs at normal speed. Translation from 4k to 512bytes seems to lack and be quite slow in many situations as I read in many reports...

The speed of my ReadyNAS mustn't be slower or I'm getting trouble working on it.

Hope to hear from the Jedi soon - or the Sith, if they know the answer :wink:

Related Threads:
http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=37983&p=212798
http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=38181&p=214194
http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=36530
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3691

[claykin]

Don't worry about the suffix after the WDC part #. This is for internal use by WD to know 1) the original customer (retail, enterprise, which OEM) 2) firmware rev and platter type and 3) whether its new or refurbished.

I suppose Netgear is listing the entire model # of the WD20EARS they approved for one simple reason. WDC has a history of enabling/diabling/breaking things when they revision a drives firmware. Sometimes they play around with TLER settings, etc.

Personally speaking I would NOT use this disk right now. Its the first 4Kb sector disk, and although The Linux kernel is OK with 4Kb sector disks, I'm not so convinced WDC has their firmware "tuned" yet. I would recommend waiting 6 months before jumping into this disk or other 4Kb sector disks. Other vendors will be watching how WDC fares in the real world so I suspect disks that release later in 2010 will be better. By early 2011 drive vendors have agreed to switch over 100% of their product to 4Kb sector. I question whether that will happen in the timeframe they discussed recently.

Thats my 2 cents on the subject.

[robUx4]

I have just bought and installed a Duo with 2 WD20EARS-00S8B1. The disks work separately, but they are not recognized when used together (only one is used at a time). I wonder if there is a way to downgrade the firmware of the drive to the one "validated" by Netgear and if it's going to make any difference...

[claykin]

robUx4 wrote:
I have just bought and installed a Duo with 2 WD20EARS-00S8B1. The disks work separately, but they are not recognized when used together (only one is used at a time). I wonder if there is a way to downgrade the firmware of the drive to the one "validated" by Netgear and if it's going to make any difference...

Good luck getting firmware out of WDC especially to downgrade. I don't advise it either as its a new disk type and there's bound to be problems. Why trade off RAID compatibility with what may be another fault they corrected.

[robUx4]

I just tried with the 7-8 jumpers set on each drive (for XP compatibility) and it gives the same result. I guess I'll have to return the drives, the NAS, or both...

[robUx4]

Well, I installed the 4.1.7 beta firmware and it's getting much further. The second drive is now Resynching (20h left). I think it's going to work fine in the end (I kept the jumpers on, shouldn't hurt).

[robUx4]

Just to follow up and let people know. It works. The 2 drives are now "fully redundant".

[claykin]

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.

[Saiyan_Prince]

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.

[mdgm-ntgr]

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.

[Saiyan_Prince]

mdgm, Thanks for the input, you've confirmed my suspicion.

[OzzyJim]

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

[KennyKentucky]

Hey the new info sounds good! 😄

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)

[OzzyJim]

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

[mdgm-ntgr]

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.

[g17ss]

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

[andy_c2]

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.

[mdgm-ntgr]

My preference would be to return the disks and get something else, but that's just my personal preference.

[andy_c2]

Oh I forgot to say, I have the the ReadyNAS NV and 4.1.6 firmware. And I got the -00S8B1 model.

I don't really want to fiddle with downgrading firmware on the drive, and installing beta firmwares on the NV. The whole reason I bought the NV is so that I didn't have to deal with this stuff. I could've built my own RAID but I wanted a "works out of the box" solution.

Maybe if the final 4.1.7 is coming out soon, that will fix it. But the only info I have now is the drive is "dead". However the readynas dashboard was able to pull the model number from the drive, so I don't know how dead it is.

I'm upgrading from 250GB drives if that makes a difference.

[roadfun]

Using the 4.1.7 beta I got the -00S8B1 to work in my Duo however the LCC count climbs steadily which in the long run is a bad thing. It seems the drive will work but will likely fail sooner than you might expect.

I really need a 2x2TB solution for my Duo. Not sure what options exist given the limited HCL info and the fact there isn't even a way to know what "suffix" of WD20EARS you're going to get when you order them. WD and Netgear should work something out rather than burning customers. I was hoping to find upgrading to a different ReadyNAS model would solve this problem but that doesn't seem to be the case based on this forum. Synology claims support but I'm not 100% certain that means the LCC issue doesn't exist in their NAS.

[andy_c2]

Alright, sounds like I have to eat this $20 restocking fee.

Any recommendations for 3 1TB drives? I probably didn't need that much space anyway. I realize now I need 3 drives to replace the 3 I have now, and 3 2TB was a little much.

I would like to get them locally in San Francisco (centralcomputers.com if anyone is familiar with it).