Like many others I bought a Stora and I am unable to obtain hard drives on the HCL as the WD and Seagate drives listed are obsolete.
I returned my Seagate Barracuda LP ST2000DL003 drives and swapped them for Western Digital wd20ears-00MVWB0. This was the closest wd20ears drive that I could get
WD support provided me with this
"Thank you for contacting Western Digital Customer Service and Support. My name is .
The numbers after the dash (WD20EARS-0058B1) are a sub-model, which will not vary any specifications on the drive"
"Recently, Western Digital has started releasing hard disks utilizing 4K sectors, and other disk manufacturers will be doing the same in the near future. The ReadyNAS will work with these 4K sector drives, however, we will not put these drives in the compatibility list due to the fact that partitions on the ReadyNAS are not 4K sector aligned, and thus write performance can suffer because of that. Rest assure that we are in the process of adding proper support for the 4K sector drives and will release firmware updates for all of our ReadyNAS systems to address this" .... "In the meantime, please note that WD has released the 4K sector drives under the same base models as the 512-byte sector drives. For instance, the WD20EADS drive are available in both 512-byte and 4K sectors. "
About the WD20EARS-0058B1 Western Digital responded with
2- The WD20EARS-0058B1 a SATA 3 drive. 3- WD20EARS-0058B1 has the ability of working with 4K sector as well as 512k sectors
I am now trying to get a response on sectors for the wd20ears-00MVWB0
I notice that the ReadyNAS now supports Seagate Barracuda LP ST2000DL003 and hopefully the Stora will be updated in the future as will to include more drives.
At this time I just really care about getting ANY CURRENT drive to work even if the write performance is not optimal.
What options do I have or do I need to return the Stora (which would mean that I have wasted a loooot of time)
Are you sure you're reading your response from WD correctly?
1. The WD20EARS is a SATA 2 drive - which is 3Gb/s.
2. The ReadyNAS post you are looking at is old. ReadyNAS released new firmware back in November which resolved the issue. I am using WD10EARS drives in my ReadyNAS without issue.
3. The WD20EARS has always worked fine in the Stora as do all of the WDxxEARS drives as confirmed by other users here, including me - just put them in, no problems.
"The numbers after the dash (WD20EARS-0058B1) are a sub-model, which will not vary any specifications on the drive"
What that is telling you is that all WD20EARS drives are the same, going back to them asking about -00MVWB0 is a waste of time, because it's the same as every other WD20EARS..."WILL NOT VARY any specifications..."
As you can see, they do not classify any of their drives by SATA II or SATA III, but by throughput, which automatically tells you what it is. SATA 3 Gb/s is SATA II, 6 Gb/s is SATA III.
So looks like I was the guinea pig - Purchased a Seagate ST2000DL003 today and fitted to the Stora.
Netgear Stora 2TB Firmware 2.5.1 Windows 7 Professional 64bit SP1 Above connected through x2 3Com Office Connect Gigabit Switches
Speed - SMB share 1.4GB file (PC to NAS) 20 - 27MBs 1.4GB file (NAS to PC) 40 - 48MBs Almost the same speeds as achieved by the factory fitted Seagate ST31000528AS - so I'm happy. BTW it appears to be a quieter drive too!
