Areca controllers and 4k sector (advanced format) drives

[VaultDweller]

Does anyone have any experience using Areca RAID controllers with advanced format/4k sector drives?

Areca themselves have an FAQ that says, "there have no special settings needed for controller to be able to works with them." However, I'm always hearing bad things about 4k sector drives in hardware RAID-5 arrays, and I'm having a hard time finding accounts from anyone who actually has first-hand experience with compatibility.

I've been running an array of WD10EADS drives on an ARC-1222 controller for two years now, and I'd like to upgrade those drives. I'm nervous about doing so though, as availability of WD20EADS drives is questionable, and I don't have much confidence that WD20EARS drives will work.

 

[Mark R]

This is more a 'desktop-grade' vs 'RAID-grade' drive difference, and a WD problem - rather than a 4k sector problem.

WD desktop-grade drives have some very strange SMART and power-saving behavior which can make RAID cards think that the drive has failed. The desktop-grade drives also use a slow error recovery process, but RAID-edition drives use a fast error recovery process (TLER). The error recovery of desktop-drives is too slow for RAID cards, and they will evict the drives in the event of bad sectors.

While the WD SMART/power-saving weirdness, and TLER issues are no problem for software RAID, they are serious problems for RAID cards, and can lead to frequent drive drop-outs.

If you are using a true hardware-RAID card, you should use RAID-edition drives to ensure to weird compatability problems. Software-RAID is much more tolerant.

 

[VaultDweller]

This is more a 'desktop-grade' vs 'RAID-grade' drive difference, and a WD problem - rather than a 4k sector problem.

WD desktop-grade drives have some very strange SMART and power-saving behavior which can make RAID cards think that the drive has failed. The desktop-grade drives also use a slow error recovery process, but RAID-edition drives use a fast error recovery process (TLER). The error recovery of desktop-drives is too slow for RAID cards, and they will evict the drives in the event of bad sectors.

While the WD SMART/power-saving weirdness, and TLER issues are no problem for software RAID, they are serious problems for RAID cards, and can lead to frequent drive drop-outs.

If you are using a true hardware-RAID card, you should use RAID-edition drives to ensure to weird compatability problems. Software-RAID is much more tolerant.

Idle parking is a non-issue. For one, it can be disabled, and two, the drives are never idle.

TLER also does not concern me. Like I said, I'm already running WD10EADS drives on this controller. They don't have TLER either, and in more than two years of use under 24/7 activity, they have presented exactly 0 problems. No drive has ever dropped out of the array. Also, TLER does not recover from errors faster. It simply abandons the recovery attempt faster.

RAID-edition drives are quite simply not an option. They cost about $250 per drive, compared to about $75 per drive. I am not able, nor am I willing, to pay more than triple the price for drives that differ only in a firmware setting (and a firmware setting that I have done fine without for the last 25 months).

 

[holty]

I've read at least one review on Newegg about the Areca 1222 card and it working with 4kb sectors with no issues.

 

[VaultDweller]

As an update, it's been smooth sailing so far with 8 WD20EARS drives in RAID6. The array has been in use for a week (not including the lengthy period to initialize it) without issues.