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HDD for server

C

coolVariable

Diamond Member
Just got a Dell Poweredge T310 with a PERC H200 RAID controller.
Would like to add a couple of HDDs, probably in a RAID 10 configuration.

Would Western Digital Caviar Black drives be a good choice and work for this?
4 of those should provide me with 2TB of space for $400:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136533

PS: I have thought about using SSDs for the OS but am not sure whether that is really useful/noticeable, since this thing will essentially be a file server for a small business.
 
SSDs are wasted on a file server unless extremely high performance or IOPS is required. Capacity is a primary concern and $/GB is more important than perf/$. I'd recommend considering the 1TB F3 drives or 1TB Caviar Blacks (1001FAALS). The 1.5 and 2TB drives tend to have a much higher $/GB price, as well as serious ongoing reliability issues in my experience.
 
That is not guaranteed any more. Also that could void the warranty if it sets off an OTP or nukes the drive firmware. The RE3/RE4 are also binned for better choice. Kind of how HP does the SAS 500/1000/2000 midline drives and the SATA 500/1000/2000. same drive different interface, different warranty (some cases but usually both still 1yr) - recommended use of the "TLER-like" SATA = 30% archival max. SAS midline= 40%.

Compared to a 146GB SAS 3.5 15K cheetah 15K.7 or Savvio 146GB 10K which is rated at 100% duty cycle.

I always wondered if seagate was next door to WD and they chucked the junky savvio's over to WD to throw a sata board on 🙂
 
1TB WD RE3 drive is $50/$60 more than the WD Caviar Black. If I buy 4 drives that is a big difference in price.
How good is TLER really? For that price, I can buy 1-2 more drives.
 
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TBQH, he's correct about TLER. It will make a potentially massive difference in drive reliability.
 
For some reason the WDTLER utility does not work with the RAID controller in our server (it doesn't find any disks)

Is there any way I can check the WDTLER setting from within Win2008SBS?
 
Would really like to know whether TLER is on or off.

BTW - this server is slooooooow. I know Win2008 SBS has to load a lot of stuff but WTF: 5 minutes to boot? 5-10 minutes to shut down?
 
Did you end up with the regular drives, or with the RE drives? The RE's are for a RAID setup, and will have TLER disabled by default.
 
It's not unheard of for RAID controllers to block low-level access to attached disks.

I thought that the WDTLER utility was no longer supported by WDC and that WDC disks, sold for Enterprise or Desktop, were pre-set appropriately by the factory.

I can't confirm the accuracy of the statement below, but...

http://www.gohighvoltage.com/forum/index.php?topic=50.0

"The WDTLER.EXE tool is no longer available from Western Digital. WD phone support confirmed that new disks cannot have the TLER setting changed, i.e. RE disks are only suitable for RAID arrays and Caviar are only suitable for non-RAID use. WD also say that using the WDTLER.EXE tool on newer drives can damage the firmware and make the disk unusable."

Also:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-Limited_Error_Recovery

"Western Digital now claims that using the WDTLER.EXE tool on newer drives can damage the firmware and make the disk unusable. The WDTLER.EXE tool is no longer available from Western Digital, and new disks will not be able to have the TLER setting changed. RE disks are only suitable for RAID arrays and Caviar are only suitable for non-RAID use. The utility still works for older disks."
 
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WDTLER 3.1 didn't work on any of my five 1TB FALS with firmware 05.01D05 manufactured in Taiwan between 11/09 and 12/09.


But I thought you were paying the extra money for the REs because you intend to use them in RAID. Since REs come with TLER already disabled, they are ready to go. You do not want TLER enabled in a RAID setup, because if a disk takes longer than 7 seconds or so to attempt to correct an error, the RAID controller will boot it off the array. If you're not using the disks with RAID, you should buy the cheaper disks, because they will go the extra mile to recover errors.


It's really a shame that WD wants to make it impossible for consumers to be able to chose whether the want to use their disks in RAID or not. However, I understand there are RAID controllers that allow you to set a longer period of time before it ejects a non-responding disk.
 
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FishAk said:
Since REs come with TLER already disabled, they are ready to go. You do not want TLER enabled in a RAID setup, because if a disk takes longer than 7 seconds or so to attempt to correct an error, the RAID controller will boot it off the array.
Click to expand...
I think that's backwards. TLER (Time Limited Error Recovery) is what LIMITS the retry time on a disk. WDC's default Read retry time is apparently 7 seconds, which is under the time limit for a RAID controller to consider the disk "unresponsive". When the time limit is reached, the disk tells the RAID controller that there's been a error on the disk and the RAID controller will substitute parity or mirror data in its place.

Desktop disks without TLER will try to read the disk longer than that, risking the RAID controller dropping the disk from the array even though there's only a small read error.

WDC's whitepaper on TLER:
http://www.wdc.com/en/library/sata/2579-001098.pdf

A much better reference:
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/learningresource/whitepapers/LearningResource_CCTL.html
 
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Seagate Barracuda NS/ES
WD RE3/RE4
Hitachi E*
samsung *raid*

just off the top of my head i believe those are the ones i know are compliant for raid purpose. how many people make drives these days??
 
It's been some time since I looked into this extensively, but either way, the enterprise disks come set up for RAID, and the desktop ones are delivered for a single disk setup.


I have 4 in RAID 10 or 01 on ICH10R, and another one by itself for backup. I have a random disk kicked off the array once or twice a month. It's a bit of a pain, because the whole system goes down when that happens, saying two disks are failed on reboot. However, I'm always asked if I want to fix it, to which I press Y, and one of the failed disks turns green. I then remove the other failed disk from the array, which turns it green, re-include it in the array, and continue on to Windows, where the “failed” drive is rebuilt.


I lean more toward IHC10R being RAID 01, because every time I have two failed disks, the controller says the OS isn't bootable. If it was RAID 10, sometimes at least, you'd think that two failed disks wouldn't be enough to bring down the system.
 
RebateMonger said:
I think that's backwards. TLER (Time Limited Error Recovery) is what LIMITS the retry time on a disk. WDC's default Read retry time is apparently 7 seconds, which is under the time limit for a RAID controller to consider the disk "unresponsive". When the time limit is reached, the disk tells the RAID controller that there's been a error on the disk and the RAID controller will substitute parity or mirror data in its place.

Desktop disks without TLER will try to read the disk longer than that, risking the RAID controller dropping the disk from the array even though there's only a small read error.

WDC's whitepaper on TLER:
http://www.wdc.com/en/library/sata/2579-001098.pdf

A much better reference:
http://www.samsung.com/global/busine...urce_CCTL.html
Click to expand...

Yes - that's my understanding too.
I got the RE drives and put them in a RAID. Now I simply want to check whether the setting is correct (TLER should be on).
 
coolVariable said:
Yes - that's my understanding too.
I got the RE drives and put them in a RAID. Now I simply want to check whether the setting is correct (TLER should be on).
Click to expand...

Were you able to add the hard drives to the server without any problems? How did you hook up the power for the extra hard drives. I wanted to purchase a Dell poweredge T310 or T410 server, but I didn't want to purchase their over priced hard drive or raid controllers. I was going to purchase the bare server and add the drives and controller afterwards. Did you have an trouble doing this?

thanks
 
nah as long as you have decent power/stabile machine - don't white box that.

btw don't use carpy sata drives for the boot. always do raid-1 sas for o/s - use sata for archival purpose.

30-40% = SATA
100% = SAS

i have 12 HP SATA drives in raid-5 for massive backup - and have lost 1 drive in 2 years but that was due to bad BBWC card simultaneously faulting. it was replaced under the 3 year warranty no problemo advance ship priority next day air. i'd suspect anything less than 1 out of 12 drives per year in a closet is far too high of a failure level.
 
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