WD20EARS Safe To Use in RAID?

[I_Sinsear_I]

Some background info: Western Digital released these new Green hard drives using the 4kb drive sector, dubbed "Advanced Format". All drives up until this point were using a legacy 512 byte hard drive sector. See: http://it.anandtech.com/show/2888

This is relatively unimportant, as my question is pertaining to RAID. Older WD desktop drives (Velociraptor excluded) could not be safely used in RAID because TLER was turned off. A tool called WDTLER, that runs in a DOS PE, enables you to switch on TLER on their desktop drives, enabling you to use them in RAID safely. Their Enterprise RE drives had TLER turned on by default. However, starting about October 2009 to December 2009, WD updated their firmware on all of their desktop drives so that TLER could no longer be enabled.

So, the question is, has anyone had experience with enabling TLER on the new WD20EARS? This drive debuted in January 2010, so presumably, TLER is disabled based on previous trends. However, several reviews on Newegg mentioned that they were using these in RAID arrays, but were they just overlooking the TLER issue or did they actually find a fix?

 

[H20cooled]

It really depends on what level raid and what raid card you are going to use. Many high end cards have a list of fully supported drives. The high end cards can be a PIA when using a non approved drive. Most onboard RAID is much less of a problem when picking drives

 

[HendrixFan]

The real problem, from what I have read, is that the green drives go into a low power state after being idle for a short period of time. This idling causes the drives to drop out of some arrays, causes slowdowns in others.

They do have "RE" versions of the green drives that wont have those problems.

 

[I_Sinsear_I]

I was hoping to use these drives in RAID 5. I know that TLER is not required for JBOD, but AFAIK, JBOD isn't redundant.

I was really hoping that I can build a RAID array with their desktop drives without having to pay the high markup WD charges for their "enterprise" RE drives.

 

[Binky]

If you're worried about the security of your data, the latest (untested) generation of drives may not be the best place to look.

 

[hennessy1]

I can confirm that the WD20EARS are safe to use in raid 1. I currently use them to backup my disk images.

 

[Emulex]

raid-5 requires a solid controller - i would not recommend non re drives. i've had a few RE drives fail maybe once every 6 months - with 24x7 power protection - no crashes ever. just died. i would fear anything less in quality.

raid-5 is far more dangerous than raid-0+1 in the event of a drive loss - it can take several hours to day+(no cache) to rebuild a large drive. the stress of rebuilding along with typical usage reduces margin for error (timeout/smart errors) even further unless you can take the machine and idle it for a day for the rebuild process to complete.

 

[I_Sinsear_I]

I can confirm that the WD20EARS are safe to use in raid 1. I currently use them to backup my disk images.

Are you using Software or Hardware RAID?

 

[I_Sinsear_I]

raid-5 requires a solid controller - i would not recommend non re drives. i've had a few RE drives fail maybe once every 6 months - with 24x7 power protection - no crashes ever. just died. i would fear anything less in quality.

raid-5 is far more dangerous than raid-0+1 in the event of a drive loss - it can take several hours to day+(no cache) to rebuild a large drive. the stress of rebuilding along with typical usage reduces margin for error (timeout/smart errors) even further unless you can take the machine and idle it for a day for the rebuild process to complete.

I'd be using it with an Areca 1231ML-2G with a battery pack + an APC UPS. This rig would be my dedicated home server rig, and therefore, leaving it on for a day or two just to rebuild the array wouldn't be an issue.

 

[H20cooled]

Well it supports raid 6 so get at least 4 HD's and run raid 6. this way should a drive drop out you can still drop 1 more before you have a data loss issue

 

[Emulex]

raid 0+1 makes more sense with 4 drives - no double crc.

drive set mirror 1 goes to cage 1 (power/etc)
drive set mirror 2 goes to cage 2

stripe them.

raid-6 gives minimal protection gain for a massive penalty in performance

 

[H20cooled]

raid 0+1 makes more sense with 4 drives - no double crc.

drive set mirror 1 goes to cage 1 (power/etc)
drive set mirror 2 goes to cage 2

stripe them.

raid-6 gives minimal protection gain for a massive penalty in performance

Raid 6 only costs you one third of you storage space. where as a raid 10 setup costs you 50%. All my large storage arrays have been raid 5 or 6.

When I do an array with 8 or 12 HD's its rather costly to run a raid 10 array

 

[alexito]

I can confirm that the WD20EARS are safe to use in raid 1. I currently use them to backup my disk images.

Hello,
I just hooked a couple of WD20EARSs in RAID1 in my new FreeNAS using Software RAID option. Are yours still alive since you posted your message?
Thank you

 

[Emulex]

unless the drivers are like the QNAP/DROBO where they handle errors on their own time - you will have raid dropouts. those guys have special drivers where you can throw in SV/AV drives which have TLER=0 along with a consumer drive which can go up to 120 seconds - they don't mind. i have yet to see this implemented anywhere else for free.

 

[dac7nco]

Hello,
I just hooked a couple of WD20EARSs in RAID1 in my new FreeNAS using Software RAID option. Are yours still alive since you posted your message?
Thank you

Sending a private message is better than resurrecting a year-old thread.

Welcome.