Advanced Format Drives - WD10EARS WD15EARS WD20EARS

[SSD]

Is there any way to check whether if the jumper is on or off without having a look on the drive itself?

 

e.g. the following line in system log:

Tower kernel: md: import disk0: [8,48] (sdd) WDC WD20EARS-00S WD-XXXXXXXXXXXX offset: 63 size: 1953514552

 

Given the "offset: 63" part, is that mean the jumper is on?

 

Thank you!

 

The way the jumper works is to allow the OS to continue to refer to sector 63 while, in reality, the drive is accessing sector 64.  The drive is basically adding one to every sector number it receives from the OS.  Not terribly high tech, but it works.

 

There is no known way to detect if the jumper is in place.  There may be some way that the manufacturer knows, but if it exists they are keeping it to themselves.

 

About the only way I could think is to perform some type of benchmarking operation to detect if an EARS drive appears to be running slower on random seek operations.  It might be slow and might not be terribly reliable (so many other variables besides the jumper can influence speed), but is the only way that comes to mind.

[binfuser]

I was constantly getting the error as others in the thread after using the 7-8pin jumper on my 2TB EARS:

 

May 20 15:54:45 Tower kernel: ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0

May 20 15:54:45 Tower kernel: ata1.00: irq_stat 0x40000001

May 20 15:54:45 Tower kernel: ata1.00: failed command: READ DMA EXT

May 20 15:54:45 Tower kernel: ata1.00: cmd 25/00:08:a8:88:e0/00:00:e8:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 4096 in

May 20 15:54:45 Tower kernel:          res 51/01:00:af:88:e0/4f:00:e8:00:00/e0 Emask 0x1 (device error)

May 20 15:54:45 Tower kernel: ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR }

May 20 15:54:45 Tower kernel: ata1.00: configured for UDMA/33

May 20 15:54:45 Tower kernel: ata1: EH complete

 

I tried to preclear the drive but had no luck at all just generating tons of errors and being no further then 10% after six hours.

 

Using the windows low level format tool mentioned earlier in the thread it seems to have corrected the reset errors and preclear is running fine now. Just wanted to report in piecing together those bits seems to have to worked fine for me.

 

One last note the low level format tool requires a pre Windows Vista kernel so Windows 7 and Server 2008 won't work.

[olympia]

Thank you for you both for the feedback and your explanation bjp999!

[Thornwood]

I used the tool on windows 7 Just need to give it admin selection.

[binfuser]

I used the tool on windows 7 Just need to give it admin selection.

 

Running with admin rights it flaked out saying error reading sectors. Soon as i used the same version on my WHS server it worked fine. Only other thing could be the Windows 7 box I tried on has an Nvidia chipset (Dell Dimension E521) with Nvidia drivers. The WHS was an Intel based board.

[Thornwood]

I have a Nvidia Chipset as well but I use a externel USB to Sata mounter..... I never had any problems sorry I dont know why it did not work for you.

[binfuser]

One last question about the EARS drives, I was reading you should disable the head parking with wdidle3 to cut down on the smart errors. Is this still applicable?

[Joe L.]

One last question about the EARS drives, I was reading you should disable the head parking with wdidle3 to cut down on the smart errors. Is this still applicable?

It has nothing to do with reducing smart errors (not directly anyway)

 

It has to do with reducing wear and tear on the physical disk components in the drive.  Does the parameter showing the number of times the disk head is being parked incrementing at a high rate (as reported in the smart report)?  If so, it might be a matter of months before the smart report indicates the drive have reached the end of its "life" as the heads have been parked an excessive number of times. 

 

This will not mean the disk will not work as it might last for years more time, but it has more mechanical wear than it would have if it had not parked the disk heads every few seconds.

[binfuser]

This will not mean the disk will not work as it might last for years more time, but it has more mechanical wear than it would have if it had not parked the disk heads every few seconds.

 

Thanks for the technical bit, I figured disable the idle parking would just cause the smart count to be exaggerated leading to possible errors.

 

So really at the moment there's no real advantage to disabling it besides the smart count, only problems it could cause.

[Joe L.]

This will not mean the disk will not work as it might last for years more time, but it has more mechanical wear than it would have if it had not parked the disk heads every few seconds.

 

Thanks for the technical bit, I figured disable the idle parking would just cause the smart count to be exaggerated leading to possible errors.

 

So really at the moment there's no real advantage to disabling it besides the smart count, only problems it could cause.

That and the extra mechanical wear it is having... there is a reason the manufacturer has a counter on that parameter.

[chanders]

^^ So I guess this means we should disable it?

[Joe]

I read the whole 13 pages of this post.  I am migrating from an HP EX490 WHS to unRaid.  I am preclearing a WD20EARS that was used in my WHS without the jumper.  I placed a jumper on it and put it in my unRaid server.  The pre-clear is working very slowly.  It has been running 24 hours and is on step 2 and is only 7% done as it is running at 3.3MB/s.  I am clearing an old 300GB drive at the same time and it is running at almost 12MB/s.  At this rate it will take over a week!  Open to suggestions.  BTW should I be concerned about these in my syslog repeating?

 

Nov 24 17:23:46 Tower kernel: sd 2:0:2:0: [sde] Unhandled sense code

Nov 24 17:23:46 Tower kernel: sd 2:0:2:0: [sde] Result: hostbyte=0x00 driverbyte=0x08

Nov 24 17:23:46 Tower kernel: sd 2:0:2:0: [sde] Sense Key : 0x3 [current]

Nov 24 17:23:46 Tower kernel: sd 2:0:2:0: [sde] ASC=0x11 ASCQ=0x0

Nov 24 17:23:46 Tower kernel: sd 2:0:2:0: [sde] CDB: cdb[0]=0x28: 28 00 e8 e0 88 a8 00 00 08 00

Nov 24 17:23:46 Tower kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev sde, sector 3907029160

Nov 24 17:23:46 Tower kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sde, logical block 488378645

Nov 24 17:23:58 Tower kernel: 3w-9xxx: scsi2: ERROR: (0x03:0x0202): Drive ECC error:port=2.

 

Thanks

Joe

[Joe L.]

I read the whole 13 pages of this post.  I am migrating from an HP EX490 WHS to unRaid.  I am preclearing a WD20EARS that was used in my WHS without the jumper.  I placed a jumper on it and put it in my unRaid server.  The pre-clear is working very slowly.  It has been running 24 hours and is on step 2 and is only 7% done as it is running at 3.3MB/s.  I am clearing an old 300GB drive at the same time and it is running at almost 12MB/s.  At this rate it will take over a week!  Open to suggestions.  BTW should I be concerned about these in my syslog repeating?

 

Nov 24 17:23:46 Tower kernel: sd 2:0:2:0: [sde] Unhandled sense code

Nov 24 17:23:46 Tower kernel: sd 2:0:2:0: [sde] Result: hostbyte=0x00 driverbyte=0x08

Nov 24 17:23:46 Tower kernel: sd 2:0:2:0: [sde] Sense Key : 0x3 [current]

Nov 24 17:23:46 Tower kernel: sd 2:0:2:0: [sde] ASC=0x11 ASCQ=0x0

Nov 24 17:23:46 Tower kernel: sd 2:0:2:0: [sde] CDB: cdb[0]=0x28: 28 00 e8 e0 88 a8 00 00 08 00

Nov 24 17:23:46 Tower kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev sde, sector 3907029160

Nov 24 17:23:46 Tower kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sde, logical block 488378645

Nov 24 17:23:58 Tower kernel: 3w-9xxx: scsi2: ERROR: (0x03:0x0202): Drive ECC error:port=2.

 

Thanks

Joe

I would stop the pre-clear on that drive. Clearly it is having problems.

 

I'd run this command  (assuming it is /dev/sde you are clearing)

dd  if=/dev/zero  of=/dev/sde  bs=512  count=8

then re-start the pre-clear.  It might go a bit faster. (and hopefully the errors will stop)

 

Joe L.

[Joe]

Thanks,  I will try that when I put the drive back in.  I pulled it out after 48 hours and only 20% done.  What does that command do?  I am just getting into Linux as I have been working on Windows for 25 years.

 

Joe

[Joe L.]

Thanks,  I will try that when I put the drive back in.  I pulled it out after 48 hours and only 20% done.  What does that command do?  I am just getting into Linux as I have been working on Windows for 25 years.

 

Joe

"dd" is a very old command in unix.  It was originally used to dump copies of disks to tape.  It copies from the "if" (input file) to the "of" (output file)

 

In the case I gave to you, it copies from the virtual device that returns an endless  source of zeros to the disk you are trying to clear.  The count is how many "blocks" of data to copy and "bs" sets the block size.  Basically, it will write the first 4096 bytes of of the disk with zeros.  This will completely overwrite the master boot record.  It will also overwrite any odd geometry the disk might be presenting to the OS in pretending it still has cylinder/heads/and sector based geometry.

 

Joe L.

[Kryspy]

Just bought a 1.5 TB EARS.  I am going to use it as a server backup for all my data.  Seeing as how it might be used later on in the unRAID array but most likely used in Windows 7 now and formatted as NTFS would it make sense to go ahead and jumper pin 7/8 before putting it into use?  It is only going to be used currently outside the array as data backup of server user shares data.

 

Kryspy

[Joe]

I would jumper it before use.  I thought it worked in my WHS but now I believe it was the reason it was so slow at times.  Not to mention how hard it may be to jumper it later and get it to work correctly.  Just my 2¢.

Joe

[Joe]

An update.

I stopped the pre-clear.  Took the jumpered drive out and put it in my Win 7 box.  Could not do anything with the drive.  I then remembered how the 3ware 5500s locks the drive.  Had to find a tool to unlock the drive and I was able to now write to it in Windows.  I then Low level initialized the drive overnight with the program suggested a number of screens back.  I then tested it with some reads and writes and seemed OK compared to other drives I have.  I then put it back in my unraid box and am proceeding to once again pre-clear.  This time it is over 2x as fast with the second stage of zeroing at about 8MB/s instead of 3MB/s it was doing before.  So I am at 44 hours and 49% done.  This still seems a little slow to me.  The other 2 drives I have pre-cleared have been at 10 and 12MB/s.  What kind of speeds have others experienced.

Thanks

Joe

[Traxxus]

During a pre-clear you should get 90, down to 60-70 as it gets to the outer edges of the disk. Only time I had it drop that low was when the drive was bad and getting media errors and i/o errors.  I ended up RMAing that one.  Mine on a 2 TB EARS with a jumper, was finished in about 32 hours.  You are at 44 hours and still in the preread stage?  You still got a write stage and another preclear to go.  If you can hold out til it gets to the write stage it may start showing errors that will shine some light on the problem.  I believe there is also a command parameter to skip the pre-read and go directly to the writing to the disk. 

[Joe]

Thanks for the reply.  It seems that the read speeds are in the range you mentioned 60-70.  The write speeds are off.  I am starting to think unRaid does not like my 3Ware 5500s controllers.  I do not get any temperature or Smart readings and the logs are full of these errors.  I did read that others were having issues with this controller and the same syslog errors.

 

Nov 30 10:28:03 Tower last message repeated 2 times

Nov 30 10:28:03 Tower last message repeated 5 times

Nov 30 10:28:03 Tower kernel: 3w-9xxx: scsi0: ERROR: (0x03:0x0101): Invalid command opcode:opcode=0x85.

 

I am on Step 2 of 10 Coping Zeros to remainder of disk to clear it.  7.6MB/s, 75% done, elapsed time 64 hours.  The other drives I have cleared have also taken longer than expected from reading posts.  They have been marginally faster at 10MB/s and 12MB/s, but it makes a big difference in time.  When this eventually finishes I can copy the results screen and post them if you like.

 

I am moving data from my WHS at the same time (which is also extremely slow).  It is a Supermicro dual Xeon with 8GB RAM. 

 

[spinbot]

I was hoping to jump into the 2TB drives, however I cannot get a 7200RPM drive at a reasonable price right now (as I need that for a parity drive first), so I've decided to remain in the 1.5TB world.  My array is primarily Seagate drives, however I can get some of the WD15EARS drives for $60 with free shipping.  Before I pull the trigger I wanted to ensure that with the jumper installed on these, I wouldn't have any problems with the Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 SATA controller they will be hooked up to.  I am running version: 4.5.6 of UnRaid right now.

 

Thanks

[Rajahal]

You shouldn't, as many people are running with exactly that combination.  Remember to disable INT13 on your Supermicro card so that the drives on that card won't mess with the boot order.

[spinbot]

You shouldn't, as many people are running with exactly that combination.  Remember to disable INT13 on your Supermicro card so that the drives on that card won't mess with the boot order.

 

I've been running with a couple data drives off the Supermicro for many months now, however I don't recall "INT13".  The only issue I had, although not specific to the controller, was my motherboard storing a backup of the BIOS to multiple drives resulting in their size being off by a few dozen bites.

 

Is it safe to say if everything is working ok now with 2 drives, that it will be fine with 2 more or might I have just got lucky with the "INT13" ?  I may have done something when I set it up, unfortunately my memory lately lasts 30 seconds ( as my girlfriend can attest to )    Let me be clear its my MEMORY that lasts 30 seconds..nothing else!  lol

[PhilH]

I may have done something when I set it up, unfortunately my memory lately lasts 30 seconds ( as my girlfriend can attest to )     Let me be clear its my MEMORY that lasts 30 seconds..nothing else!  lol

 

lol 

[Joe L.]

I may have done something when I set it up, unfortunately my memory lately lasts 30 seconds ( as my girlfriend can attest to )     Let me be clear its my MEMORY that lasts 30 seconds..nothing else!  lol

 

lol 

Nothing else lasts that long...    You must be very wealthy.