Advanced Format Drives - WD10EARS WD15EARS WD20EARS

[Joe]

New Drives - Use Jumpers right away.

Used Drives w/o jumpers - I jump them, low level format them with "Hard Drive Low Level Format Tool" http://hddguru.com/

Then Pre-clear drive.

Ready to use.

 

W/O jumper they start @ 64

W jumper they start @ 63

 

Hope that helps

[spinbot]

It's probably not a bad idea to stick this summary in Post 1 of this thread.

 

"Topic: Advanced Format Drives - WD10EARS WD15EARS WD20EARS  (Read 18970 times) "

 

The topic is clearly very popular.    I've also made use of it. 

[squirrellydw]

I agree and I think what joe just posted should be the very first thing.  I just ordered another one and cam here to refresh my memory on what to do.

[skank]

I agree and I think what joe just posted should be the very first thing.  I just ordered another one and cam here to refresh my memory on what to do.

 

+1

 

In my case, i could switch the unjumpered used harddrive for a new unused unjumpered one.. so im gonna jumper it right away and preclear it

so no issues for me then

 

but what i would like to know

whats the difference in starting at 64 or 63?

[BRiT]

whats the difference in starting at 64 or 63?

 

Internal alignment that improves performance due to buffering efficiency for the drive. In most cases instead of having to perform two unaligned block reads, it will do one aligned block read. The same is true for writes.

[skank]

so starting at 63 is better?

[MartinQ]

so starting at 63 is better?

 

No, starting at 64 is better.

 

[bombz]

I have a few EARS drives in my system, with data on them all. Are you saying it is wise to jumper pins 7-8?

 

I am getting EXTREMELY low data writes !! (500kb-10mb/sec) when sending data to my unRAID.

 

Thanks

[lionelhutz]

I have a few EARS drives in my system, with data on them all. Are you saying it is wise to jumper pins 7-8?

 

I am getting EXTREMELY low data writes !! (500kb-10mb/sec) when sending data to my unRAID.

 

Thanks

 

You can not just jumper the pins 7-8 without going through some hoops to get the drives to work again. There must be another issue causing it to be that slow.

 

Peter

[skank]

so starting at 63 is better?

 

No, starting at 64 is better.

 

then why put a jumper on new disks?

cause joe says "W jumper they start @ 63"

 

[lionelhutz]

Joe is wrong.

 

The partition always starts at sector 63, that is the sector where unRAID starts every partition.

 

The jumper maps sector 63 so that it internally lands on the beginning of a 4k sector.

 

Peter

 

[limetech]

Joe is wrong.

 

The partition always starts at sector 63, that is the sector where unRAID starts every partition.

 

The jumper maps sector 63 so that it internally lands on the beginning of a 4k sector.

 

Peter

 

 

Maybe this has been done?  An experiment: install jumper and format drive.  Now remove jumper and look at a raw dump of the first few sectors.  Does the MBR now show up in sector 1 instead of 0?  If so, then start of partition 1 is probably in sector 64 (that would be ideal because it means you could remove jumper from previously-jumpered drive, write a correct MBR, and partition 1 data is good to go).

 

Thinking like a programmer, if I see the jumper I increment the LBA by 1 before translating to a physical address used by the rest of the drive firmware.  If no jumper, no increment.  I don't really see the WD firmware guys doing anything more complex than that! 

 

[lionelhutz]

Tom;

 

You'd think that, but there must be more to it after reading some of the hoops that EARS owners have had to jump through to get them to work after partitioning them and then jumpering them before trying to partition them again. Somehow, the interface firmware seems to get all messed up by existing data/formatting on the disk. If it were a simple sector "shifting" then the drive would just appear without a partition and could simply be re-used without acting up like they often do.

 

Peter

 

[Blade1001]

Hi all,

 

I'm in the process of gathering together the components for my first unRAID server. I currently have a DroboFS (which is frankly crap!) and in that I have three WD EARS 2TB drives.

 

I plan to build my unRAID server using three or four brand new WD EARS 2TB drives, setting one as the parity drive. I will then transfer all the data from my Drobo to the new server.

 

Finally taking the current used WD EARS drives out of the Drobo for use in the new unRAID server.

 

Now I have read through all 16 pages of this thread, and to put it bluntly I'm confused! Whilst I have built a number of PC's in the past, and have tinkered with BIOS settings, DOS (back in the day!) and Windows, I have no experience of Linux, or unRAID, and and the majority of the technical stuff in this thread is well over my head.

 

So if I may, I have some simple questions concerning these drives to help me get from my current set-up to my new set-up as simply and smoothly as possible:

 

1. The issue as I understand it, is there is a performance hit when using one of these drives WITHOUT the jumper in an unRAID server. So what are the expected approximate real world Read and Write speeds of jumpered versus non-jumpered drives (in MB/s) – I know absolute streaming (Read) and file transfer speeds (Write) will depend on other system components and settings too, but just give me an idea of the potential difference if there are no other bottlenecks in the system or network?

 

2. Are there any other issues (dangers!) from using a non-jumpered drive (e.g. increase risk of drive failure or data corruption etc)?

 

3. Given that the Drobo uses its own file system which cannot be read by any other system, what are the EXACT steps I need to go through in order to go from 1) Drive working in Drobo, to 2) Drive working in unRAID server? (Please assume no prior knowledge if you answer this question, and give me a DUMMIES guide to this!).

 

4. If unRAID adds the necessary support in the future, that means the jumper is no longer required, can I assume that if you have non-jumpered drives in your unRAID system, no further action would be required after the software update?

 

Cheers in advance...

 

[kizer]

1. I normally see 18-20MBs uploads 30-35MBs downloads. I'm running a completely Green WD system too

2. Not sure

3. If the drobo has a compatible file system you could mount the drive and copy files from it, but if it does not you could just simply use something like TeraCopy and copy the files across your network to your new setup. Not the fastest, but you could initially leave your Parity drive off before copying, but keep in mind you would have no protection until you enable the Parity drive and run a parity check. I personally enabled everything and just let my system do its thing. Sure it was a little slower, but honestly I'm building a protected system so I wanted to be protected from the start.

4. Not knowing the time table nor the later advantages I would simply plan to use the Jumper for now

[SSD]

Tom is in the process of updating unRaid to begin partitions on sector 64 instead of sector 63. It is being so as to minimize impact on existing drives already in arrays. But the longer term direction is sector 64 alignment for all new drives. New EARS drives add to unRaid once this new version comes out (initially in 4.6.1) should not be adding the jumper.

 

I might suggest that people planning to add EARS drives consider holding off until the new version comes out. It may save you time later on if you want all of your disks migrated to the new format.

[Blade1001]

Hi bjp999,

 

That sounds good - do you have an ETA for 4.6.1?

[neilt0]

Too late! I added a 2TB EARS yesterday! 

[SSD]

Too late! I added a 2TB EARS yesterday! 

 

I don't have a date but expect it soon. If you need the space don't wait, but if you can hold off I would. If nothing else you might be able to run some tests to compare performance between jumpered and unjumpered disks.

[Rajahal]

1. The issue as I understand it, is there is a performance hit when using one of these drives WITHOUT the jumper in an unRAID server. So what are the expected approximate real world Read and Write speeds of jumpered versus non-jumpered drives (in MB/s) – I know absolute streaming (Read) and file transfer speeds (Write) will depend on other system components and settings too, but just give me an idea of the potential difference if there are no other bottlenecks in the system or network?

 

I'm helping someone right now who is seeing writes in the range of KB/s instead of the normal MB/s.  I don't know his read speeds.  I expect the problem is that several of his drives (including his parity drive) are WD EARS drives without jumpers.  This is the slowest extreme I've seen.  Others have reported more modest performance hits, something like 30%.

[limetech]

Hi bjp999,

 

That sounds good - do you have an ETA for 4.6.1?

 

Trying like hell to get 4.6.1-rc1 done by this weekend.

[Blade1001]

That's great news I'll look out for it! Assuming then that I won't have to mess about with jumpers, once my unRAID server is setup and running with the new drives, what process do I need to go through to transfer my three existing WD EARS 2TB drives from my Drobo to the new server - will it just be a matter of dropping them into the server and unRAID will format them, check them etc ready for use, or will I have to do something manually?

[Rajahal]

See this thread for more info on that.  Of course the first step in your case will be to get the data off the drobo and onto some other drive, as drobo and unRAID use vastly different file systems.  I would just copy the data over the network.

[squirrellydw]

I just added one today. I only have two, the one I added today and my parity drive. What will be the process to upgrade these when 4.6.1 come out?

 

Edit.....I found my answer in the post Raj posted, thanks

[Blade1001]

See this thread for more info on that.  Of course the first step in your case will be to get the data off the drobo and onto some other drive, as drobo and unRAID use vastly different file systems.  I would just copy the data over the network.

 

Hi Rajahal,

 

Yeah, thats my plan - build the unRAID server with three new drives, transfer the data over the network from the Drobo to the unRAID server, then take the three existing drives out of the Drobo and add them to the unRAID server (giving me six in total) for it to format them and add them to the unRAID array.

 

I just wasn't just if I was missing a stage (having read about 'pre-clearing' and 'WD Drive Cleaner' and 'Kill Disk' etc etc elsewhere in this thread - none of which i have any experience of)!