Advanced Format Drives - WD10EARS WD15EARS WD20EARS

[Joe L.]

how did you perform a low level format?

 

debug g=c800:5    ;D ;D

Cute...  Shows how very oldexperienced you are....

[bcbgboy13]

Or something from Hiren's BootCD may work too...

 

 

[Thornwood]

I found this

 

HDD Low Level Format Tool ver.2.36 build 1181

 

I states that it can do this even if the drive is on a usb adapter... Like mine is. I have nothing to lose so on Saturday I will attempt to do the format and post what I find... Based on the technical Spec. I found that the drive should be ok after doing this and all I need to do as a full test is to format it NTFS because if it does not like it should error right away. After this add to array. I hope I am right and we can use this a possible fix for unjumpered drives.

 

Now here is a question the reason these drives are using the unjumpered format is to allow for much bigger drives. So it does not matter to this one but it might when we hit 3TB or greater? If so what will happen then? I just read that there will be a 3TB Seagate coming out soon.

 

[purko]

I found this

 

HDD Low Level Format Tool ver.2.36 build 1181

 

I states that it can do this even if the drive is on a usb adapter...

Yeah, they had that "program" there in 1991, when they were formatting 80MB drives.  I wonder what that will do to your drive.

 

Did you notice what they're calling "low-level formatting"?  According to their web site, their "tool will clear partitions, MBR, and every bit of user data."  That's not what low-level formatting means.  You could do that yourself in unRAID with the dd command.  On modern hard drives you can't get any "lower" than that.

 

[local.bin]

 

4 x WD15EARS

 

What write speeds are people getting, as a noob to unraid I have it running on a dual opteron rig (940) and am getting 23 kb/s writes which seems very slow.

 

I have yet to tackle the jumber thing, but should I realistically expect more speed than I am getting for writing the parity data?

 

(appreciate its dependent on a number of things, but ...)

 

Thanks in advance

[BRiT]

If' you're getting 23 kb/s then something is horribly horribly wrong. Not quite heat-death of the universe, but somewhere near there. Typical ranges are 30-40 MB/s.

 

You will see performance improvements with Jumpered EARS compared to Unjumpered EARS. However, there seems to be issues in going from unjumpered to jumpered if the drive has already been used and formated; some drives don't respond and have to be RMA'd to be able to function in jumpered mode. In all cases, switching between jumpered/unjumpered wipes out all the data on the drive.

[vca]

 

4 x WD15EARS

 

What write speeds are people getting, as a noob to unraid I have it running on a dual opteron rig (940) and am getting 23 kb/s writes which seems very slow.

 

I have yet to tackle the jumber thing, but should I realistically expect more speed than I am getting for writing the parity data?

 

(appreciate its dependent on a number of things, but ...)

 

Thanks in advance

 

I have 8 WD green drives (7 EADS and 1 EARS which is the parity drive) and get about 24MB/s (mega bytes per second) on writes and in the 60-70MB/s range when parity checking.  So if your 23kb/s was a typo and you meant 23MB/s, then we're getting the same performance and from what I've seen from other postings that's about as good as you'll get from the green drives.

 

Regards,

 

Stephen

[dogmanky]

I have a friend who had the same success with the EARS drives after they had not responded in the Preclear.  Low-level on a windows box with jumper on then precleared fine and still work several weeks later with no apparent issues.

 

 

 

 

I've installed several of the WD15EARS drives in my server and ran into problems, some of which I documented earlier in this and other threads.  The only workaround I found to be effective was to perform a low level format of the drive with the jumper installed and then perform a preclear with the jumpered drive in the array.  Once I did that the drive was recognized and the data was restored from parity.  I've been running the drives for over a month now with no issues.

[captain_video]

how did you perform a low level format?

Download the Acronis utility from the Western Digital website.  I believe the low level format option is labeled as the one that writes all zeroes to the drive.  You need to set up the drive internally to your PC to perform this.

 

If you want to set up your drive externally with a USB adapter like the Thermaltake BlacX eSATA adapter, download the WD Data Lifeguard utility.  I had problems getting it to recognize one of my drives, which is why I switched to the Acronis utility.

[Thornwood]

I found this

 

HDD Low Level Format Tool ver.2.36 build 1181

 

I states that it can do this even if the drive is on a usb adapter...

Yeah, they had that "program" there in 1991, when they were formatting 80MB drives.  I wonder what that will do to your drive.

 

Did you notice what they're calling "low-level formatting"?  According to their web site, their "tool will clear partitions, MBR, and every bit of user data."  That's not what low-level formatting means.  You could do that yourself in unRAID with the dd command.  On modern hard drives you can't get any "lower" than that.

 

too bad  I was hoping that we could find a utility that would do that the debug code that was shown a few lines up does. there must be somthing that can do this.  To run this debug code we would need to install debug into a boot floppy but in the cammand i dont see how to make sure it will find the harddrive or it there some questions it will ask?

 

I have run debug in school but not alot.

[bubbaQ]

You can't low-level format modern drives in the field.  For one thing, they have variable interleaves now.  For another, they cary the SPT with more SPT on the outside cylinders than the inside ones.

 

The flux of modern drives is much higher also, so there is no need to "refresh" the sector boundaries with a LLF that used to be needed with old MFM drives.

 

Wiping the ENTIRE drive with zeros is about all you can do.  There may be some diagnostic routines that can write to some areas that are locked out by normal use (such as secure erase features that will write to remapped sectors) or access the SMART storage area, but that's about it.

[JarDo]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/60089

[purko]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/60089

Some people may think that you're being serious   

 

[Thornwood]

Well on the weekend I added the Jumper to my Drive. All data lost but expected.

I then used my usb and found the drive.

I then used HDD Low Level Format Tool ver.2.36 build 1181... Might not be truly low level but I wanted to give it a try.

I then Created a Partition on Windows 7 with Ntfs and did High level format. When finished I installed in to Unraid box.

 

I did a preclear, With no errors.

I added the drive as parity drive and have not seen a single error.

 

On preclear I was getting 117MBs throughput....

 

Will post if any errors come up.

 

[purko]

Well on the weekend I added the Jumper to my Drive. All data lost but expected.

I then used my usb and found the drive.

I then used HDD Low Level Format Tool ver.2.36 build 1181... Might not be truly low level but I wanted to give it a try.

I then Created a Partition on Windows 7 with Ntfs and did High level format. When finished I installed in to Unraid box.

 

I did a preclear, With no errors.

I added the drive as parity drive and have not seen a single error.

 

On preclear I was getting 117MBs throughput....

 

Will post if any errors come up.

 

 

Thornwood, you never had jumper problem with that particular drive.  You "fixed" a problem you didn't have.

Most EARS drives work perfectly well after adding that jumper.  Aparently, your drive was one of those.

Some EARS drives had buggy firmware and have problems if you install the jumper after the drive has been used.  That wasn't your case.

Joe L.'s preclear script does exactly the same thing as that so called "low-level format" -- writes zeros to every sector of the drive.

 

[rd_blair]

Purko wrote:

 

Some EARS drives had buggy firmware and have problems if you install the jumper after the drive has been used.

 

Any idea as to what firmware level is the problem?

[spinbot]

Are these drives even our best option right now?  Should we just avoid any hassle and get a Seagate , Hiatchi or whatever?

 

If one already has a collection of 1.5TB and smaller 7200RPM drives, adding one of these 5400RPM drives would slow down things.. right?

[Joe L.]

Are these drives even our best option right now?  Should we just avoid any hassle and get a Seagate , Hiatchi or whatever?

You can certainly do that

If one already has a collection of 1.5TB and smaller 7200RPM drives, adding one of these 5400RPM drives would slow down things.. right?

It will slow down writing to that one data disk drastically (proportional to the relative RPM.)  It will not affect the reading of them by much.    A parity check would not be much different, since only "reads" are being performed, but writing parity to one would be drastically different than if a 7200 RPM drive were used.

 

Just remember, there are only two basic types of disk drives:

  -- Those that have already failed

  -- Those that have not yet failed.  (it is just a matter of time though, so just be patient and they will)

 

Personally, in my opinion, if you are a speed-freak, then all 7200 RPM drives is the way to go.  But If you just want to watch movies and store data, then any mix of any speed drives will do.    I buy them when they are sale... seldom more than one at a time.  Speed is not so important as price per Gig. 

 

Joe L.

[Rajahal]

Are these drives even our best option right now?  Should we just avoid any hassle and get a Seagate , Hiatchi or whatever?

 

In my opinion, the only other option for 'green' drives right now is the Samsung EcoGreen.  Seagate LPs have been getting bad reviews, and Hitachi doesn't make a 'green' model (plus they still haven't gained back my trust  ).

 

I still like the WD Greens because they are the technically best drives on the market.  The Samsung EcoGreens aren't advanced format and have half the cache.  The jumper issue is a small inconvenience in my mind.  Of course I'll probably be singing a different tune in a few years when we all have to remove our jumpers and let unRAID restore the data (one disk at a time, of course) in order to allow unRAID to natively use the 4K sectors.

 

Plus the WD Greens have the prettiest labels 

[local.bin]

 

I'm about to setup a new system with these drives as I haven't done the jumper bit yet, after using the drives elsewhere...

 

Question is; is the native version being tested so I can be a tester for the native, or is it months away and I should just mess with the jumpers and get it done now?

 

Thanks in advance

[Joe L.]

 

I'm about to setup a new system with these drives as I haven't done the jumper bit yet, after using the drives elsewhere...

 

Question is; is the native version being tested so I can be a tester for the native, or is it months away and I should just mess with the jumpers and get it done now?

 

Thanks in advance

not even close to being months away.  no mention of it in anything lime-tech has posted.  Install the jumper. Hope your drive has the firmware where it can be changed after the fact.  If not, RMA it.

[spinbot]

I've finally got my AOC-SASLP-MV8 SATA card "in the mail", so now I have to make my hard drive decision.  My server runs with primarily 1.5TB drives.  I want to move up to the 2TB drives ( for my next additions ).  One will have to be parity.  I am not a speed freak, but like many, the quicker things happen, the better.    If you were to go with a 7200 model, which would you guys use?

 

I see Canada Computers sells the Hitachi for $120 for the retail version

http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=568_15_210_212&item_id=027386

 

The price between different makes isn't really that much.  As mentioned "all drives eventually fail", well... I just want it to fail after I remove it from my computer 

[local.bin]

 

I'm about to setup a new system with these drives as I haven't done the jumper bit yet, after using the drives elsewhere...

 

Question is; is the native version being tested so I can be a tester for the native, or is it months away and I should just mess with the jumpers and get it done now?

 

Thanks in advance

not even close to being months away.  no mention of it in anything lime-tech has posted.  Install the jumper. Hope your drive has the firmware where it can be changed after the fact.  If not, RMA it.

 

Thanks Joe.

 

Is there a quick test to check whether it will accept the change after the fact? purely by speed after adding the jumper?

 

Cheers, thanks

[Roscoe62]

I'm now getting to the stage where I NEED to replace at least 1 drive. So now I have 2 questions....

 

1) I don't know where you guys are getting your jumper pins from, but most retailers or suppliers here just look at you blankly if you ask about buying jumper pins for these drives! So where are you getting your jumper pins from?

 

2) I'm using UnRaid mainly to stream movies (DVD, BluRay) over our home network. If I have to remain unjumpered, is that gonna kill my performance?

 

Thanks!

[Carpet3]

1) If you're from the UK then maplins sell a pack of 10: http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=34146 or alternatively if you go to any local computer shop (even pc world) that do pc repairs they'll likely have a bunch of them, they dont normally mind giving one away for free (ymmv)

 

2) From what i've seen I wouldn't run these drives unjumpered with an OS that doesnt natively support them