October 27, 201015 yr hi motivated by some posts in another thread (and not wanting to hijack it) I wanted to post some thoughts/questions about the new WD 3TB (http://204.14.213.185/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136764&Tpk=wd%203tb) I read the following in a HDD review site (http://www.storagereview.com/western_digital_caviar_green_3tb_review_wd30ezrsdtl): Since most current systems don't yet support UEFI standards, WD is providing an interim solution for those who want to boot these high-capacity drives in certain operating environments; they're including an AHCI-compliant host bus adapter (HBA) card with the retail drive kits. This allows legacy BIOS motherboards and GPT-ready operating systems to use a known driver to correctly support large capacity drives. While not a perfect solution, WD had to either go this route or hold off until UEFI adoption warranted the drive release. The rules are slightly different when using the drive in a non-boot scenario, simply as a secondary storage device. Here the drives play well with 32-bit operating systems when used with or without the included HBA (depending on OS). According to the site, this 3TB disk can be used straight in a windows 7 32 bit pc (not for booting but for storage). also, an HBA card is given with the WD disk which can accommodate (from what i see from the pictures) 2 HDDs. So, is it possible that unraid may support 3tb disks in current mobos? if not maybe it needs few modifications or to add the HBA card driver? or am i not taking some other unraid aspect in consideration?
October 27, 201015 yr No. If they work in unRAID, they will work ONLY with the adapter that comes with the drive. So one has to be parity, and the most you could have is 3 data + 1 parity. Not much help. WD found problems with multiple SATA chipsets in various mobos.... that's why they included a controller.... so trying to run it off the mobo controller is playing with very hot fire.
October 28, 201015 yr Author No. If they work in unRAID, they will work ONLY with the adapter that comes with the drive. So one has to be parity, and the most you could have is 3 data + 1 parity. Not much help. WD found problems with multiple SATA chipsets in various mobos.... that's why they included a controller.... so trying to run it off the mobo controller is playing with very hot fire. Well, if they work with the adapter, there are some advantages. When they get a bit cheaper and it is worth buying some over the 2Tb ones, you can do so, put them in the array and give some extra life to your mobo until you can upgrade... but even then we will have to know if the adapter works with Unraid
October 28, 201015 yr Nice article about this drive at Tech Report:http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/19871 Looks like the controller card is PCI-E x1. Since we won't be booting to these drives, it looks like we'll just need to add support for either GPT or 4KB sectors in order to support these drives.
October 28, 201015 yr Since we won't be booting to these drives, it looks like we'll just need to add support for either GPT or 4KB sectors in order to support these drives. No, no, .... and no. Can you certify your SATA controller is >2TB safe? WD found some were not. 4K sectors are not exposed to the OS ... so they are irrelevant to compatibility.
October 28, 201015 yr Oh, I thought if the OS could support 4k sectors natively, then we'd be able to end run around the MBR limit of 2^32 bits. I'm confused about LBA48. Isn't 48 bit LBA old news? That was back when the limit was 137 GB, right?
October 29, 201015 yr Author Help me understand something. Let's say that one has an EFI mobo. will one be able to use the >2tb HDs or unraid must also unergo some changes?
October 29, 201015 yr UEFI supports GPT. UnRAID itself would have to support GPT in order to make that work, and I'm not sure that it does.
October 29, 201015 yr Help me understand something. Let's say that one has an EFI mobo. will one be able to use the >2tb HDs or unraid must also unergo some changes? Depends on the SATA chipset/controller. unRAID will have to change from MBR partition tables to either partitionless or GPT. But I can not get my hands around the incessant drone of posts about the 3TB drives. You are not putting one in unRAID for a long time to come. They are way ahead of the bleeding edge, and anyone with an ounce of concern for data integrity will steer far away from them for a long time.
October 29, 201015 yr UEFI supports GPT. UnRAID itself would have to support GPT in order to make that work, and I'm not sure that it does. All the versions of unRAID (so far) use a standard MBR record. It would take a major change to unRAID to support a different partition scheme. There has been absolutely no mention of any support of the 3TB drives by lime-tech. (so far) I expect eventually they will be supported, and the MBR scheme currently used changed, but as for when? who knows?
October 29, 201015 yr Author Help me understand something. Let's say that one has an EFI mobo. will one be able to use the >2tb HDs or unraid must also unergo some changes? Depends on the SATA chipset/controller. unRAID will have to change from MBR partition tables to either partitionless or GPT. But I can not get my hands around the incessant drone of posts about the 3TB drives. You are not putting one in unRAID for a long time to come. They are way ahead of the bleeding edge, and anyone with an ounce of concern for data integrity will steer far away from them for a long time. although i am certain you are much more tech-savy than i am, i am not sure if you are right in this case. 3tb HDs just use 4 750Mb platters. also, the WD EARS support Adanced formatting for some time now and are used jumperless in many systems without any problems, they just have to be aligned. I also understand that GPT is safe. so, why is there a threat to data integrity? I must also add that i am gonna build some Unraid rigs for 2-3 friends and the reason i am looking in 3Tb HDs +Unraid is that i am wondering if it is worth the extra effort and money to look for mobos that support EFI...
October 29, 201015 yr The most basic question would be if the HighPoint Rocket 620 card WD is using is supported in unRAID?
November 1, 201015 yr The most basic question would be if the HighPoint Rocket 620 card WD is using is supported in unRAID? I think you mean HighPoint RocketRAID 620 card. They use a Marvell 88SE9128 controller that has 64bit LBA support greater than 2TB per volume See also: http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/series_rr600.htm The HighPoint Rocket 620 supports a max of 2TB per volume: Support up to 2TB Hard Drives http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/series_r600.htm
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