WD 1Tb drives

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kojak71
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WD 1Tb drives

Post by kojak71 » Tue Feb 19, 2008 3:06 am

Typically the raid edition is more expensive than the desktop equivalent. This is still the case, except over the past week or so the 1Tb raid edition has become £25/$50 cheaper than the desktop version.

Call me suspicious, but is there something about the raid edition 1tb drive I don't know about? At that price point it's very close to the price/Gb of the 500Gb drives, so am tempted to buy several of them.
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MiKeLezZ
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Re: WD 1Tb drives

Post by MiKeLezZ » Wed Feb 20, 2008 2:38 am

kojak71 wrote:Call me suspicious, but is there something about the raid edition 1tb drive I don't know about? At that price point it's very close to the price/Gb of the 500Gb drives, so am tempted to buy several of them.
Perhaps, just low demand. I'd buy them without regrets. "RAID editions" are often superior quality parts since they'd work in a 24/7 envinroment.
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kojak71
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Post by kojak71 » Wed Feb 20, 2008 8:38 am

And you would see no issue in using them as standalone desktop drives, i.e. non-RAID?
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whiic
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Post by whiic » Wed Feb 20, 2008 9:43 am

RAID editions don't have different parts in them. They may have different lenght factory test performed and different features enabled by default. One of these features that make WD RAID edition RAID edition is TLER (Time-Limited Error Recovery) to prevent HDD from dropping out of RAID if it encounters read errors.

If you use the drive as single HDD or part of RAID0 (which is not a real RAID at all), you need to disable TLER as time-outing on a single HDD system causes an I/O error noticeable in operation. (If one of the disks in real RAID time-out read request, the content will be read fromt he disk that didn't give the error, and there should be no lock-up of system, drop-out of RAID, bluescreen or any other unwanted side-effect.)

If you ask WD, TLER cannot be enabled or disabled outside of their factory. This is utter, complete bovine fecal matter. TLER utility exists, it can disable TLER and it has leaked to the public (but it's still a difficult piece of software to find).

TLER utility can also be used to "make" RAID edition HDDs out of desktop ones. Sure, it doesn't extend the warranty period from 3 to 5 years by running the utility...
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MiKeLezZ
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Post by MiKeLezZ » Wed Feb 20, 2008 10:31 am

Maybe the full name of the software would help more than just words. :)
WDTLER.zip
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Nick Geraedts
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Post by Nick Geraedts » Wed Feb 20, 2008 10:58 am

whiic wrote:TLER utility can also be used to "make" RAID edition HDDs out of desktop ones. Sure, it doesn't extend the warranty period from 3 to 5 years by running the utility...
Are you saying that I can activate TLER on my WD5000AAKS drives (i.e. "non-RAID" versions) using this utility? I haven't had any problems as of yet with the drives in my RAID5 array, but it'd be nice to have that feature if I can.
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kojak71
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Post by kojak71 » Wed Feb 20, 2008 2:48 pm

It was the TLER feature that was causing me concern as WD don't recommend this for non-RAID setups. Thanks for pointing me in the direction of the software utility to enabe/disable TLER, it makes my decision very easy now.
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mrand
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Post by mrand » Thu Feb 21, 2008 3:52 pm

Nick Geraedts wrote:
whiic wrote:TLER utility can also be used to "make" RAID edition HDDs out of desktop ones. Sure, it doesn't extend the warranty period from 3 to 5 years by running the utility...
Are you saying that I can activate TLER on my WD5000AAKS drives (i.e. "non-RAID" versions) using this utility? I haven't had any problems as of yet with the drives in my RAID5 array, but it'd be nice to have that feature if I can.
Yes. I did exactly that with my WD7500AAKS (in addition to turning on AAM).

Marc
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yefi
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Post by yefi » Thu Feb 28, 2008 6:56 am

MiKeLezZ wrote:Maybe the full name of the software would help more than just words. :)
WDTLER.zip
Ah, it's apparent which drive I should buy now. Thanks!
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nick705
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Post by nick705 » Thu Feb 28, 2008 9:39 am

whiic wrote: If you use the drive as single HDD or part of RAID0 (which is not a real RAID at all), you need to disable TLER as time-outing on a single HDD system causes an I/O error noticeable in operation. (If one of the disks in real RAID time-out read request, the content will be read fromt he disk that didn't give the error, and there should be no lock-up of system, drop-out of RAID, bluescreen or any other unwanted side-effect.)

If you ask WD, TLER cannot be enabled or disabled outside of their factory. This is utter, complete bovine fecal matter. TLER utility exists, it can disable TLER and it has leaked to the public (but it's still a difficult piece of software to find).
MiKeLezZ wrote:Maybe the full name of the software would help more than just words. :smile:
WDTLER.zip
Thank you, I owe you both a beer. 8)
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