Don´t buy Wester Digital for RAID setup!!!

[pablo scapi]

Hello:

Just want to share my recent experience and problems with a RAID setup, some things are solved after long serch in the net, so maybe it can help some one in the same situaion.

 

I just build my new PC, and went with x2 1TB WD caviar black for a RAID 1 setup.

I didn´t realise of the driver instalation during OS, so my first problem was that when i set up the Drives of the mobo to be RAID instead of the default IDE, my sytem won´t start up, this was of course because i forgot to install the driver. My firs thought was that i needed to reinstal WINDOWS 7 again, but lucky of me i have found the solution that i post here, works like a charm.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=13940673&postcount=3

 

NOTE: this is for win 7, don´t know for other win versions.

 

Well one problem solved but during this search i found a lot of people in many forums explaining some problems they had with thw WD disk for RAID. Aparently, WesterDigital have a line of disk ready to work with RAID setup and a "desktop" series with are NOT recomended to do so. In this "desktop" series are the caviar green, black, etc. wich are the ones i have.

The problem is that this desktop disks doesn´t have TLER enable by default (the server ones does) and without this function the disk at some point fall of the RAID array and appear as down.

 

Here you can read an extend post on this issue where i found most of the info.

 

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/message.php?config=tomshardwareuk.inc&cat=13&post=269867&page=1&p=1&subcat=322&sondage=0&owntopic=0&new=0

 

The bottom part is that there is an utility that let you switch this function on the drives, BUT!!!, and here is where i´m really pissed:

 

"WARNING: any Western Digital "desktop" series hard drives shipping late 2009 (or later) CANNOT be used in RAID because the TLER read and write is now LOCKED as "disabled" on these drives, so you have no way of toggling TLER back to ENABLED as you need to do in order to use those desktop series drives in a any RAID array."

 

Yeh that more or less summarizes what i have been doing last nigth until i found that actually my new WD disk have the TLER disabled as stated in the tomshardware forums.

 

I will try to send those disks back and go with another brand, because i´m not going to risk my data in a RAID 1 setup that may fall down, THAT´S EXACTLY WHY I´M DOING THE RAID 1 SETUP!!!

 

Cheers

[ihabkal]

I have been using western digital drives for years in raid and non raid setups, and thank God no major problems yet. I think this is related to the specific hardware you chose. A different series in the western digital lineup would work fine in my guess.

[Christiansltd]

Hi i have also set up 4 WD Caviar Black 1TB in a raid 5 config using a synology 410j for my home storage and they work great, infact have just order the same setup again to replace a more commercial spec machine for the office as i was so impressed and only cost £565.00 inc vat..... Cheap.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

I read about the issues with the Western Digitals in RAID before I bought them, but I bought them anyway, and set them up in a RAID 1 configuration. I haven't had any problems and they have been running this way for 9 months now.

 

2 WD Caviar Black 1TB in RAID 1.