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HDD WD Caviar Green 1TB WD10EARS

I'm looking at the WD10EARS... for a RAID 5. I read mixed comments on various forums and review sites about whether it had TLER or not. Since I'm thinking of putting in a RAID 5, I'd like to have that capability. On wiki, it mentioned that the EADS models (32 MB cache ones) don't have TLER enabled on the Nov2009+ ones.

I'm not looking at fast transfers, just mass reliable storage, with decent performance with some redundancy. I will use this purely for storage.

Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

David

The correct and appropriate thing to do when evaluating HDDs to put behind RAID controllers is ALWAYS to consult the RAID hardware vendor and find out which disks they have qualified for use. Do not get hung up on TLER. Some RAID controllers detect and disable this automatically. Others will have considerable problems with certain drives, regardless of TLER settings (they are sensitive to the timing constraints when it comes to remapping bad blocks).

So If you want reliability & stability, consult the RAID controller vendor, and get a list of supported disks. If the RAID vendor does not provide a certified list. Then this shows that they do not take time to certify disks, so don't use their RAID controller. If you have a problem, and your vendor has not qualified your disk, then you know that they have no ability or desire to reproduce the problem and figure out a solution

bchoor

ASKER

since this is for a home system, I was just going to use the ICH10R on the Asus P6T motherboard. Any ideas as where would intel have listed hw compatibilities. I'm not looking at an enterprise-type solution, just something decent enough for mass reliable storage.

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theonlyallan

I would don't use the Green series for an raid 5 array.. The green series has some kind of internal timer that will make the drive goto sleep.. Stay away!!

I would go with the WD Black series.. .They don't cost very much more. and the performance is also much better.

David

Intel does not qualify the chipsets, they will qualify their own boards. Note that it is possible a vendor can design a board around an unqualified hub chipset. This will cause problems, look here:

http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-020644.htm

http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=732464&highlight=velociraptor+ich10r

If you want reliable storage, get a reliable controller. The controller you are using is a $10.00 chip. You WILL get what you pay for.

David

P.S., bottom line, that disk is not appropriate for use in RAID5. The disk will be nothing but trouble. The disk is designed to save energy by going to low-power, and the RAID engine will prevent this. You will be running the disk outside of specifications, as well as the design points.

bchoor

ASKER

Yep, through more research I was able to confirm that TLER was disabled on the EARS. In that case, the answer is very straight forward - not to be used in RAID.