WD Green Drives no good for QNAP's??

[sonicmainliner]

Thanks for that! Mission accomplished, I have just set the idle timer to max value of 255.

LCC has increased since a post some pages ago from ~5000 to 12037 for 123 hours uptime, meaning 97 instances per minute, I will monitor to see if this is the case now, and report findings.

[sonicmainliner]

This must have fixed it, I see no increase in LCC for the past 10-15 minutes, and as I previously said, I did get around 97 per minute. Thanks for your help Dawgneck!

[Dawgneck]

No problem, sonicmainliner.

All credit to Jollster.

[psikey]

Recently fitted a new WD 2TB RE4-GP in my TS-119, do my figures look high or OK?? (use as a single drive, no USB/eSATA Qraid used)

Hard disk model WDC WD2002FYPS-01U1B04.0
Model number WDC WD2002FYPS-01U1B0
Disk capacity 1863.02 GB
Firmware version 04.05G04
ATA version ATA-8


1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 200 200 051 0 OK
3 Spin_Up_Time 100 253 021 0 OK
4 Start_Stop_Count 100 100 000 25 OK
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 200 200 140 0 OK
7 Seek_Error_Rate 100 253 000 0 OK
9 Power_On_Hours 100 100 000 171 OK
10 Spin_Retry_Count 100 253 000 0 OK
11 Calibration_Retry_Count 100 253 000 0 OK
12 Power_Cycle_Count 100 100 000 3 OK
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 200 200 000 2 OK
193 Load_Cycle_Count 200 200 000 418 OK
194 Temperature_Celsius 117 106 000 35 OK
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 200 200 000 0 OK
197 Current_Pending_Sector 200 200 000 0 OK
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 200 200 000 0 OK
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 200 200 000 0 OK
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 200 200 000 0 OK

[schumaku]

Recently fitted a new WD 2TB RE4-GP in my TS-119, do my figures look high or OK??

Worth reading for WD2002FYPS (04.05G04) customers:
http://files.qnap.com/download/Forum/WD ... elease.pdf
Contact WDC support to get your HDD firmware updated.

-> The WD REn enterprise HDDs are not to critical overall.

-> Very different, the WDC desktop drives (WD Caviar Green / Blue / Black) will create massive issues when the deep error correction becomes active and TLER is not - or can no longer be - enabled hence WDC dropped support for desktop drives in non-desktop/RAID systems.

-Kurt.

[psikey]

Thanks, already checked out that thread. Don't want to do the firmware upgrade unless I have to so was wondering if the LLC figures were OK.

If I do do the update isn't there a risk of invalidating the warranty? Plus I'll have to take it out of the QNAP & mess about with it in my PC in DOS mode.

[wchia]

Hi guys,

I know I'm very new to this forum (starting using my QNAP TS-639Pro only in late October) to I seek your indulgence if step on any toes. I just thought that I should share something. First, I don't think the problem with the Greens are limited to just them. Second, I think WD has taken note of the problems with its Greens and their low power behaviour with the introduction of the EARS series.

When I first bought the unit, I decided to populate it with 4xWD 1tb Blacks. This was partly driven by the problems reported by users of the Greens, which in my opinion, would have been better for my SOHO environment where low noise and power consumption are helpful. In any case the Blacks were not problem free too. One of the 1TB WD Blacks, HDD4, keeps reporting itself as ejected. This happens only during large file transfers and is believed to be related to the same problem other users have reported here. Anyway, my supplier in Singpaore replaced HDD4 with another WDC Black, with the same firmware WDC WD1001FALS-00J7B05.0 as the other three although it was made a month later. I did not have any more problems with HDD4 but I occassionally got short freezes (2-3minutes) where whole array goes unresponsive for only to come back to life as if nothing had happened. I think this behaviour has also been reported by others.

Anyway, 2 months into the NAS' operation, our NAS was already running out of space. We started out with using only 1/3 of the total approx 3tb capacity but have quickly reached the 2/3 mark. I decided to upgrade the drives rather than to add two new 1tbs, since the current price sweet spot is with the 1.5tbs. And 1.5tbs will buy more time for us, esp when I can add two more drives later. However, I wasn't able to find sufficient stocks of the hitachi/samsung drives at my usual IT suppliers in Singapore and could not wait (I was only there for a weekend) but I was alerted to a new WD Green version. Deciding to take some risk, I got myself 4 WD15EADS-00Z5B1 80.0 (as reported by QNAP admin). Interestingly, two of them were made in Malaysia while two were made in Thailand. All are from the 11 Dec batch and have the same firmware.

Main change was the introduction of an advanced low 4k block formating and a 64mb cache but I believe other changes have also been made. I was also told that the 1.5EARs have dual CPUs that the 1.0EARs didn't but I have no way to verify that (WDC site doesn't seem to say so). Another thing that my supplier said was that the intellispin of the new models was more generous with spin speeds, allowing the drive spend more time at 7200rpm than before (the Greens usually ran at 5400rpm if I'm not wrong). I was told to expect 5-7% performance increases but early benchmarks on other sites do not show this. Frankly, I'm not expecting any performance increases with these new versions, aside from those attributable to the larger cache but the lower noise and heat output would be appreciated.

The real reason why I decided to risk getting them was that the new greens appear to have done away with the deep idle mode of the previous incarnations. (All other brands have their own problems too) Check out the drive specification sheets from WDC at http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-701229.pdf. The 1.5TB EARS specs are not listed yet but according to the 1.0EARS power consumption specs, the new versions do not consume much less power when idle, indicating that they do not enter into as deep a sleep state as before. What exactly that means is still not clear but I believe the heads no longer park when idle.

My array is currently being expanded and I've replaced the second of four drives. Already, based on the figures from our MGE UPS, each Black replaced netted around 11-12watts less in power consumption! And the clatter of the Blacks is noticeably less pronounced now. I'll keep everyone updated on the progress and try to duplicate some of the problems I had with the Blacks to see if there are there. This is promising.

[schumaku]

Hi wchia,

Good to see you have the same good experience with brand new disks like QNAP at the time they had run the compatibility checks. As long as there are no deep error recovery processes, you will not have any issues with your WD desktop drives without TLER - no matter WD Caviar Green, WD Caviar Blue or WD Caviar Black. You might be very lucky and might never hit any issues - with a lot of good luck, in good AC environment, very clean air, no vibrations, ... Should you update the HDDs every three months, fine - new HDDs should not create read or write errors. What happens beyond - you can read it all over the NAS manufacturer forums.

It is commonly understood, that any error correction process taking longer than seven seconds will create either RAID issues, or a Denial of Service - for two, three, or many minutes. Or forever. This is what all WD Desktop drives do. In addition, there is no way around enabling TLER now. WD does supply excellent counterparts to their desktop drives with e.g. the RE3 and the RE4. No doubt, these drives were very similar, and have green power saving capabilities - but have a very different firmware now.

Not my toes - your own ones on mid or long term. And the toes of other QNAP customers following your actually (!) good experience. Not accepting all these facts is ... well, simply ignorant and stupid. You are on your own - any subsequent HDD issues cannot be blamed to QNAP anymore.

Good luck,

-Kurt.

PS. You are correct, other fat HDD units had or have some issues, too. This includes the Samsung F1 (similar hang due to a firmware bug - get updates from Micheal Dell's support pages), some Seagate series and/or firmware releases, as well as the WD RE4 produced before mid November 2009 again.

[Ibbz]

I have 4 WD 1.5TB Green drives - they would have been manufactured before October - Is there an easy way to remove these drives one a time, change the TLER to WD RAID settings (From here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-Limit ... r_Recovery), and place them back into the array without losing any data?

Would using the 'Online Raid Expansion' option work if I just removed the drive when it said to remove, perform the TLER/Idle change and then placed it back in when it said 'Please insert the new drive' ?

[schumaku]

Feasible, but this will take far too much time always resync the RAID with every HDD. Instead of doing one by one, mark the drives according to the slots, shutdown the Turbo NAS, and enable TLER on a standalone PC in MS-DOS boot. Ensure you do not mix-up the drive sequence - then you plug them back to the NAS and boot it again.

Just use the WDTLERS.EXE and WDIDLE3.EXE - do not play around with any other utilities, e.g. fdisk.

-Kurt.

[birillobo]

XP, Vista, or Windows 7 don't allow "physical" low-level access to the drives while running, e.g. from cmd/command.

You need to create a bootable MS-DOS device (e.g. a CD-ROM), add the programs, and launch from there.

-Kurt.

I must add the programs to the iso image? Or i must make a iso image with the programs?

[dcmutt]

Kurt
you are obviously the expert here in relation to drives etc. I am looking to purchase a TS439 pro. This is not a cheap unit, however, i believe it necessary. I own a photography business and there will be three to four computers accessing the unit at any one time. To read about hard drive issues is disturbing to say the least. Kurt, may you recommend what you believe is the best drive for this unit.

I will be backing up the NAS unit daily to a Coolermaster Xcraft RS-3SB. As the external drive is limited to 1TB, I was wondering if i can use two external drives fitted to the two eSATA ports on the back and back up specific directories to each external drive.

I look forward to your reply.

[rboerdijk]

For the Record, with the Qnap 209, using fw 2.1.2 Build 1113T

Have it now for 2 years or so. First Disk was bought together with the Qnap, second one
was bought a bit later (running as single-disk).
So here are the stats, pretty high power_on_hours and LCC approaching 300K...

Disk 1 WD10EACS
ID Description Value Worst Value Threshold Raw value Status
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 200 200 051 0 OK
3 Spin_Up_Time 183 180 021 7841 OK
4 Start_Stop_Count 073 073 000 27330 OK
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 200 200 140 0 OK
7 Seek_Error_Rate 100 253 051 0 OK
9 Power_On_Hours 077 077 000 17257 OK
10 Spin_Retry_Count 100 100 051 0 OK
11 Calibration_Retry_Count 100 253 051 0 OK
12 Power_Cycle_Count 100 100 000 30 OK
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 200 200 000 31 OK
193 Load_Cycle_Count 104 104 000 288597 OK
194 Temperature_Celsius 118 100 000 34 OK
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 200 200 000 0 OK
197 Current_Pending_Sector 200 200 000 0 OK
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 200 200 000 0 OK
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 200 200 000 0 OK
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 199 197 051 196 OK

Disk2 WD10EACS
ID Description Value Worst Value Threshold Raw value Status
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 200 200 051 0 OK
3 Spin_Up_Time 185 182 021 7708 OK
4 Start_Stop_Count 075 075 000 25102 OK
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 200 200 140 0 OK
7 Seek_Error_Rate 100 253 051 0 OK
9 Power_On_Hours 079 079 000 15504 OK
10 Spin_Retry_Count 100 100 051 0 OK
11 Calibration_Retry_Count 100 253 051 0 OK
12 Power_Cycle_Count 100 100 000 20 OK
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 200 200 000 18 OK
193 Load_Cycle_Count 119 119 000 245754 OK
194 Temperature_Celsius 119 100 000 33 OK
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 200 200 000 0 OK
197 Current_Pending_Sector 200 200 000 0 OK
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 200 200 000 0 OK
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 200 200 000 0 OK
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 200 200 051 0 OK

Thinking of buying a TS-410 with a 2TB Samsung (too much negative publicity on the WD's),
and in the future extending it with 2TB of other manufacturers, to reduce risk of failing drives.

Regards

[wchia]

Hi Shumaku,

I completely agree with you. Its a risk that I had calculated and am prepared to accept. Its just that I'm not sure if I can afford to go "RE" all the way just yet.

For those who are interested, here's the SMART info from the oldest drive (Drive 1)

WDC WD15EARS-00Z5B1 80.0 #1
ID Description Value Worst Value Threshold Raw value Status
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 200 200 051 0 OK
3 Spin_Up_Time 202 186 021 4875 OK
4 Start_Stop_Count 100 100 000 13 OK
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 200 200 140 0 OK
7 Seek_Error_Rate 200 200 000 0 OK
9 Power_On_Hours 100 100 000 151 OK
10 Spin_Retry_Count 100 253 000 0 OK
11 Calibration_Retry_Count 100 253 000 0 OK
12 Power_Cycle_Count 100 100 000 10 OK
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 200 200 000 9 OK
193 Load_Cycle_Count 200 200 000 265 OK
194 Temperature_Celsius 110 107 000 40 OK
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 200 200 000 0 OK
197 Current_Pending_Sector 200 200 000 0 OK
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 200 200 000 0 OK
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 200 200 000 0 OK
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 200 200 000 0 OK

I'm not sure if its normal to have around twice more LCCs over power-on hours but it seems acceptable. My old Caviar blacks exhibited more or less the same pattern. At this rate, I expect around 150,000hrs mtbf.

BTW, one of my drives (No 3) is showing Multi-Zone Errors. Data below:

1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 200 200 051 0 OK
3 Spin_Up_Time 187 187 021 5616 OK
4 Start_Stop_Count 100 100 000 12 OK
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 200 200 140 0 OK
7 Seek_Error_Rate 200 200 000 0 OK
9 Power_On_Hours 100 100 000 141 OK
10 Spin_Retry_Count 100 253 000 0 OK
11 Calibration_Retry_Count 100 253 000 0 OK
12 Power_Cycle_Count 100 100 000 10 OK
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 200 200 000 9 OK
193 Load_Cycle_Count 200 200 000 264 OK
194 Temperature_Celsius 109 106 000 41 OK
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 200 200 000 0 OK
197 Current_Pending_Sector 200 200 000 0 OK
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 200 200 000 0 OK
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 200 200 000 0 OK
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 200 200 000 2 OK

Is this something to be concerned about? All other drives are free of this error.

Any views/thoughts are appreciated.

[squirrelnuts]

Hi

I purchased two WD15EADS-00P8B0 a couple of months ago for my new TS-419P and they weren't on the compatibility list as an issue (they are now)., the compatibility list simply WD15EADS were OK. There definitely is a "performance problem" with these drives and the system is frustratingly slow as a result.

Is the performance problem likely to be resolved by QNAP or is it a case of throw them away and buy new drives ?

I like the product and just want to use it for what I intended. I'm frustrated because I bought the drives precisely because they were listed as compatible, only to find that a subsequent distinction has been made and now they are clearly incompatible.

Thanks