Raid 0 on two x 1Tb caviar black HD

WD Internal Drives Desktop & Mobile Drives
1

Hi,

Can anyone help me? For what i’ve read, i’m scrud…rs

I’m trying to set a raid 0 on my caviar black hds, on the new g1 killer sniper mobo (on the marvell sata 3 chip).

so:

1.the caviar drivers are not suit to raid?

2.wd doesn’t work on marvell chips?

Note: I got past the bios settings (got the array to work), but in the win 7 64 pre install ( marvell driver load), win 7 doesn’t recognise it (says that owfull signature problem). I even wrote to gigabyte for clearance…

Botton line,

Is my problem the hds?

Thanks.

2

Maybe you should try contacting WD’s Technical Support about this. You can do so either by phone or email.

To Contact WD for Technical Support
http://support.wdc.com/contact/index.asp?lang=en

3

Hi, if i recall well the wd caviar blacks are not suited for RAID, because they lack TLER…

check out this link  http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1478/session/L3RpbWUvMTMwNzQ4NTEwMC9zaWQvUlIySUFYdms%3D

4

“WD Caviar Black Hard Drives are tested and recommended for use in consumer-type RAID applications (RAID-0/RAID-1).”

Source:  http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-701276.pdf  (revision: 2879-701276-A11 Mar 2011)

5

Check this out.  I spent a week trying to figure out why my two new systems with Black 1TB drives wouldn’t sustain a raid array.  It was weird because it would fail and then if I rebooted off my SSD boot drive the array was back- no data loss.  It would stay up sometimes for a whole day, sometimes for an hour or less. 

I too found the statement voidp posted so I ruled out the drives and was looking at the controllers.  Tried the Marvell and then the Intel and same problem. 

Then I found this:  http://www.eggxpert.com/forums/permalink/615011/615158/ShowThread.aspx#615158

Then I started going through the WD site and found all kinds of weird stuff.  One place they say consumer drives are fine for RAID 0 or 1 and other places they state only the RE drives work in RAID arrays.

Difference between Desktop edition and RAID (Enterprise) edition drives

“If you install and use a desktop edition hard drive connected to a RAID controller, the drive may not work correctly. This is caused by the normal error recovery procedure that a desktop edition hard drive uses.”

And then in the next pargraph: “Desktop Class Hard Drives are tested and recommended for use in consumer-type RAID applications (RAID-0 / RAID-1). ”

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1397/p/227%2C279/session/L3RpbWUvMTMwNzQ4OTMyNi9zaWQvT2ZqY1JYdms%3D

If anyone knows of a workaround I’d sure like to know before I return 4 disks.

6

Gentlemen,

The article you are quoting, Answer ID 1397, is about the difference between Desktop drives and an Enterprise drives.  The article you should be looking at is Answer ID 996.  We have updated it to hopefully clear up some of this misunderstanding. 

You need to know that we changed our policy for utilizing our Desktop drives in RAID configurations last October.  So anything I’ve said, or other WD Staff may have said, about using our drives before then (and maybe after) applied to our policy at that time.  So, I’m not going to go back and change what I wrote then. 

Since we’ve changed our policy for recommending our Desktop drives in Consumer type RAID environments (RAID 0 and RAID 1), I would also include that our new policy should only be applied to our current build of drives.  At least, that is MY interpretation of it.  I’m sure there will be further updates as we go along, but Answer ID 996 pretty much states our position on the issue.

7

Fudencio wrote:

Hi,

 

Can anyone help me? For what i’ve read, i’m scrud…rs

I’m trying to set a raid 0 on my caviar black hds, on the new g1 killer sniper mobo (on the marvell sata 3 chip).

 

so:

1.the caviar drivers are not suit to raid?

2.wd doesn’t work on marvell chips?

 

Note: I got past the bios settings (got the array to work), but in the win 7 64 pre install ( marvell driver load), win 7 doesn’t recognise it (says that owfull signature problem). I even wrote to gigabyte for clearance…

 

Botton line,

Is my problem the hds?

 

Thanks.

Answer ID 996will give you the direction you need to troubleshoot the problem you are having.

8

I’am worried since in answer_id 996:

WD Caviar Black, Caviar Green, and Caviar Blue hard drives are not recommended for and are not warranted for use in

RAID environments utilizing Enterprise HBAs and/or expanders and in multi-bay chassis, as they are not designed for, nor

tested in, these specific types of RAID applications. For all Business Critical RAID applications, please consider WD’s

Enterprise Hard Drives that are specifically de […]

ok about the raid stuff, but regarding that “and/or”, i simply i don’t like it:

is expected for wd hard disks to work in a port-multiplier (CBS / FIS / BOTH)? (in non-hardware raid, of course)

is expected for wd hard disks to work in a simple eSATA enclosure ?

is expected for wd hard disks to properly hot-swap in a eSATA enclosure at something higher that 1.5Gbps reliably or at all?

what is the exact list of sata controllers with ‘blacklisted’ ‘consumer’ raid controllers? (those that people are having problems) I think wd shoud compile a list of chipsets / revisions / motherboard & experienced issues, otherwise everbody will ask again… and again… and again…

—[main disks]-------------------

2 x WD 2TB Black (linux, sw raid1)

2 x WD 2TB Green [Nextar CX eSATA/USB2] (one backup, the other wdtv)

—[legacy testing disks]--------

1 x WD 500G BLUE

1 x WD 320G

1 x WD 120G

9

So what about TLER on the desktop drives?  It is disabled (or non-existant) right?  If so then why?  Isn’t it necessary even in a consumer RAID 0/1?

10

The deskdrop drives need to handle errors themselves, so they do.

The enterprise controllers are supposed to handle errors instead of the drive dealing with it, so the enterprise drives have TLER to prevent the drive from handling the errors itself.

If the “consumer” controller doesn’t have the same error-recovery as a true entreprise system, then having TLER enabled would be rather fatal – then neither the drive nor the controller would be dealing with drive errors.