Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
234 of 266 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
WD Advanced Format 4k Sector Drives (INFORMATION ONLY), January 13, 2010
This review is from: Western Digital 1.5 TB Caviar Green SATA Intellipower 64 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD15EARS (Electronics)
INFORMATION ONLY! I don't own this drive; however I did just purchase the previous Caviar Green 1.5 TB WD15EADS model.
As I was about to purchase that hard drive, I noticed the banner near the top of the page that informs you "There is a newer model of this item"
I thought, "Well, that's awesome. Thanks Amazon!" It was in my shopping cart, but then, I decided to do some research first, just to see if it was worth a little extra money. After all, the debates about cache size (32MB to 64MB) seem to reveal it's just a marketing gimmick and performance gains don't really exist.
So, after some searching, I came to learn about the new Western Digital "Advanced Format".
It seems these new Caviar Green drives (all containing EARS in the model number) are using 4k sectors rather than the standard 512b (0.5k) sectors.
This change means that these drives are NOT inherently compatible with Windows XP or earlier.
However, Western Digital has two solutions in place to allow them to work with Windows XP.
1) They include a jumper on the drive that can be set to "trick" Windows into properly aligning the partition table.
This solution is only "reliable" when using a SINGLE partition. I don't like it.
2) They have a custom application (not pretty) that can be used to "shift" the partition and data into alignment.
This is apparently the recommended method that can also work for multiple partitions.
Clearly, you don't see this information described anywhere on this page and since Windows XP is still in wide-spread use, I think it's unfair not to be given this warning upfront. Also, if you use any type of hard drive imaging software, these new drives will be problematic there as well.
This information and more can be read in the article at AnandTech:
[...]
Anyway, I scored this at a neutral three stars based on lack of important information only.
And, while I love the feature, Amazon's "new version" notice can be misleading given the vast difference between the two models.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
 
|
|
|
|
|
|
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Great standalone, terrable raid, May 7, 2010
This review is from: Western Digital 1.5 TB Caviar Green SATA Intellipower 64 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD15EARS (Electronics)
I purchased these drives to create a RAID 5 setup for home storage, turns out these drives have terrible characteristics for RAID because of the "Green" firmware. If you are using these drives as stand-alone drives everything should be fine, if you are looking to put together a RAID (software or hardware) look somewhere else, there are plenty of consumer-grade drives that work well with RAID.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
|
|
|
|
|
|
39 of 54 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Be very careful with these, January 30, 2010
This review is from: Western Digital 1.5 TB Caviar Green SATA Intellipower 64 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD15EARS (Electronics)
Update: Did get past the boot problem. But, these drives randomly "funk out" with transfer speeds dropping so dramatically the system is barely usable. No hard/soft reports in SMART, nothing from the OS (both in and out of the software raid). Even when they're not "funking", they're hardly performance stars. Anyway, had to return them and come up with Plan B.
So, bought a Hitachi 7k2000 to try. Oh my, pay dirt. Not only did it "just work" but as my raid array is rebuilding right now the performance is exceptional. Usually the write target of an array rebuild sits solidly at the top of the IO busy list, not so the Hitachi. In sequential reads, the Seagate's are being noted as 50-70% busy reading 2800-3500 IOs/10sec. The WD15EARS best performance, ever, max'ed at 2200 IOs/10sec read, while the Hitachi is reporting only 31% busy at 3500 WRITEs/10 sec (atop). Drive LED's confirm, Seagate ST31500341AS drives are lit up, while the Hitachi's is clearly FAR less active.
Temps (After 6 hrs writing). In toaster: Seagate 99F, Hitachi 95F. In case: both 82F. (SMART data)
Sound: Spin sound same as Seagate's. WD's are quieter. Hitachi is just a bit more noisy than Seagate when seeking heavily (booting), I can hear a difference in the toaster (unenclosed bare drive, 2' away) but not in the case.
Other: All 7 of the Seagate's are reporting millions of SMART correctable "Read Errors". 10's of thousands a day, everyday, from the first power up array rebuild. Hitachi rebuild just finished, reported '1'. (SMART data) WD doesn't report this data, guess if you have to ask you don't want to know.
Having spent far more time studying hard drives than I ever wanted/needed to, Ihave a theory these 500G platters are just slightly beyond what current drive mechanics can accurately track. WD decided to go with slow and careful, and has recently started using a secondary positioning actuator on their heads to get back to normal speeds. Meanwhile Seagate decided to lean on ECC to pull them through. Problem with the ECC route is it was created to handle day-to-day events like micro vibrations and small shocks. When you lean on it as a routine, you lose the purpose for which it was intended, thus Seagate's seeming inability to maintain a stable drive.
------
I purchased 7 of the WD15EARSdrives to replace my problematic Seagate units. When I put the first on into my machine, if failed to boot. Opened another, same issue. Boot process stops, and motherboard (EVGA Classified) reports error code '8d'.
Contacted EVGA support. Turns out some controllers cannot handle drives with different speeds on them at the same time. One of the three controllers on the board seems to work (Intel's ICH9 chipset) but the other two (Jmicron) will not.
Also, transfer speed to the media seems consistent with a fixed 5400 rpm when compared to a 7200 rpm drive. Rumor on the net suggests these will speed up when demand dictates, 5400 rpm to 7200 rpm. I've seen no hint of any speed up. The drive always transfers more slowly than the 7200 and consistently at a 5400/7200 ratio one might expect from a fixed 5400 rpm drive. WD is utterly silent on spindle speeds on their green drives, so maybe the 'net rumors are inaccurate.
Also, their new "advance formatting" can get you into trouble. The drive does physical I/O in 4K units to the media, but acts to the OS like it's handling standard 512 byte blocks. If your OS unknowingly mis-aligns its file system blocksize to cross one, or more, of these physical blocks the drive's performance will tank.
Otherwise these may be fine drives but, as usual, pushing the technology envelope has its drawbacks. Some technical savvy is a good thing when using these drives, and I may have a somewhat compicated plan that may salvage them in my setup. I gave one star because I should have been given some clue that I might have to "work at these" in the first place. But, then again, if I knew, I would not have bought them and that's probably not in WD's business plan.
If I do get these WD's to work, I sure hope they're reliable. I'm going through all this because Seagate is now at 5 failed/failing drives out of 8 in less than a year, and even raid 6 can't safely cope with that sort of trash reliability. No matter how "easy" Seagate's wty service, I can't safely have them failing that quickly. (I have 3 failing Seagate's in the array right now, enough to wipe it out.)
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
|
|
|
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
Saving...
