Interesting. Sounds like we need to find a guinea pig with a 3TB drive and WHS!!!

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Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

That shouldn't matter except for a final confirmation. The issue is can a person create a GPT-partitioned disk and add it to the drive pool. You could test that with any size disk. If it works, then GPT will allow the use of larger drives.

edit: I have an unused 300GB drive floating around, so I popped it into the dock and ran diskpart. I was able to delete the current partition on the drive, convert it to a GPT disk, then created a new primary partition, assigned a drive letter and formatted it.

edit #2: I suspect it will be a 3rd party HBA or RAID controller that provides the support. If XP/Server 2003 directly supported these drives, the manufacturers would say so.

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Synology DS411: 2 * WD20EARX and 2 * WD20EARS
DIY Small Business Server 2011
MP 8-core 2.26GHz, 2012 MBA13 i7/8GB/256GB, AppleTVs, iPhone

I think this is an interesting subject. With my new X510 arriving this week, I've decided to put it into service and live under it's 3 year warranty, holding on to my EX495 as the spare. I'm looking at HDDs for the pool and am concerned about the proliferation of Advanced Format drives. The old WD EACS and EADS drives of the past are long gone and their replacements are either Advanced Format or have features like Intellipark that don't play nicely with WHS. Even the Samsung Spinpoint F4 seems to misbehave, leaving us with a shrinking set of choices. The WD EARS drives, although Advanced Format, seem to be a good choice since their modification step is fairly straightforward.

So I have a question about the WD EARS drives. If I use a 2 TB unit and set the jumper on pins 7&8 before I install the drive, then all is well and I have a fully functional 2 TB drive in my pool. However, if my server crashes, can I plug this drive into my Win7 machine and read the data as I can with my older non-Advanced Format drives? The reason I ask is that I read somewhere that once the jumper is set, the drive can't be used in any other machine. I'm hoping I misread that comment, but can someone confirm one way or another?

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X510 w/7 TB (100% WD Green EARS)
Stock Processor, 4 GB Memory Upgrade

Set the jumper and you're golden. You can read it in any machine. You just can't go from jumpered to unjumpered or vice-versa without expecting to lose the data on the drive.

What I wonder is, what other manufacturers aside from WD have provided a jumper-style or equivalent ease-of-use approach?

Super! That's what I was hoping was the case. Guess I'll be ordering a couple of the 2 TB units. As nice as the 3 TB units are, I don't want to deal with the added efforts to get them readable and the price is out of my range at the moment.

From what I've read the WD EARS drive is the only one offering an easy solution. All other advanced fromat drives seem to require a lot more effort to get them working, if they can be made to at all. What bothers me more is that even the old standby WD EADS drives now have newer technology that needs to be hacked to get them working well with WHS. That Intellepark feature really needs a jumper to enable/disable it - I spent a couple of hours researching that last night and was not impressed with the solution. All of these developments could pose a problem later on as reliable 'out of the box' drive solutions for WHS v1 may start getting much harder to come by.

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X510 w/7 TB (100% WD Green EARS)
Stock Processor, 4 GB Memory Upgrade

I thought the 'wdidle3' tool did the trick for the intellipark... letting you set it to a more reasonable timer.... or does that only postpone drive spindown?

Here is what I think I've learned about the WD Green Dirves over the past two days. I'd appreciate corrections if any of this info is incorrect.

The WDIDLE tool is for setting the Intellipark (autopark) feature. Seems like WD is implementing this on more of their drives and their literature is full in inconsistencies about what has what. After spending a couple of hours reading through the various materials, it looks like pretty much every Caviar Green drive now has it. So, WDIDLE tweaking may become a necessity for all of us buying new WD Green drives. Interestingly I did find some cool info on what drives have advanced format and which don't.

EADS drives are the standard GP drive without advanced format, but they are now manufactured with Intellipark. EADS drives have a 32 MB cache. Since there is no advanced formatting, these drives can accept multiple partitions out of the box and could be candidates for system or pool drives.

EVDS drives are designed for 24/7 AV units like settop box boxes, etc. They are marketed as GP-AV, but their specs look identical to EADS GP drives from WD. Like EADS drives, these do NOT have advanced formating, they have a 32 MB cache and the drives can accept multiple partitions so they could be candidates for system or pool drives. There seems to be a little more marketing fluff around these drives and their ability to stream video.

EARS drives have advanced formatting (thus requiring the jumper) and the latest literature indicates they probably have the Intellipark feature as well (at least those most recently manufactured do.) EARS drives have a 64MB cache. Once jumpered (which is the easiest way to get around the advanced formatting), they cannot be partitioned and can only be used as pool drives.

EURS drives are from the GP-AV line and their specs look identical to the EARS. Once jumpered, they cannot be partitioned and can only be used as pool drives.


As I noted above, the Intellipark feature seems to be common across all. Modifying it before using the drives in environemnts such as WHS seems to be highly recommended. It requires booting up a PC (not the MSS) using a FreeDOS CD. All HDDs except for the WD Green drive need to be disconnected from the PC when this is done. Once the machine boots, then you execute the WDIDLE utility and quickly disable the Intellipark timer. It's a one time thing and then you are good to go. Without modifying the Intellipark feature, the drive heads will auto park every 8 seconds which can lead to a high LCC. As I understand it, high LCC could affect long term drive relaiability, drive warranty, or both.

I don't know that cache size really matters in the world of WHS, so I'm leaning towards the EADS or the EVDS drives which would allow me to use the drive pretty much anywhere for anything, provided I disable the Intellipark feature first.

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X510 w/7 TB (100% WD Green EARS)
Stock Processor, 4 GB Memory Upgrade

I guess , I am just thinking about what would be happening at 9- 10 sec intervals that would shorten the life of a drive. usually your either moving , editing or downloading files at a continuous rate. my pause rate is closer to 5-10min intervals if not alot longer. So I dont see an issue with this. I suspect WD did alot of research and testing, since they warranty the drives for 3 years or longer. When I backup my disks it is under constant use , when I stream video under constant use, the only time maybe if you looking at photos maybe i will look longer than that but in my WHS it does alot more sitting than working, hence the great idea of green drives. maybe other have different needs that would strain the drive and constant park issue. can you give some examples of when you think this is a problem. just dont see this as an problem for most users. our biggest trouble is data thru put, access speed and reliability. we all should be using SSD that are 500gig or larger then these issues are void.

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EX490 3.0Ghz E6600 3X WD20EARS 1T ST7200.11 ----Esata attached TR5M 2X 2T Samsung F4 2X 2T Baracuda LP 1X 2T WD20EARS
DIY build HAF 912 case Asus M4A88-TD EVO MB 4 gig Ram Phenom II X4 3.2Ghz B55 VelociRaptor 600 3X WD20EARS

Personally, I have no data to back up any concerns over the LCC issue. However in a thread over in the EX490/495 Folder, a user noted that his 3 month old EARS drive in his MSS had logged over 84,000 LCCs within 3 months. I read other posts from WHS users elsewhere that indicate similar experiences. With the drive having a rating 300,000 LCCs, it is easy to see where concerns creep in.

All that being said, I don't routinely look under the skirt of my HDDs to see what they are doing, but info like this is good to know on the front end. I figure if I disable the feature I won't have to worry. According to WD, the concept of Intellipark is to decrease the aerodynamic loads on the spinning disk. I'm not sure how much power that concept saves, but I figure loosing that efficency is not that big of a deal. If it is then I probably don't need to have a sever in the first place.

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X510 w/7 TB (100% WD Green EARS)
Stock Processor, 4 GB Memory Upgrade

just some quick math. if his drive did have that many parks then it is parking and unparking every
92.571428571428571428571428571429-- secs, I did some quick calculations for 90 days.. sounds more like a drive problem, I will have to look and see what mine are saying . but I have not heard of any issues with warranty issue do to failing drives. for WD, actually rated one of the better ones on reliability.

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EX490 3.0Ghz E6600 3X WD20EARS 1T ST7200.11 ----Esata attached TR5M 2X 2T Samsung F4 2X 2T Baracuda LP 1X 2T WD20EARS
DIY build HAF 912 case Asus M4A88-TD EVO MB 4 gig Ram Phenom II X4 3.2Ghz B55 VelociRaptor 600 3X WD20EARS

Okay, I got brave and have decided to try something discussed over at WeGotServed. My X510 is sitting at my house and today I ordered a 4 GB memory stick and 3 EARS drives - one 1 TB and two 2 TB. When the drives arrive, the first step will be to run the WDIDLE tool to deactivate the autopark feature on all three drives, followed by swappping of the memory module. Then, plans are to pull the native X510 HDD and insert the 1TB EARS in it's place followed by a factory reset. The WGS forum has some interesting posts about pulling the new EARS system drive after the WHS install and realigning it using one of the newer WD Realign tools on a WIN7 machine, then putting it back in the X510/MSS. Once tha this done, the server is restarted and 2TB EARS drives are then added to the storage pool WITHOUT the jumpers. Once WHS confirms the successful addition, the sytem is shut down. Using the same improved Realign Tool/procedure, you then pull each 2TB EARS pool drive and realign it, followed by immediate reinsertion in the X510/MSS. The net result is that you have a properly aligned set of Advanced Format drives without jumpers that are technically VAIL ready, WHS v1 compatible, and can be read on any machine.

Next Friday is the day, so stay tuned.

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X510 w/7 TB (100% WD Green EARS)
Stock Processor, 4 GB Memory Upgrade

I contacted Seagate in regards to their 2tb xt drive and if it would work with the WHS. Even gave them a link to the MS KB article that states Advance Format Drives wont work in older operating systems. This question was brought on by WD alighment issue talks and jumpers. So I figured I look at the drive closer. On their site it states supports XP (XP doesnt support AFD either from what I thought). This is what they had to say:

Dear T-Bone,

Thank you for choosing Seagate.

Our 2 TB XT drive not have the advanced formatting 4 K sector size. We are not releasing any internal drives with advanced formating at this time until technical issues have been worked out. You should be fine in using the current 2 TB XT drive on your system if your system accepts standard SATA drives.

If you have any additional questions, please let me know.

Best Regards

Alan G
Seagate Technical Specialist
Support hours: Monday through Friday 8:00AM - 6:00PM (CST).
Phone: 800-732-4283 (North America)
Web: http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/
Chat: http://support2.seagate.com/ChatLaunch?rc=1
On Twitter: @AskSeagate

I don't know about the system drives but running the newer WD align tools on pool drives (from an XP workstation) prevented them from being properly recognized on reinsertion. It's a little foggy but I think I tried both the paragon alignment tool as well as the boot-cd alignment tool and had similar results with both.

I probably could have gotten it to work with some registry effort but I didn't bother. I just reverted to jumpering the (pool) drives and haven't looked back since.

Aside: From my experience with developing the cloning procedure WHS seems less picky identifying the data partition on system drives than it does the pool drives.

The trickery to getting Green Drives that have been realigned with the WD align tool recognized as pool drives is buried within the WGS post I referred to. There is some registry editing involved that I won't go into until I confirm I can get it to work.

The heart of the issue is that WinXP and WHS start writing critical drive info on a specific sector and only on that sector. That sector works well for the non-AF drives and can be read by any OS, but it is one sector out of sync for optimum performance on the AF drives. If the writing starts out of sync, then all the data is out of sync as well and eventually the drive bogs down. The newer versions of Windows are adaptive and can shift where they begin laying down this critical drive info (Volume ID, etc.) based on the type of drive (AF or non-AF), so all drives stays happy.

The jumper trick simply adds the correct offset to ANY data written to the drive, but it's limitation is that the drive has to be one partition. That’s why removing the jumper at a later date destroys the data - the offset is lost and no OS can read the data as it was originally laid down. The align tool accomplishes the same thing as the jumper, but physically shifts everything over and can deal with multiple partitions. Since the data is physically rewritten to be in sync, the drive is happy and any OS can read the resync'd data. There are two versions of the align tool now, one of which has been hacked to work on WHS, so it can actually be run off the server. However, my inpression is that the aligning may be best done off the server and the hacked tool simply used to confirm the process at the end.

The align tool trick works well for system drives, but pool drives represent a challenge. DE relies on the Volume ID, etc. to correctly mount the drive for use. However, the alignment tool changes that info when it does its trick, rendering the drive unrecognizable by DE and WHS comes back saying that the drive needs to be re-added to the pool. Re-adding the drive to the pool results a WHS reformat and the alignment is lost. This is a classic 'Catch-22', so the simple answer has evolved that you slap a jumper on the pool drive and you are done. But...if that jumper is ever removed before the data is cleaned off the drive, then the data is gone. To get around the 'Catch-22' of using the alignment tool, you have to tweak some registry settings for the pool drives. Once the registry is tweaked, you are good to go. So the process I intend to try is:

1. Remove stock system drive. Insert 1 TB EARS drive and do a Factory reset.
2. Pull drive and realign with WD align tool, reinsert. (At this point the system drive is realigned and working.)
3. Insert EARS pool drive(s) UNJUMPERED.
4. Pull drive and run realign tool.
5. Reinsert realigned pool drive and reset/edit the registry values with the Volume Info.
6. Install the hacked align tool and confirm that all drives are still aligned on the server after everthing is done

Note only the reason I am doing this is because my EX495 is still on-line and I won't risk any data until I've convinced myself everything is working as advertised. If it fails, then I’ll add the jumper to the pool drives and be done with it.

_________________
X510 w/7 TB (100% WD Green EARS)
Stock Processor, 4 GB Memory Upgrade

I used my EARS drives in the storage pool for a few days prior to my becoming aware of potential issues with advanced format drives. I did not install jumpers on them at any point. I removed the drives from the storage pool and connected them to an XP virtual machine via a USB SATA/IDE drive adapter. From that machine I used the Acronis WD Align tool to align them. I reintroduced them into the pool where they've been running happily since the Labor Day weekend. I did not have to make any registry changes to accommodate these drives. I would expect the align tool to operate at a layer below that of the OS and the changes it made would not be affected by subsequent repartitioning or reformatting of the drives.

_________________
Synology DS411: 2 * WD20EARX and 2 * WD20EARS
DIY Small Business Server 2011
MP 8-core 2.26GHz, 2012 MBA13 i7/8GB/256GB, AppleTVs, iPhone