WD SE 400GB Drives in Raid -1 Setup

[Justintoxicated]

I have one and after losing my raptor I'm thinking about setting up a new Raid-1 Array with my storage drives at least. I lost too much data just on my boot drive to imagine losing my important data this way. Raptor went without any warning as well. Just turned on PC and Bam, Partition was lost. Worst thing is I lost luckily weresome drawings in sketchup that took many hours o make as well as my Oblivion Save (not sure if I want to start over now)

Will SE drives work well in Raid-1 setup or do I need to consider diting the SE drive for and RE set?

[dekard]

I have one and after losing my raptor I'm thinking about setting up a new Raid-1 Array with my storage drives at least. I lost too much data just on my boot drive to imagine losing my important data this way. Raptor went without any warning as well. Just turned on PC and Bam, Partition was lost. Worst thing is I lost luckily weresome drawings in sketchup that took many hours o make as well as my Oblivion Save (not sure if I want to start over now)

Will SE drives work well in Raid-1 setup or do I need to consider diting the SE drive for and RE set?

those drives will work just fine in a raid 1 setup... The re's will work better, but the differences are so small that it wouldn't be worth you time. Besides, the re's really should be run on a decent raid card, whereas the se's are happy with onboard from a motherboard.

yes, you can run either the se's or the re's on whatever you want, but the re's are focused on raid and prefer to be recommended on a raid card.

[Justintoxicated]

I'm not looking for any performance gains really, I know raid -1 will be a bit slower, but it is just the data storage drive.. Thanks for your help, my understanding was that the RE drives should not be run by themselves which is the reason I did not get one in the first place.

I used a raid card in my last build but this time I will be using the built in raid on my DFI Expert. If I want to create a Raid-1 aray will I lose all the data on my current HD? I have not created a Raid-1 Array before.

[dekard]

Some controllers will offer to save your data when you are creating an array. I suggest you don't take any chances with data you aren't willing to lose. Perhaps back up to another drive before you build the array, just in case.

[DougLite]

Backup anyway you can.

Burn DVDs of the important stuff.

Take one of the 400GB drives and make it an external SATA/USB drive. Connect it only when you make backups, that way your data won't get hosed if you accidentally delete/modify something, your OS goes corrupt, or your comp is affected by a natural disaster.

[Lazn_Work]

Backup anyway you can.

Burn DVDs of the important stuff.

Take one of the 400GB drives and make it an external SATA/USB drive. Connect it only when you make backups, that way your data won't get hosed if you accidentally delete/modify something, your OS goes corrupt, or your comp is affected by a natural disaster.

QFT. Raid is not backup. And backup is not raid. They serve different purposes.

What you want is backup, this means a separate drive and a periodic backup process.. Because if you just have RAID a virus or a power surge could still kill all your data.

Raid is for uptime and covers only the failure of a hard drive, it doesn't help in any other situation. Regular backups is more important for most people.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/learnmore/bott_03july14.mspx

==>Lazn

[Justintoxicated]

I understand with the backups, however I was thinking about getting a network drive for this purpose at a later time. I do have an APC to keep my PC up and running, viruses are of course are still a problem.

I don't really have a place to backup all this data to though, in order to make the raid-1 array.

Basicaly I don't have time to backup my system every day so thats why I thought Raid-1 would be my best bet for the time being.

[unhappy_mage]

yes, you can run either the se's or the re's on whatever you want, but the re's are focused on raid and prefer to be recommended on a raid card.
False. If you run REs in a non-redundant environment - single disk or raid 0 - or run the SEs in a redundant environment, you *will* encounter problems. That simple. Which is why I have such a problem recommending them for anything but boot disks. If the TLER bug is such a huge problem, who knows what else is in there?

http://www.hardfolding.com/ftag1.php/mem/150072.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=38&tm=33&id=150072)http://www.hardfolding.com/utag1.php/mem/428/1.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=36&id=428&type=1)

[dekard]

False. If you run REs in a non-redundant environment - single disk or raid 0 - or run the SEs in a redundant environment, you *will* encounter problems. That simple. Which is why I have such a problem recommending them for anything but boot disks. If the TLER bug is such a huge problem, who knows what else is in there?

http://www.hardfolding.com/ftag1.php/mem/150072.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=38&tm=33&id=150072)http://www.hardfolding.com/utag1.php/mem/428/1.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=36&id=428&type=1)


You must have some more updated data than I do. The last I heard the re's were decent desktop drives, excepting for the TLER feature... Is there a bug I'm not aware of?

http://www.hardfolding.com/ftag1.php/mem/187689.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=38&tm=33&id=187689)

[unhappy_mage]

You must have some more updated data than I do. The last I heard the re's were decent desktop drives, excepting for the TLER feature... Is there a bug I'm not aware of?
The problem is that drives with TLER give up on error recovery sooner than their non-TLER counterparts. So in circumstances where the data is recoverable with a long attempt to read it but not a short one, the RE drives don't retrieve it. No good.

http://www.hardfolding.com/ftag1.php/mem/150072.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=38&tm=33&id=150072)http://www.hardfolding.com/utag1.php/mem/428/1.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=36&id=428&type=1)

[protias]

The problem is that drives with TLER give up on error recovery sooner than their non-TLER counterparts. So in circumstances where the data is recoverable with a long attempt to read it but not a short one, the RE drives don't retrieve it. No good.

http://www.hardfolding.com/ftag1.php/mem/150072.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=38&tm=33&id=150072)http://www.hardfolding.com/utag1.php/mem/428/1.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=36&id=428&type=1)

i trust your words u_m, but do you have a linky for the rest of us? :)

[unhappy_mage]

From WD's website (http://westerndigital.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=238) (under the Overview tab):
RAID-specific, time-limited error recovery (TLER) - A feature pioneered by WD, significantly reduces drive fallout caused by the extended hard drive error-recovery processes common to desktop drives.
Read between the lines - the error recovery time is limited, TLER reduces the extended error-recovery processes.

The best way to solve this would be include an autonegotiation between drive and controller about how long error recovery would be allowed/expected to take. But that's not WD's fault; the sata committee should have addressed it IMO.

http://www.hardfolding.com/ftag1.php/mem/150072.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=38&tm=33&id=150072)http://www.hardfolding.com/utag1.php/mem/428/1.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=36&id=428&type=1)