Caviar Black Raid 5.

[TheBlueChanell]

I've got two Caviar Black 640gb's now running in a software RAID on SB850. I'd like to convert this X6 system into a server and want to pick-up 4 more 640's for RAID5. Is this doable? I have read that the caviar blacks no longer support RAID in the firmware but haven't had any issues?

Anyone have experience using caviar black class drives for raid?

 

[E4g1e]

Unfortunately, you've heard correctly. All WD desktop (as opposed to enterprise) hard drives with newer firmware versions (build dates after October 2009) do not support TLER at all (or have such a feature permanently disabled, and cannot be changed at all whatsoever). This will cause problems with drives dropping out of arrays in any parity RAID setups (e.g. RAID 5) or multi-level RAID setups (e.g. RAID 10). The drives are reported to the controller as "failed", and all data is permanently lost in those drives even though the drives are still good by themselves! These consumer WD drives should be used only as single drives or in a single-level RAID 0 or RAID 1 configuration.

 

[TheBlueChanell]

Unfortunately, you've heard correctly. All WD desktop (as opposed to enterprise) hard drives with newer firmware versions (build dates after October 2009) do not support TLER at all (or have such a feature permanently disabled, and cannot be changed at all whatsoever). This will cause problems with drives dropping out of arrays in any parity RAID setups (e.g. RAID 5) or multi-level RAID setups (e.g. RAID 10). The drives are reported to the controller as "failed", and all data is permanently lost in those drives even though the drives are still good by themselves! These consumer WD drives should be used only as single drives or in a single-level RAID 0 or RAID 1 configuration.

Alright so were do I start looking. I've read the RE3 drives have reliability issues? Samsung, Seagate?

 

[Dangman]

Hitachi and Samsung drives seem to have a better compatibility with many RAID controllers and configs out there.

 

[E4g1e]

Hitachi and Samsung drives seem to have a better compatibility with many RAID controllers and configs out there.

Yep. I have three 1TB Samsung F3 HD103SJ drives in my main system (one with firmware version 1AJ10002, the other two with firmware 1AJ10001). The drives with the 1AJ10001 firmware support ERC (or "TLER") but the feature is disabled by default. The drive with the 1AJ10002 firmware has ERC enabled by default - and set to 7.5 seconds by default.