There was recently a "Hot Deals" thread about these drives. Someone had implied that these drives have an above average failure rate. Does anyone else here use these drives? Have you noticed this as well? I recently bought one for my new server and was just looking to see if there was any evidence that this claim is true.
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WD10EARS reliability issues?
- Thread starter sap
- Start date
If anything, these should be the most reliable consumer class HDDs available, due to 4KiB sectors.
Do not use this HDD in combination with Windows XP though!
Be sure to create the partition table manually, let Vista or Windows 7 create the partition table; in order to avoid a misalignment issue that cripples performance.
Do not use this HDD in combination with Windows XP though!
Be sure to create the partition table manually, let Vista or Windows 7 create the partition table; in order to avoid a misalignment issue that cripples performance.
Because larger sectors have larger ECC error correction pools. With less sectors and bigger ECC pools, this should help fight against BER; Bit Error Rate or bad sectors that popup because the damage is greater than the error correcting capability of ECC.
Thus, the ECC works better and can correct more bit errors, making it less likely that you would be affected by one which cannot be fixed by ECC. That makes 4KiB sector HDDs probably the most reliable desktop class HDDs out there.
This is a nice link that explains it pretty well:
http://hothardware.com/Articles/WDs...vanced-Format-Windows-XP-Users-Pay-Attention/
Thus, the ECC works better and can correct more bit errors, making it less likely that you would be affected by one which cannot be fixed by ECC. That makes 4KiB sector HDDs probably the most reliable desktop class HDDs out there.
This is a nice link that explains it pretty well:
http://hothardware.com/Articles/WDs...vanced-Format-Windows-XP-Users-Pay-Attention/
Because larger sectors have larger ECC error correction pools. With less sectors and bigger ECC pools, this should help fight against BER; Bit Error Rate or bad sectors that popup because the damage is greater than the error correcting capability of ECC.
Thus, the ECC works better and can correct more bit errors, making it less likely that you would be affected by one which cannot be fixed by ECC. That makes 4KiB sector HDDs probably the most reliable desktop class HDDs out there.
This is a nice link that explains it pretty well:
http://hothardware.com/Articles/WDs...vanced-Format-Windows-XP-Users-Pay-Attention/
Thanks for the explanation. I actually read that article before I replied, but I didn't really get the part about ECC.
Basically, without ECC (Error Correcting Code), your harddrive does NOT know what it is storing; all sectors would be bad!
This is not unlike optical media like CD/DVD/BluRay, where redundancy and error correction is required to retrieve the information stored on the device.
So ECC is not a luxery; and better ECC in 4K sector drives means the ECC can better protect your data, and this should result in less bad sectors.
Interestingly, there is no difference in the specified Bit-Error-Rate (BER); it is still 10-14 or 10-15; but EADS and EARS have the same specified BER. However, i do believe the EARS/4K sector drives are more reliable.
I would rather have a 2TB 4K sector drive than a 2TB 512 sector drive. Take care to align the partitions properly, windows 7 should do that for you. To check you can run AS SSD which tells you if your partitions are aligned.
This is not unlike optical media like CD/DVD/BluRay, where redundancy and error correction is required to retrieve the information stored on the device.
So ECC is not a luxery; and better ECC in 4K sector drives means the ECC can better protect your data, and this should result in less bad sectors.
Interestingly, there is no difference in the specified Bit-Error-Rate (BER); it is still 10-14 or 10-15; but EADS and EARS have the same specified BER. However, i do believe the EARS/4K sector drives are more reliable.
I would rather have a 2TB 4K sector drive than a 2TB 512 sector drive. Take care to align the partitions properly, windows 7 should do that for you. To check you can run AS SSD which tells you if your partitions are aligned.