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WD3200SD vs. WD3200JD

TeeJayHoward

TeeJayHoward

Limpness Supreme
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Okay, so ZipZoomFly's listing two different WD 320GB SATA drives - The WD3200JD and the WD3200SD. They list the SD as having the following important notice - "IMPORTANT: Because of the time-limited error recovery feature, this product is intended for server applications and is not recommended for use in desktop systems."

Could someone explain this to me further? All the stats on the drives appear to be the same. The only information I could find was, "Time-limited error recovery (TLER) – improves compatibility with RAID adapters; prevents drive fallout caused by the extended hard drive error-recovery processes common to desktop hard drives."

So, there are drives that are NOT compatible with RAID adapters? And what fallout occurs, exactly, by "error-recovery processes"? For that matter, what is a drive "fallout"?
 
TeeJayHoward said:
Okay, so ZipZoomFly's listing two different WD 320GB SATA drives - The WD3200JD and the WD3200SD. They list the SD as having the following important notice - "IMPORTANT: Because of the time-limited error recovery feature, this product is intended for server applications and is not recommended for use in desktop systems."

Could someone explain this to me further? All the stats on the drives appear to be the same. The only information I could find was, "Time-limited error recovery (TLER) – improves compatibility with RAID adapters; prevents drive fallout caused by the extended hard drive error-recovery processes common to desktop hard drives."

So, there are drives that are NOT compatible with RAID adapters? And what fallout occurs, exactly, by "error-recovery processes"? For that matter, what is a drive "fallout"?
Click to expand...

Although i do not know what drive fallout is, i am guessing that the Western Digital Caviar RE WD3200SD is just tweaked to be run in servers. Enterprise class drives sometimes use different technologies to give them more stability in multi user enverionments.
It is not to say that drives are not compatible with RAID controllers, but some are better suited for it. I believe Maxtor makes a Raid edition of hard drives as well although those are desktop based.
 
TeeJayHoward said:
Okay, so ZipZoomFly's listing two different WD 320GB SATA drives - The WD3200JD and the WD3200SD. They list the SD as having the following important notice - "IMPORTANT: Because of the time-limited error recovery feature, this product is intended for server applications and is not recommended for use in desktop systems."

Could someone explain this to me further? All the stats on the drives appear to be the same. The only information I could find was, "Time-limited error recovery (TLER) – improves compatibility with RAID adapters; prevents drive fallout caused by the extended hard drive error-recovery processes common to desktop hard drives."

So, there are drives that are NOT compatible with RAID adapters? And what fallout occurs, exactly, by "error-recovery processes"? For that matter, what is a drive "fallout"?
Click to expand...

Actually, all hard drives can be RAIDed. However, the Caviar RE series (WD####SD) is engineered for high-volume use - and the extra features on the WD####SD series such as TLER do slow down desktop performance significantly. If that level of desktop performance from the WD####SD drives is what you're after, then you might as well use a 4500rpm to 5400rpm hard drive.

On the other hand, the extended error-recovery processes common to desktop hard drives will contribute to much greater wear and tear on the desktop hard drives when used in a server environment. Remember, the desktop hard drives are engineered for desktop performance first, reliability second. The exact opposite is true for the Caviar RE series - reliability first, and f**k desktop performance!
 
E4g1e said:
the desktop hard drives are engineered for desktop performance first, reliability second.
Click to expand...
What exactly changed? Different firmware? Are the materials used during the manufacturing process different? Circuitboard layout?
 
Wrong wrong wrong.

The drives are the same.

It's basicly just a firmware change. Time limited error recovery is the biggest difference. Also many of these "nearline" drives employ read after write as well. These are not recomended for desktop use because of this. Hardware is the same.
 
StorageJoe said:
Wrong wrong wrong.

The drives are the same.

It's basicly just a firmware change. Time limited error recovery is the biggest difference. Also many of these "nearline" drives employ read after write as well. These are not recomended for desktop use because of this. Hardware is the same.
Click to expand...

Oh, I see. And the firmware is different enough that you cannot update the nearline drives' firmware with one from a desktop version of the same drive without causing data corruption or loss.

And the alogarithm used in the desktop drives' firmware tries to achieve the best compromise between performance and reliability. That of nearline drives' firmware, on the other hand, favors reliability over single-user performance.

In either case, the WD3200 series - other than the relatively quiet spindles in newer-manufactured units - have little to recommend over other 300GB-class drives. Their performance, even in their desktop versions, doesn't stand out from the pack.
 
The Time Limited Error Recovery "feature" on RAID Edition Caviars is a compatibility fix for using them with RAID adapters. It limits the amount of time the drive spends on error recovery. Since enterprise level RAID adapters have their own error recovery methods, the drive does not need to perform them on its own. Not only is this not necessary, it's a problem for desktop Caviars, as extended periods in error recovery can cause RAID adapters to think that a Caviar has failed when in reality it's just busy with error recovery. There's an even bigger pitfall when using RE Caviars on a dekstop without BIOS level error recovery - if the drive cannot complete error recovery, it may allow corruption to propogate :eek:

This is why WD has two separate Caviar lines, desktop and RAID. That's also why I don't recommend mixing their roles. RAID with RAID, desktop on desktop.
 
E4g1e said:
In either case, the WD3200 series - other than the relatively quiet spindles in newer-manufactured units - have little to recommend over other 300GB-class drives. Their performance, even in their desktop versions, doesn't stand out from the pack.
Click to expand...

Indeed. However, the price/gig (without rebates) is currently the best I've seen for a 300GB+ drive. (I'd love to be proved wrong here! Anyone? Before I buy some?)

I've my MAU for performance. The 320's I'm considering would be for data storage, maybe even in another machine.
 
TeeJayHoward said:
Indeed. However, the price/gig (without rebates) is currently the best I've seen for a 300GB+ drive. (I'd love to be proved wrong here! Anyone? Before I buy some?)

I've my MAU for performance. The 320's I'm considering would be for data storage, maybe even in another machine.
Click to expand...

If you're just going to use the drive for simple storage (usually without any RAID at all whatsoever), then you don't need the WD3200SD. Go with the WD3200JD, in this case.

In other words, only buy the WD3200SD if you will be using the drive into a multiple-drive RAID configuration, using an expensive hardware-based RAID controller. Do not buy the WD3200SD if you're not going to use RAID. Also, do not buy the WD3200SD if you will be using RAID 0 or RAID 1 with a motherboard-chipset-integrated software-based RAID controller or a low-cost RAID controller.
 
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