Western Digital Time-Limited Error Recovery (TLER) with RAID and SE, SE16, GP Models

wukaijie said:
I tried to flash the firmware to my WD20EADS, and not successful.

I guess this is because my hard drives are WD20EADS 00S2B0 with firmware 01.00A01?

please confirm. thanks!
Click to expand...

How was the HDD connected?
 
wukaijie said:
I tried to flash the firmware to my WD20EADS, and not successful.

I guess this is because my hard drives are WD20EADS 00S2B0 with firmware 01.00A01?

please confirm. thanks!
Click to expand...

I had one WD20EADS 00S2B0 with firmware 01.00A01 among the 52 WD20EADS drives I updated and I had no issue with any of them. The rest of them are all 32S2B0. All had firmware version 01.00A01, except for 3 which had version 04.05G04 loaded. The odd thing is that I couldn't figure out a correlation between hardware release, manufacturing date and/or serial number. I was trying to figure out why some of them had firmware release 01.00A01 and some others 04.05G04 loaded. All drives with 01.00A01 have no APM support.

Sorry, forgot to ask, you have the drive directly connected to your motherboard's SATA ports and have the BIOS configured to have your interface set to IDE?
Also, do you have any other drives still connected to any other SATA ports?
 
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pgjensen said:
anyone know of a solution for the 1.5TB drives and TLER? only 9 of my 16 allow TLER (using old utility) and i don't have a spare to pull out to test TLER 1.03. does that work? i imagine there's no enterprise firmware out there since they go from 1tb to 2tb
Click to expand...

They have 1.5tb RE4's (WD1503FYYS), I would contact WD and see what they have to say.
 
Yes, I have two of them, and I tried it one by one. I have them connected directly to mobo's sata and as IDE, i successfully did wdtler and wdidle3, when i tried to do this, i was told the drive is not upgradable, or something like that.

Edit:
One thing to add is that, since the image and tool are too large to fit into a floppy disk, i put the tool (exe file) to the ram drive created by my dos boot disk, create the path variable, and leave the image in a floppy disk. then I go to a: drive, type the following: 0405g05

the exe file was executed, and I assumed it should at least look for the A: drive since that is the place where I started the command ... i am not sure about this point now, i haven't used dos for 10 years now...

Edit again:
burned a CD with those tools, and still got the same problem. tlerscan can run and report without problem, but the 0405g05 reports "Drive update not applicable".


treadstone said:
I had one WD20EADS 00S2B0 with firmware 01.00A01 among the 52 WD20EADS drives I updated and I had no issue with any of them. The rest of them are all 32S2B0. All had firmware version 01.00A01, except for 3 which had version 04.05G04 loaded. The odd thing is that I couldn't figure out a correlation between hardware release, manufacturing date and/or serial number. I was trying to figure out why some of them had firmware release 01.00A01 and some others 04.05G04 loaded. All drives with 01.00A01 have no APM support.

Sorry, forgot to ask, you have the drive directly connected to your motherboard's SATA ports and have the BIOS configured to have your interface set to IDE?
Also, do you have any other drives still connected to any other SATA ports?
Click to expand...
 
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treadstone said:
I had one WD20EADS 00S2B0 with firmware 01.00A01 among the 52 WD20EADS drives I updated and I had no issue with any of them. The rest of them are all 32S2B0. All had firmware version 01.00A01, except for 3 which had version 04.05G04 loaded. The odd thing is that I couldn't figure out a correlation between hardware release, manufacturing date and/or serial number. I was trying to figure out why some of them had firmware release 01.00A01 and some others 04.05G04 loaded. All drives with 01.00A01 have no APM support.

Sorry, forgot to ask, you have the drive directly connected to your motherboard's SATA ports and have the BIOS configured to have your interface set to IDE?
Also, do you have any other drives still connected to any other SATA ports?
Click to expand...

Did you upgrade your drives via a CD or usb?
 
wukaijie said:
Yes, I have two of them, and I tried it one by one. I have them connected directly to mobo's sata and as IDE, i successfully did wdtler and wdidle3, when i tried to do this, i was told the drive is not upgradable, or something like that.

Edit:
One thing to add is that, since the image and tool are too large to fit into a floppy disk, i put the tool (exe file) to the ram drive created by my dos boot disk, create the path variable, and leave the image in a floppy disk. then I go to a: drive, type the following: 0405g05

the exe file was executed, and I assumed it should at least look for the A: drive since that is the place where I started the command ... i am not sure about this point now, i haven't used dos for 10 years now...

Edit again:
burned a CD with those tools, and still got the same problem. tlerscan can run and report without problem, but the 0405g05 reports "Drive update not applicable".
Click to expand...


I get the same error on 2 drives I just tried. I can change the idle and turn on tler. I have several others to try but feel I will fare the same.
 
So hang on a second, i just bought some WD15EADS (actually they were out of WD elements usb hdd's as the WD EADS HDD's seem to have been discontinued) and they were Nov 2009 and i can confirm they could NOT enable TLER. There was also a jan 2010 WD15EADS which could not enable TLER.

So is this just a problem with the WD15EADS? Can pretty much all the WD20EADS have TLER enabled? Has anyone had a 2tb WD20EADS not allow TLER to be enabled? and has anyone seen or enabled TLER on a WD20EADS-11R6B1?
 
esseeayen852 said:
So hang on a second, i just bought some WD15EADS (actually they were out of WD elements usb hdd's as the WD EADS HDD's seem to have been discontinued) and they were Nov 2009 and i can confirm they could NOT enable TLER. There was also a jan 2010 WD15EADS which could not enable TLER.

So is this just a problem with the WD15EADS? Can pretty much all the WD20EADS have TLER enabled? Has anyone had a 2tb WD20EADS not allow TLER to be enabled? and has anyone seen or enabled TLER on a WD20EADS-11R6B1?
Click to expand...


I have enabled successfully on 8 WD20EADS ranging from January to April dates. I have not been able to upgrade the firmware to allow APM support.
 
The firmware will check the drive and determines if the drive requires the update. If it won't upgrade the firmware on the drive, it is most likely because the particular hardware/software build you have is not listed in the firmware compatibility table. All of the different versions that this upgrade applies to are listed in the actual firmware (binary) file.
 
Total RAID Newbe here... Made a mistake and bought the WD20EARS-00S8B1, Dec 29, 2009 manufacturer date. Of course the TLER function is disabled. I saw (in this thread I think) some other drives (WD2002FYPS?) being updated to firmware 0405G05. Can this firmware be used on these drives to enable the TLER? Is it best to disable WDIDLE or give it a set time (/S300)? Are there any risks associated with disabling WDIDLE?
 
I too have made the same error and bought WD20EARS drives and am wondering if there is any way to enable TLER on these.
I am thinking I should cancel the drives, and get either 2TB Seagate ST32000542AS Barracuda LP's, 2TB Samsung HD203WI Spinpoint F3EG, or 2TB Hitachi Saturn, 0F10311, Deskstar 7K2000.

Regards
Rich
 
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pretty sure you're screwed with EARS. get EADS and do firmware update, or get hitachi 2tb drives.
 
I can confirm success in updating the firmware on 2 WD20EADS-00S2B0 drives to version 04.05G05. Everything worked out exactly as described in this thread.

I enabled TLER (left it at 7 seconds), and then I also set the spin-down time to 5 minutes. I love my drives now. Running them in RAID1 in my media box. Since you can still get EADS drives from Newegg last I checked, I might get a couple more to have as backups...

Al
 
How is it now-a-days with the WD GP drives, is it safe to buy one to use as non-raid (stand alone drive) or does they still have the Load Cycle Count problem (that the drive wear it self out).
I currently got 8 EADS drives (WD10EADS) and two of them are the -M2B0 version, those two have i patched with the WDIDLE app, the other ones are the -00L5B1 wich has the IDLE turned of by factory.
A friend of mine has a WD15EARS and reported that it increased fast in LCC value. He also said with the newer GP drives WD has done something to prevent users from applying the WDIDLE software to it.
Or is it better to go with the WD Black still the price is much higher.
 
Al Koholic said:
I can confirm success in updating the firmware on 2 WD20EADS-00S2B0 drives to version 04.05G05. Everything worked out exactly as described in this thread.

I enabled TLER (left it at 7 seconds), and then I also set the spin-down time to 5 minutes. I love my drives now. Running them in RAID1 in my media box. Since you can still get EADS drives from Newegg last I checked, I might get a couple more to have as backups...

Al
Click to expand...

Where were you able to download the firmware?

thanks
 
On my RocketRAID 4320 I have an array of 8 WD20EADSs drives, some with firmware version 04.05G04, some with version 01.00A01. I have not touched the firmware of any of these, they're all as they were 'out of the box'. I have, however, run wdidle and set the TLER values to 7s on all of them.

My question is: Do you guys see any problem with adding an additional WD20EADS to this array that has been flashed with the RE4 GP 4.05g05 firmware upgrade? Will it change the characteristics of the drive substantially enough to produce instability with the other stock WD20EADS drives? Has anyone tried mixing them like this yet?

Thanks!
 
I honestly don't think that you would run into any issues with the different firmware versions, just like between the 01.00A01 and 04.05G04 versions.

I have, however, run wdidle and set the TLER values to 7s on all of them.
Click to expand...

I think you meant to say that you ran WDTLER to set TLER to 7s... WDIDLE3 has nothing to do with the TLER setting.

I don't recall if it was WDIDLE3 or WDTLER that I had to run again after the firmware upgrade. One of these settings is kept the other defaulted back to the factory setting after the firmware upgrade. So if you do decide to to flash the firmware to 04.05G05, make sure you run the WDIDLE3 and WDTLER again just to make sure your settings are all back the way you want/need them.

I created a little batch file that I called up to do all 3 steps sequentially one after the other since I had to do this on 52 drives, two at a time...

Also, make sure you have the latest version of WDILDE3 (v1.05) as previous versions did not turn off the idle timer but rather set them to 62min!
Version 1.05 fixed that bug in the WDIDLE3 program!
 
Right, I meant that I set both the Intellipark *and* TLER timings. I should have said 'as well as'. :)

Safer to just flash them all, I know, but The array is already loaded, and I'd prefer to leave sleeping dogs lie if I can get away with it.. hehe.

Thanks for the tip about re-confirming the idle and TLER settings. I'll definitely do that.

So you think that even though one of the drives will have the RE4 GP firmware on it, it should still play nicely with the other WD20EADS drives within the same array that haven't been flashed? I know the others have a mix of firmware versions, but they're still all WD20EADS firmware and not RE4 GP..
 
What I have been told is that the controller on the RE4 GP drives is the same as that found on the WD20EADS in fact the hardware is identical so flashing a WD20EADS drive with 04.05G05 makes no difference (other than that they fixed a few things in the 05 version of the firmware. If you flash the WD20EADS drive with the 04.05G05 firmware, you don't see any difference and the drive will work the same way. The 04.05G05 version will however enable APM support on the WD20EADS (04.05.G04 already enabled APM on the WD20EADS drives but 01.00A01 did not!).
 
Well that's reassuring.. I'll flash it, throw it in, and see how it goes! Thanks, Treadstone!

I'm tempted to flash the other drives already used in the array, but I'm not sure how the controller indexes them, and if the metrics it uses to uniquely identify/tag the drives would be disrupted by the new firmware and therefore no longer recognized as the same drive to the array..
 
I can't speak to the data integrity of whatever you may have on the discs. The firmware upgrade should NOT affect the data on the drive, however there is no guarantee. So make sure that you backup your data BEFORE you flash the drives with any new firmware, unless you don't care for what's on the drives :)

When I upgraded my drives, they were all blank, un-formatted drives! I don't think that the firmware upgrade will corrupt, alter or make your data inaccessible in any way, form or shape (well unless something goes horribly wrong during the firmware upgrade). As I said, it's always a good idea to make a backup before you undertake any kind of modification/upgrade of your hardware!
 
I just did an upgrade to 2x WD15EADS and it worked fine without issues. What I noticed is that the upgrade reset the SMART table without the Power_On_Hours value. Just for the record if someone needs all values to backup the SMART table before the upgrade.

If someone already posted this, sorry, I missed a few pages in this thread :-(

Cheers!

EDIT: I tried to use the upgrade on a WD15EARS firmware 80.00A80 and it failed. I mean I got the message that the drive cannot be upgraded because firmware in not compatible! Different HW I know but I said to try it anyway.
 
I am about to start building my RAID array and I was debating between the WD20EADS and WD2002FYPS. The RE drives are significantly more expensive, and I would much rather save some money and go with desktop edition drives. After reading this entire thread I have two questions:

1) Regardless of the production date, can all of the WD20EADS drives be upgraded to the 04.05G05 (LSI) firmware and have TLER enabled?
2) Once TLER is enabled is that setting persistent? Can it survive a full power cycle (extended power-off)?

Thanks in advance.
 
I can't answer for your first question, however I can tell you the the TLER and IDLE settings do survive power cycles (remember these are actually WD provided tools!).
 
treadstone said:
I had 49 drives with 01.00A01 and 3 with 04.05G04 all of which I upgraded to 04.05G05.
Click to expand...

How did you upgrade your 1.00A01 drivers? The firmware I used to successfully upgrade my 04.05G04 drives to 04.05G05 does it does not support the 1.00A01 drive.
 
The upgrade program detected the 01.00A01 drives and simply performed the firmware flash just like the 04.05G04 drives!
 
What model was it? WD20EADS?
Please post your model number including the 6 digits following the model number!
 
I just picked-up 4 WD20EADS with a manufacture date of January 2010. All the drives are running 01.00A01. Full model number: WDC WD20EADS-00R6B0. None of the drives would take the RE4 firmware. I was able to successfully enable TLER and disable head parking on all of the drives.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can upgrade the firmware on these drives? I do not think this is a connectivity issue, since the drives can be “seen” and modified by WDTLER and WDIDLE.

Thanks!
 
Is there any hope for wd10eads-00m2b0 drives?

I had to rma one of my drives and got one of those in return.. to my dismay tler cant be enabled.. the firmware is 01.00A01

I tried the firmware update, but as expected the drive isn't supported..

Now I have a degraded raid 5 array with about 3.5Tb of data that I'm scared to try to copy off..
 
weird, I just checked and I have another wd10eads-00m2b0 with the same firmware 01.00a01 but mfg date of 6/8/09 and tler enabled fine..

all my other drives are wd10eads-00L5b1, including 1 recertified drive from 11/2/09 and tler enabled fine on those..
 
Update:

After some extensive complaining, Western Digital has agreed to exchange the WD10EADS for an RE drive this one time. This won't save me the next time one of the drives fail though.

I still feel it was wrong for them to disable TLER in the middle of the EADS drives life cycle..
 
treadstone said:
What model was it? WD20EADS?
Please post your model number including the 6 digits following the model number!
Click to expand...

The drive I successfully upgraded were:
Model: WDC WD20EADS-00S2B0
Serial: WD-WCAVY1807206
Firmware: 04.05G05

The drives that are still at 1.00A01 are:
Model: WDC WD20EADS-00S2B0
Serial: WD-WCAVY4834150
Firmware: 01.00A01

Both are the exact same model number so I'm not sure what the difference is. The firmware on the later drive just said that the drive wasn't supported.
 
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