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

Just adding my post to the list to help others compiling evidence regarding this whole RAID/non-RAID drive mess. Some have speculated that the whole not being able to set the TLER setting on newer drives is incorrect. Well, here is my experience:

Today I ran down to Best Buy and purchased a 1TB WD1001FALS-00JB0 drive. It was manufactured in later February, 2010. The WDTLER utility, version 1.03, failed with this drive. Here is the output:

WD1001FALS-00JB0 WD-XXXXXXXXXXXXX
Unable to set Read TLER time.
Error enabling Read TLER to 7.000 seconds.

Then the same set of errors was given for the Write setting as well. As a long time buyer of their drives, I'm feeling pretty irritated with Western Digital. They appear to be taking active steps to frustrate enthusiasts like us. I understand the need for TLER, but why block us from setting the value ourselves? Weak sauce.
 
I have a six drive RAID 5 setup using WD 1TB drives. When one of the drives died I tried to replace it and ran into the same problems.

Here's my results:

PASS= TLER was enabled
FAIL= TLER would not enable

WDC WD1001FALS-00K1B0 - Four of these make up the bulk of my RAID.
FW: 05.00K05
Date Unknown - PASS

WDC WD1001FALS-00E8B0 - Another drive running in the RAID.
FW: 05.00K05
Date Unknown - PASS

WD1001FALS-00J7B0 - The drive that died. Actually this drive isn't dead and will be going back in my RAID.
FW: 05.00K05
06 Aug 2009 - PASS

WD6401AALS-00E3A0 - This is a 640GB Black Edition that I grabbed by accident. :eek:
FW: 05.00K05
01 Mar 2010 - PASS

WD1001FALS-00U9B0 - A new drive that came in to the store as Recertified RMA.
FW: Unknown
20 Aug 2010 - PASS

WD1001FALS-00E3A0
FW: 05.01D05
07 Feb 2010 - FAIL

WD1001FALS-00J7B1 - Tested two of these.
FW: 05.00K05
12 Dec 2009 - FAIL

WD1001FALS-00J7B0 - Tested two of these.
FW: 05.00K05
10 Mar 2010 - FAIL

WD1001FALS-00E8B0
FW: 05.00K05
22 Nov 2009 - FAIL

When trying to perform the fix with AHCI enabled WDTLER doesn't even detect the drive.
Hope this helps!

Hoobie7;)
 
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I don't think they list that on the outside of the drive!

You would need to go through your controller or OS to find the firmware.
 
Added firmware numbers to my list above.
It's interesting to me that the 640GB drive that did work, has the same FW as two of the 1TB drives that don't work.

Interesting...
Hoobie7;)
 
Picked up 6x WD6401AALS-00L3B2 from Buy.com. All have DCM ending in GB/AB, manufacturered on March 2010. None of them support TLER.
 
I have enabled TLER on 8 WD20EADS drives in total:

1x 00S2B0: Jan 21 2010 (my previous post was wrong on the date by a week)
2x 00R6B0: Jan 16 2010
4x 00S2B0: Feb 23 2010
1x 00R6B0: Jan 17 2010

7 were through Best Buy Online, 1 from in store.

Time to build my server!
 
@lizardking009: would you mind posting the firmware versions for those drives you listed above?
 
Firmware on all drives is 01.00A01.

I finally got a free moment to put the drives into caddys and put them in. 4 showed as 2tb, 4 showed as 1tb. Two of the 1tb drives were 00S2B0, two were 00R6B0. I managed to fix them. Here's what I did.

1st drive: Put it in my main workstation. WDDLG showed it as 1000gb. Shut down, turned off tler. Powered back up. WDDLG showed as 2000gb. Powered down, enabled tler. Powered back up. WDDLG showed 2000gb.

2nd drive: Left my boot WD connected. Ran the Tler-off.bat file. It said TLER was off. Booted up. WDDLG showed 1000gb, still. Powered off. Disconnected boot drive. Had a thought - disabled TLER then reenabled it without rebooting. Powered back up. WDDLG showed as 2000gb.

3rd and 4th drive: With each drive attached alone, I disabled and renabled TLER without a reboot. WDDLG showed as 2000gb after booting into Windows.

Now all of my drives show as 2tb in the Areca web page. I'm currently initializing the array. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Lesson: the 2tb TLER-enable process is extremely touchy. Each drive should be done by itself with AHCI disabled.

Also, my 320gb boot drive doesn't support TLER at all, so I stand corrected with regards to my FUD comment.
 
I assume if you look under the physical disk properties in the Areca web page or BIOS on each drive, that with firmware version 01.00A01 they show as APM not supported?!?

Mine did, except those with firmware version 04.05G04. That firmware version as well as any newer version seems to support APM!
 
Looks like WD forgot about the I in RAID

Thanks OP for putting this together. Once I can get into some OS that's not 64Bit I will try this utility on my 2 WD 1TB Green Drives sitting along side some seagates and hatachi's in a RAID 5. Already had a hair-raising experience with them once when i added a new drive so hopefully this works!

Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks

*Also, If I don't want AHCI enabled, what mode do I want to run? IDE compatibility? I am using an Intel ICH10R chipset.
 
The_Engineer said:
Looks like WD forgot about the I in RAID

Thanks OP for putting this together. Once I can get into some OS that's not 64Bit I will try this utility on my 2 WD 1TB Green Drives sitting along side some seagates and hatachi's in a RAID 5. Already had a hair-raising experience with them once when i added a new drive so hopefully this works!

Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks

*Also, If I don't want AHCI enabled, what mode do I want to run? IDE compatibility? I am using an Intel ICH10R chipset.
Click to expand...

You want compatability mode, only the first 4 ports will work in this mode. For the record I did all of my drives two at a time and had no issues at all with disk sizing etc.

The easiest way I found to do the mod was download the ultimate boot disc. Copy the WD files into the Dossapps folder and run the makeiso batch file. The result is a bootable CD that can change the drive settings.
 
I don't know if this was mentioned before, but some of the single platter WD5000AAKS drives support TLER. I bought two from Frys.com in Feburary and they both support TLER.
 
I bought a WD5000AAKS 3 weeks ago from Amazon and TLER is not supported. I have two others that are over a year old that do support TLER.

10 years of only WD disks and I am now done with them. Who'd have thought I'd be buying a pair of 1TB Deathstars for my new home server?

Irony can be pretty ironic.
 
Added another drive to my list of failed attempts to find one that will work.
I'm starting to get worried, I need to find a replacement for my bad drive or risk losing all 4TB of data!

Hoobie7 :(
 
hoobie7 said:
Added another drive to my list of failed attempts to find one that will work.
I'm starting to get worried, I need to find a replacement for my bad drive or risk losing all 4TB of data!

Hoobie7 :(
Click to expand...

Did you try both versions of the TLER tool?
 
@ enginurd
No I believe the version I'm using is the 1.03.
Oh, and added a few more drives to the list.

Hoobie7;)
 
I am using WD 2TB EADS drives. Does it matter which utility is run first? WDIDLE3 or WDTLER?
 
lizardking009 said:
I have enabled TLER on 8 WD20EADS drives in total:

1x 00S2B0: Jan 21 2010 (my previous post was wrong on the date by a week)
2x 00R6B0: Jan 16 2010
4x 00S2B0: Feb 23 2010
1x 00R6B0: Jan 17 2010

7 were through Best Buy Online, 1 from in store.

Time to build my server!
Click to expand...

RAID built, took forever. I had to jumper to SATA150 to avoid timeouts, but it works and I can max gig ethernet with iSCSI. All is well that ends well.
 
tale said:
LizardK, can you explain what you did here? thx.
Click to expand...

This is a know issue with the WD Green drives and RE4 drives with Intel IOP based raid controllers (Areca 1680 uses this chip). These drives often dropout of the array without reason unless you force the drive down to Sata 150 speed, doing this makes no real difference to performance at all.

Adaptec and Higpoint cards using the same Intel chip also have this problem too although Adaptec automatically drop the speed to SATA150 for you in the newer firmwares.
 
Interesting - I wonder if this may be my problem as well?

I have been using 6 WD20EADS drives on my RocketRAID 4320 controller in RAID 6 for months without issue, after disabling Intellipark with WDIDLE3 and enabling TLER on each of them. However, I recently added 2 more drives:

Drive 7: WD20EADS-00S2B0 04.05G04 with last 2 DCM of AB, manuf. date: Dec 20,2009
Drive 8: WD20EADS-00S2B0 01.00A01 with last 2 DCM of BB, manuf. date: Dec 14, 2009

On each of them I was able to disable intellipark w/WDIDLE3) and set the TLER to 7s w/WDtler.

However, during my OCE, after some time of all the lights flashing, only the light of Drive 7 will be on, essentially freezing the OCE. Only if I start doing something on the system and trying to access the array will it 'kickstart' the OCE again. Then, a few hours later the same may happen. If I leave uTorrent running and accessing the array, OCE will keep going without freezing.

Its almost as though the Intellipark on the drive isnt actually disabled? I saw similar issues when I initially tried to build the array using Seagates..

Any ideas about what the issue might be? Could it be that the BIOS on Drive 7 is not allowing me disable Intellipark even though it says it did? Note: Other drives in the array could not have Intellipark disabled, so I set it to 25s, but have seen no issues.

Thanks for any ideas you guys might have!
 
Any ideas about what the issue might be? Could it be that the BIOS on Drive 7 is not allowing me disable Intellipark even though it says it did? Note: Other drives in the array could not have Intellipark disabled, so I set it to 25s, but have seen no issues.

Thanks for any ideas you guys might have!
Click to expand...

Over time, you can find out if the intellipark is disabled on drive 7 by using SMART tools to determine the load cycle count. If intellipark is still enabled, the LCC would be MUCH higher than your other drives with parking disabled.
 
Krobar said:
This is a know issue with the WD Green drives and RE4 drives with Intel IOP based raid controllers (Areca 1680 uses this chip). These drives often dropout of the array without reason unless you force the drive down to Sata 150 speed, doing this makes no real difference to performance at all.

Adaptec and Higpoint cards using the same Intel chip also have this problem too although Adaptec automatically drop the speed to SATA150 for you in the newer firmwares.
Click to expand...

What tool did you used to drop the SATA speed to 150 on the WD20EADS drives?
 
Tale: I heard some talk about recent firmware not incrementing this value, presumably in an attempt to avoid the alarming numbers people have been seeing it grow to. In any case, once the OCE is complete I will keep an eye on this value to see if it is in fact growing.

Though it seems odd to me that it would want to park itself during an OCE, during which all drives are not idle for more than a split second for many hours. Perhaps the nature if this drive access (through the RAID Controller) is different than that from the OS, access from which does seem to keep the drives spinning.
 
Unwire,

These drives are known to increase LLC. you may want to set the idle time back to 8 seconds and monitor for rapid growth. If LCC is growing at a rapid rate, you got a "normal" drive. : )

as for the OCE, you can always disable the cache on the controller. good luck.
 
Ran into a problem.

I am using an EVGA mboard, 132-ck-nf78-a1. I can't find the settings to disable AHCI. Researched a few websites and some users stated that the EVGA 780i series do not support AHCI. Not sure what to think now. How can newer mboards not support AHCI? ...even if this board is a few years old, still relatively new.

Any ideas on how to disable AHCI, if there is such a feature on my board? thx.
 
Ran into a problem.

I am using an EVGA mboard, 132-ck-nf78-a1. I can't find the settings to disable AHCI. Researched a few websites and some users stated that the EVGA 780i series do not support AHCI. Not sure what to think now. How can newer mboards not support AHCI? ...even if this board is a few years old, still relatively new.

Any ideas on how to disable AHCI, if there is such a feature on my board? thx.
Click to expand...

So it appears that the 780i chipset doesn't have AHCI. *I think* I didn't disable anything in the BIOS and was able to modify idle time and TLER. I am one step closer to 11160GB using RAID6... cost $1120. not bad at all!
 
to all those who have tried to enable TLER and failed:

1) was there just a single hard drive connected to the system at the time?
2) was the drive connected to the onboard SATA controller, or your RAID card?

from what i have been able to gather, the TLER utility will try to enable/disable TLER for ALL drives that it can see at the same time....so it stands to reason that if there is another hard drive that doesn't support TLER (such as a brand other than WD), it could cause the utility to fail.

also, the TLER utility is not even likely to be able to see the hard drive if it is connected to an add-on controller card, so you should try removing the card entirely (so you don't boot up with one or more of your RAID drives missing, and causing the RAID array to fail), and connect the drive directly to a SATA controller built into the motherboard.

and from what i've gathered also, your SATA controller must be set to IDE mode for it to work, it is not likely to work in AHCI.

obviously, the best way to do this is to have a spare "test bench" computer available to do this, so you don't have to worry about pulling a bunch of stuff out of your main PC.
 
xXaNaXx said:
from what i have been able to gather, the TLER utility will try to enable/disable TLER for ALL drives that it can see at the same time....so it stands to reason that if there is another hard drive that doesn't support TLER (such as a brand other than WD), it could cause the utility to fail.
Click to expand...

I have seen the utility fail when a non-TLER capable WD is attached and when a Seagate was attached. I also had problems, including 2tb drives changing to 1tb, unless I ran TLER with one drive attached alone. The utility would enable TLER on 2 drives, but the correct capacity would not be detected.
 
Hopefully this will help a lot of people.

I know a lot of people have timeout issues with WD GP drives in RAID and i was talking to one of the techs at LSI and he pointed me to a KB article.
Apparently the RE4 drives had the same problems so WDC released a new firmware 04.05G05 to fix the issues.

Firmware Release notes
Firmware and instructions for LSI

You will need to connect each drive to a mobo SATA port for the flash, but some controller manufacturers can manipulate the .bin(firmware) file for you so you can flash all your drives at the same time so you dont have to break your RAID.

Also this is supposed to be a non-destructive flash, but as a precaution it is best to backup your data first!

PS: The LSI tech also told me that this firmware will work on non-RE4 (WD20EADS) drives as well. Apparently the hardware is a 100% match. Go figure :rolleyes:
 
I can confirm that this firmware does work on WD20EADS drives. I flashed 52 drives with this firmware. I obtained the firmware file I used through a WD contact. I just verified the file I obtained directly from WD against the link that nitrobass24 posted ( http://kb.lsi.com/KnowledgebaseArticle15592.aspx?Keywords=WD+RE4 ) and it is the same file!

This will NOT change a WD20EADS drive into a WD RE4 WD2002FYPS! This will only upgrade the firmware and among other things it will provide the WD20EADS with APM support!
 
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!

treadstone said:
I can confirm that this firmware does work on WD20EADS drives. I flashed 52 drives with this firmware. I obtained the firmware file I used through a WD contact. I just verified the file I obtained directly from WD against the link that nitrobass24 posted ( http://kb.lsi.com/KnowledgebaseArticle15592.aspx?Keywords=WD+RE4 ) and it is the same file!

This will NOT change a WD20EADS drive into a WD RE4 WD2002FYPS! This will only upgrade the firmware and among other things it will provide the WD20EADS with APM support!
Click to expand...
 
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
 
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