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

don't forget to switch it back after you do TLER

This thread has been a God-send. Special thanks to Dew for the pre-made boot CD, very kind!

i made a custom one with WDIDLE and TLER on it if someone wants it. pm me.

Originally Posted by Dew

Here is the bootable dos cd I made, includes a menu: http://pages.woods.us/WDTLER-BootCD.zip

Thanks, giving it a try now with my Adaptec 5445 and WD20EADS drives that keep dropping out.

P.

i had one drop out on me and it had TLER enabled. i am hoping the drive is bad hehe. doing a full media scan using WD's diag tool.

I'm a novice with computers, so I have some questions. Due to viruses (even with anti-virus) and both internal and external HD failures, I'm going to setup a NAS. I purchased the Thecus N4100pro to attach to our router and work with an XP desktop (used pretty much as a printer server), 2 XP laptops, 1 Vista laptop, and a macbook pro. I've also purchased 2 1TB WD caviar black (WD1001FALS) to configure in a Raid 1. I know I need to enable TLER before setting up the Raid 1, but how do I do that? In other words, do I need to attach them separately to my computer first and run a utility or can I do that when I install them in the NAS enclosure or how should I do this?

Thanks,
Toni

Originally Posted by Dew

Here is the bootable dos cd I made, includes a menu: http://pages.woods.us/WDTLER-BootCD.zip

could you please tell me if is this 100% the same as the standard WDTLER application by Western Digital, except in the form of a bootable CD, or are there other modifications as well? should work well with WD1001FALS (the 1TB Black Caviar)?

cheers

that is the same boot disk i created. the disk works, it just doesn't recognize the drives. I get the menu with the first option being to enable TLER, but then i get the message that no drives found. i'm attaching the drives to my laptop through a usb to sata connector.

Does anyone know if Seagate has a similar utility or is it already enabled on their drives? I have four 7200.10 750GB SATA2 in a RAID5.

For seagate its called Error Recovery Control or ERC.

But im not sure about a tool.

Any luck with enabling TLER on WD20EADS?

Originally Posted by sethh

could you please tell me if is this 100% the same as the standard WDTLER application by Western Digital, except in the form of a bootable CD, or are there other modifications as well? should work well with WD1001FALS (the 1TB Black Caviar)?

cheers

The WDTLER in the boot image is equal to the original program.
Yes, WTLER works perfectly with WD1001FALS.
I personally tried on 3 HDD.

Can anyone confirm it works for 20EADS ?

Hi,

I picked up 4 WD1001FALS hard drives the other day. I tried to run the WDTLER utility on them, but this failed. The application shows the drive and its serial number, however it says it failed to update the TLER read and write settings. (It can't read the setting either).

My SATA controller is running in IDE emulation mode (I can choose, RAID, AHCI or IDE on this Asus M2A-VM HDMI board).

I read the WDTLER utility can be picky on the controller so I also tried it on an Intel 82801 (IHC7 family) on board SATA controller. The same issue here. Connecting a WD1600JS drive worked however... I can see the TLER settings.

My goal was to create a 3TB RAID-5 array. The WD1001FALS seemed a very nice choice to me especially after reading about successful WDTLER stories from other users (also on this forum).

Yes, I know that I should have picked RE edition drives but as a home user I found these too expensive.

Did Western Digital change the rules? The newer WD1001FALS drives no longer support it? Or is it a firmware issue (can't find anything about this either).

Did anybody see this behavior? How can I fix it or should I return the drives and go for the more expensive RE edition WD drives?

Kind Regards,

Erik

Erik, on the drives, whats the MDL and DATE?

Kritter,

MDL: WD1001FALS-00J7B1
Date: September 24 2009

Does this make a difference?

Originally Posted by choas

Kritter,

MDL: WD1001FALS-00J7B1
Date: September 24 2009

Does this make a difference?

My 3 HDD all have:

MDL: WD1001FALS-0?????
Firmware: 05.00K05.
S / N: WD-WMATV2411xxx
Date: Jul 2009

I can not tell you the complete MDL why should I dismantle the huge stack of 8 HDD from the case.

WDTLER works perfectly with these HDD, when connected in IDE mode, to a MB nVidia nForce 590 SLI.

No problem
Your answer is of great help anyway!
I thought that the 00J7B1 was the firmware version that came with the disks from the factory.
But this is not the case, as I see know.

I should check the firmware version this evening. If I happen to have the incorrect firmware version, is there a way to flash 05.00K05? Probably not since there's not much on Google....

How did you check the firmware? I'm sure my RAID GUI can tell me or otherwise Linux.

I would still love to have these disks in RAID-5

Originally Posted by choas

No problem

How did you check the firmware? I'm sure my RAID GUI can tell me or otherwise Linux.

I checked the fw from "Adaptec Storage Manager". This is the tool for my RAID controller.

Have you checked the label, simply ?

Originally Posted by Iron67

I checked the fw from "Adaptec Storage Manager". This is the tool for my RAID controller.

Have you checked the label, simply ?

The problem is that WD support states that "J7B1" is the firmware version.
Which is obviously not true since my Highpoint RocketRaid Manager states that the firmware version is 05.00K05, just as yours.

Funny fact: Highpoint (my raid manufacturer) has the WD1001FALS with firmware "0K05" on their compatibility list.

Since we have the same firmware version, I assume that WD has removed TLER support from this drive as of model WD1001FALS-J7B1.

Currently I'm trying to RMA the 4 drives to the retailer, but since I opened the packages of 3 of the 4 drives they are not sure if they want to take them back. They requested a photo which I've send. I'm waiting for a response.