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

Interesting. Is there any way to do this for Seagate's hard drives? Except they don't call it TLER, they call it ERC.

Thanks for the info, though. It'll be helpful when I swap out my drives with a pair of SE16 640GB.
 
Wow, this is pretty obnoxious. I kept clear away from WD form many years as my last WD drive was buggy (one of those Caviar drives from 2001 or 2002 that didn't like being hooked up to a different manufacturer's drive on the same pata cable). So now I get a 6400AAKS (just delivered today) and decide RAID might be the way to go, and I read this. Shit.

Since I'm not well informed about this issue, can I ask some advice? My plan was to keep my existing 320Gb drive, and also use my new WD6400AAKS. I planned on making two partitions at roughly 320Gb each on the WD. The first I would use for my OS, games, other non-vital stuff. The other partition I planned on setting up a RAID1 array with my old 320Gb drive for security. So, now will this work? Since I had planned on using my WD drive for both a RAID and nonRAID function, should I enable or disable the TLER function? Would this setup work with any drive? Does anyone have any advice?
 
I've been using two WD 640's in RAID 1 for the last two months w/o TLER, and they've worked fine.

If I enable TLER now, will I have to reformat the drive? Also, will it perform any worse than non-TLER drives?
 
Jimmy the Greek said:
I've been using two WD 640's in RAID 1 for the last two months w/o TLER, and they've worked fine.

If I enable TLER now, will I have to reformat the drive? Also, will it perform any worse than non-TLER drives?
Click to expand...

I didn't lose data when enabling TLER on my Raptors.
 
So I got my two WD640's today and im just going to put them in WHS using DE....
Do I need or is there any reason to enable TLER?
Also does TLER reduce performance?
 
nitrobass24 said:
So I got my two WD640's today and im just going to put them in WHS using DE....
Do I need or is there any reason to enable TLER?
Also does TLER reduce performance?
Click to expand...

You should probably check and ensure that TLER is enabled. If it isn't enabling it wouldn't hurt. If you aren't having any problems I wouldn't really worry about it. Finally TLER doesn't hurt performance at all.
 
This is really good information on TLER better than I could anywhere else

This should be made a sticky or at least moved to the Answers Sticky.

Thumbs up for JakFrost
 
Does anyone know if the utility will enable TLER on the new 1TB WD1001FALS or any Caviar Black for that matter? I find it ridiculous that this *software* feature would be limited to "enterprise" models only...
 
dune said:
Does anyone know if the utility will enable TLER on the new 1TB WD1001FALS or any Caviar Black for that matter? I find it ridiculous that this *software* feature would be limited to "enterprise" models only...
Click to expand...

I don't find it ridiculous - i think there's a valid purpose in having RE drives TLER-enabled by default and consumer drives disabled TLER by default. Example if I had a standalone drive attached to my motherboard and it suddenly got flaky and I was trying to get the data off before it crashed completely, I would WANT the drive to keep hammering away attempting to do its own error recovery, re-reading the same sector, etc. Conversely with a drive in an array the moment there's any hesitation on a drive's part I would want it to give up trying to do anything on its own and revert to letting the array controller decide if it deserves staying in the array. So, WD's decision to default different models of drives to a different setting depending on the target application kind of makes sense in the absence of a more intelligent mechanism that automatically figured out how to act (i.e. if a drive's logic board could figure out when its attached to a raid controller and dynamically adjust TLER accordingly).

As to your question: Yes, I just enabled TLER on all 16 of my new WD1001FALS drives since I'll be attaching them to an Areca array controller.

Now if I could just get Western Digital to hurry up and upgrade my damn warranty from 3 years to 5 years on these drives. There seems to be a common problem people are having where online shops (and even WD themselves in their online policy on FALS drives) advertise a 5 year warranty, but if you do a warranty check it will typically show only a 3 year warranty. Some people have had success calling up and having them bump the warranty to 5, but I'm annoyed I have to even do this. I talked to some incoherent guy in India yesterday who I got nowhere with, then just called their corporate office in 949 area code and got a level 2 tech support guy that told me to fax in my serial#'s and proof of purchase and they'd bump warranty.

Hope I don't have to do this every time since I want to buy more of these drives.
 
Thanks for the quick reply, very informative. I think I have found the drive for my server upgrade :cool:. I've read about the warranty issues which concern me too. If you get a line to someone at WDC that can issue a warrantly correction with little fuss, please let me know.

I don't find it ridiculous - i think there's a valid purpose in having RE drives TLER-enabled by default and consumer drives disabled TLER by default.
Click to expand...

Allow me to rephrase... I certainly understand the intention and value behind creating an enterprise-class drive. My frustration came from speaking directly with Western Digital who told me twice that if I "insisted" on creating a raid array that my only option was to purchase a more expensive drive. Glad to hear the TLER toggle utility will still work on the FALS.
 
dune said:
Thanks for the quick reply, very informative. I think I have found the drive for my server upgrade :cool:. I've read about the warranty issues which concern me too. If you get a line to someone at WDC that can issue a warrantly correction with little fuss, please let me know.

Allow me to rephrase... I certainly understand the intention and value behind creating an enterprise-class drive. My frustration came from speaking directly with Western Digital who told me twice that if I "insisted" on creating a raid array that my only option was to purchase a more expensive drive. Glad to hear the TLER toggle utility will still work on the FALS.
Click to expand...

Yep - ofcourse they have to say that since they don't want people coming back complaining about any failures, not to mention potentially tying up their techs with people much less savvy than you and I (aka people that know "just enough to be dangerous") and having to teach them how to use the TLER utility, or making a dos bootdisk, or whatever. Tech support hours cost them a lot of money and they rather tell desktop and enterprise demographics "here you run THESE, and here YOU run THESE", and be finished. That's why the TLER util is not publicly available (without getting it from a private link from tech supp). There are more diffs between desktop and enterprise class drives than TLER obviously, but this is just one example why they have the stance they do.

That said, I run MANY different arrays including some based on off-the-shelf 3.5" harddisks, including Seagate 1Tb's (desktop and ES2 editions), Hitachi 1Tb's, Western Digital WD10EACS (GP drive) 1Tb's, now WD1001FALS 1Tb's, and I run them on Areca and Adapter 24-port array controllers. I really haven't had a single problem with any of them as far as falling out of an array due to TLER issues, i.e. my WD10EACS drives all have TLER enabled since day 1 before creating an array with them.

A lot of people (especially home users and enthusiasts) think the HD makers are just using a "marketing gimmick" in the enterprise class drives since architecturally they're similar to and built in the same factories as the desktop class counterparts. However there ARE differences in the firmware for the enterprise class drives such as the I/O patterns they're optimized for, and the enterprise class typically have double the MTBF of the desktop-class counterpart for various reasons. At work I *only* run enterprise class drives, because saving $30-$50 per drive is not worth any catastrophes.

Obviously a savvy home user can get away with desktop class drives in raid arrays, but manufacturers won't endorse it, especially when they sell drives already set for raid use out of the box. Simple economics for them.
 
One more thing - i really like the WD1001FALS drives so far - just did a benchmark for 16 in Raid5 and its in the stratosphere - will post links in another thread. They're just speedy as far as their mechanics (fastest spin-up of any drive i've ever used) and the fact they're only 3 platters makes me much more confident in their longevity than the 5-platter mechanical nightmares of my Hitachi 1Tb's for example. They're a very mature platform.

I've been grabbing these for $180 a piece which is also amazing value for money, since its only about $30 more than the WD10EACS drives. Right now I think the WD1001FALS is clearly the highest performing 1Tb drive for the pricepoint (and perhaps any pricepoint).
 
Great thread, I thought I was going to have to buy the re2-gp drives for the raid array I am building. I think this is going to save me at least $50 a drive by going to the WD10EACS drives. Thanks OP.
 
I picked up four WD1001FALS's and attempted to run WDtler on a board with an ESB2 controller, but it hangs with a blinking cursor while the HD LED flashes. Tried in both IDE and AHCI modes with no luck... I know I've done it on ICH7, so I didn't think this would be a problem. Are there multiple versions of this utility, or do I possibly have an incompatible chipset?
 
odditory will have the best answer, but I would definitely give it a try on other controllers you may have available (specifically one that doesn't do RAID). My order arrives on Monday and I'll post my WDTLER results as soon as I have them (it'll be the first thing I do).
 
Yea, since I put them in a hotswap bay I popped them out and flashed each one individually off a board that had a cheapo SiS controller and they're all now TLER enabled.

Guess the utility doesn't work with all controllers, even in PATA emulated mode.
 
ok i got two wd2500ys in a raid0 setup. i upgraded wd latest firmware to prevent these harddrives from dropping from the array

i did a little more reading at wd site and came across this:
http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1278
(at the very bottom of page, questioning disabling the TLER)

"The TLER (Time Limited Error Recovery) feature on Western Digital RAID Edition EIDE and Serial ATA hard drives cannot be disabled.

Western Digital manufactures desktop edition hard drives and RAID Edition hard drives. Each type of hard drive is designed to work specifically in either a desktop computer environment or on RAID controller.

For more information on how TLER functions, please see Answer ID 1397." from wd site


So i guess i'm wondering if wd is saying the TLER cannot be disabled, how is there a western digital utility to do it??? i'm a little confused at this point :confused:
 
goldznnz said:
"The TLER (Time Limited Error Recovery) feature on Western Digital RAID Edition EIDE and Serial ATA hard drives cannot be disabled.
Click to expand...

I read that article today and it confused me a bit at first too. Remember that you want TLER enabled for RAID and disabled when using the drive standalone.

If I understand correctly, what this is saying is that you can never disable TLER on any WD Enterprise drive (be it EIDE or SATA) and that such a drive is never intended to be run standalone. However, on a desktop drive (Caviar, SE, etc...), the WDTLER utility can be used to enable or disable TLER (it is disabled by default). My guess is that the utility will only work on desktop drives.

It looks like the wd2500ys is an enterprise "RE" drive so the utility shouldn't be able to modify the TLER settings. Since you are running them in RAID-0, you want TLER on anyway. I found the wiki article on TLER to be a good read too.
 
dune said:
I read that article today and it confused me a bit at first too. Remember that you want TLER enabled for RAID and disabled when using the drive standalone.

If I understand correctly, what this is saying is that you can never disable TLER on any WD Enterprise drive (be it EIDE or SATA) and that such a drive is never intended to be run standalone. However, on a desktop drive (Caviar, SE, etc...), the WDTLER utility can be used to enable or disable TLER (it is disabled by default). My guess is that the utility will only work on desktop drives.

It looks like the wd2500ys is an enterprise "RE" drive so the utility shouldn't be able to modify the TLER settings. Since you are running them in RAID-0, you want TLER on anyway. I found the wiki article on TLER to be a good read too.
Click to expand...

thanks for trying to clear things up dawg ;) but currently i want to break my raid 0 with the wd2500ys and use them as single desktop drives. Should i been concerned since i cannot disable the TLER?

one last question, why does the TLER need to be disabled on non-raid drives? i know its not the best place to check, but reading all the reviews on the wd RE drives, many folks are using them as single drives for the OS and storage/stuff

thanks
 
goldznnz said:
one last question, why does the TLER need to be disabled on non-raid drives? i know its not the best place to check, but reading all the reviews on the wd RE drives, many folks are using them as single drives for the OS and storage/stuff
Click to expand...

I believe you do not want TLER on any standalone drive so that the normal error-recovery process internal to the drive can take as much time as it needs.
 
Just saw this thread again and I made a small update to the original post as shown below.

Update: (2008-09-15) As an answer to some of the posts. Enabling or disabling the TLER settings on your hard drives will not decrease speed or performance and it will not cause you any data loss and you will not have to recreate your arrays or reformat your drives. Changing of the setting is invisible to the system and can be switched without any changes, damage, or problems.

Update: (2008-09-15)It has now been 6-months since I enabled TLER on my drives and my computer has been running pretty much 14-hours a day everyday for months and recently 24-hours a day for the last month and there has been no issues at all with the drives and no more dropped hard disks from the arrays.


unhappy_mage said:
I'm a little disappointed by this conclusion. Software RAID of any level can be done well, and in some cases it's all you need. Shun a particular implementation (SilImage? Shun away!) but don't dismiss the whole concept. Highpoint has a decent implementation, for example, and Linux software raid is very capable and steady.

But all kinds of RAID depend on good drivers, period. If you have bad drivers for your hardware controller, you'll end up with a corrupt array in pretty short order. But if you have good drivers, you'll have no troubles with a software RAID array.

So how do you find good drivers? There are only two ways I know of: word of mouth and try-and-see. I recommend the first, having lost data to the other one. Ask around and see what's recommended before buying.
Click to expand...

I changed recommendation against software RAID5 only to the Silicon Image PCI based controllers instead of all software RAID5 controllers. In the fog of anger that I was under after the loss of my 2TB array I lashed out against all instead of just the specific controller implementation that was giving me grief. I fully agree with unhappy_mage about not grouping all software RAID5 controllers into one category to blame.
 
Are there tools available to enable/disable the TLER equivalents that the other hard drive manufacturers use? According to Wikipedia:

Similar technologies are called Error Recovery Control (ERC), used by competitor Seagate, and Command Completion Time Limit (CCTL), used by Samsung and Hitachi.
Click to expand...
 
Good question... I have not seen any but that doesn't mean they're not out there. Remember that the TLER utility isn't normally available freely from WD. It did get leaked however and you might get it from support if you can get the right tech. I would try the support line for the mfg. in question, perhaps multiple times.
 
Does this apply to the new EADS line as well? I have bought two WD10EADS 32MB 1TB and have them in a RAID 1 NAS system (QNAP 219).

Do I have to take the discs from the server and put them into my main computer to run this program or can I run a similar program directly on my Linux system? :confused:
 
Pr0wler said:
Does this apply to the new EADS line as well? I have bought two WD10EADS 32MB 1TB and have them in a RAID 1 NAS system (QNAP 219).

Do I have to take the discs from the server and put them into my main computer to run this program or can I run a similar program directly on my Linux system? :confused:
Click to expand...

It works on the WD15EADS(did it to 8 drives), so the WD10EADS should be fine.

As for the process, I made a bootable dos CD with the utility on it.
 
I was wondering if the TLER setting needs to be enabled on the caviar black 640gb edition. Someone earlier was saying stay away from caviar black for raid0 except for the 640gb version. Does that mean that person had a successful raid0 config without using TLER on that drive, or do I still need to worry about TLER settings? Anyone ever tried changing the TLER on the WD6401AALS?
 
sHaDoW8185 said:
I was wondering if the TLER setting needs to be enabled on the caviar black 640gb edition. Someone earlier was saying stay away from caviar black for raid0 except for the 640gb version. Does that mean that person had a successful raid0 config without using TLER on that drive, or do I still need to worry about TLER settings? Anyone ever tried changing the TLER on the WD6401AALS?
Click to expand...

I don't know about using the Blacks in RAID 0, but I do know a bit about TLER.

You should not enable TLER in RAID 0. It should onlyl be used in a RAID with data redundancy, such as RAID 1, 5, or 6.

The only thing that TLER does is LIMIT the on board error recovery to 7 seconds, instead of up to 2 minutes. If it cannot recover from the error in 7 seconds, it simply reports the error to the Raid controller, and the controller recovers the bad data from the redundant data in the array. With RAID 0, you have no redundant data to recover from, so you are best to just let the drive try and fix it.

TLER should never be used in a stand alone drive. Yes there are people who have been running for a long time with no apparent problems. But they are much more likely to lose data than a non TLER drive.

When I built my RAID 5 array from 3 X WD 1 TB GP desktop drives, one kept dropping out of the array, but would test fine. After the third time, I RMAd the drive. While waiting for the replacement, I learned about TLER, and turned it on for all 3 of the drives when I got the replacement drive in from ZZF. It has worked flawlessly since.

Don
 
will the TLER work the same way with the 2TB desktop models? if so, i may have to return these 1.5TB seagates that are giving me trouble with TIMEOUT errors :(
 
pgjensen said:
will the TLER work the same way with the 2TB desktop models? if so, i may have to return these 1.5TB seagates that are giving me trouble with TIMEOUT errors :(
Click to expand...

It should, works fine with the WD15EADS.
 
I am running 2 black caviar 1 TB HD's in Raid 0. I download the TLER utility to enable TLER on my drives. When the disk boots, it informs me the utility cannot recognize the controller. I am using the onboard ICH10R controller. Any ideas?
 
lodingi said:
I am running 2 black caviar 1 TB HD's in Raid 0. I download the TLER utility to enable TLER on my drives. When the disk boots, it informs me the utility cannot recognize the controller. I am using the onboard ICH10R controller. Any ideas?
Click to expand...

Are you running the ICH10R in Raid mode? See if there is some kind of IDE compatibility mode to put it in.

Don
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top