New Western Digital EARS series drives - Bubba2 compatibile?

[jonj1]

I'm thinking of getting a larger HDD for my bubba2, and looking on Amazon there is a new line of WD Green drives - the WD??EARS series, eg.
http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-I ... 002ZCXJZE/

The customer reviews raise an important issue, which is the new "WD Advanced Format technology" appears to be causing a headache for WinXP users and someone with a linux DirectTV box. The new format is a move from 512b sector size to 4kb sectors size, since the previous WD??EADS series, which I think shiped with bubba2. Does anyone know if bubba2 is fine with 4kb sector sizes?

thanks,
Jon

[RandomUsername]

Support for the new format HDDs has been in the Linux kernel since September last year. I've actually no idea what version of the kernel the B2 is running and I'm not near mine to check but that should give you something to go on - source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8557144.stm

[jonj1]

My bubba2 is fully updated and running kernel 2.6.32.6, released in December 09, so 4k sector support should be there (probably since 2.6.31). Thanks for the starting point,

Jon

[jallee]

Hi!
I have also ordered a EARS disk from WD.
So now to my question, can the Bubba installer do a 8-sector alignment of the partitions at a new installation?
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux ... h-LX#tools
Or do I do this manually via the command line before the installation?

[jonj1]

I finally got one of these drives - WD20EARS - and the B2 installation went fine. Looking good so far.

[Ubi]

wasn't there some issue with these Green drives in Unix machines having to spin up and down too much because of some mis-timing of the sleep mode and log files being written every so-many seconds. There's a thread about it in this forum somewhere.
(Disclaimer: the above could also be complete nonsense)

[RandomUsername]

@Ubi, Thread is here - http://forum.excito.net/viewtopic.php?f ... 105#p10126

Specifically, see this post - http://forum.excito.net/viewtopic.php?f ... 105#p10126 - WD don't see it as an issue and will honour any warranties regardless of the LCC.

[Ubi]

thanks!

I know WD may be gentle with this, but if the drive dies your problem is your loss of data, as I guess few folk have the ability to backup 2TB of data.

[RandomUsername]

True. But to quote them:

this should not affect the drive's performance or longevity.

Anyway, drives can go south for any number of other reasons. That's why backups are soooooooo important.

[Ubi]

If it doesn't affect anything then why did WD say that their green disks are designed for max 300000 of these Load Cycles (at least that's what I thought the original issue was about)?

[RandomUsername]

If it doesn't affect anything then why did WD say that their green disks are designed for max 300000 of these Load Cycles (at least that's what I thought the original issue was about)?

That I don't know. I've not heard that. Either way, I've got their rep on record stating they'd honour the warranty so there's not much they can do about it.

[razor1394]

I use a new WD20EARS on my Bubba TWO and it works fine but I had some trouble getting the install going in the beginning. And the old 1TB drive was also sitting almost rock hard in the case. It was very troublesome removing it. The thermal compound wasn't properly attached to the sides either so I had to realign it on the new drive.

This is how my smart looks like:

@bubba:~$ sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda
smartctl version 5.38 [powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-8 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model: WDC WD20EARS-00MVWB0
Serial Number: *REMOVED*
Firmware Version: 51.0AB51
User Capacity: 2,000,398,934,016 bytes
Device is: Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is: 8
ATA Standard is: Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is: Sat Feb 26 17:15:23 2011 CET
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status: (0x84) Offline data collection activity
was suspended by an interrupting command from host.
Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.
Self-test execution status: ( 0) The previous self-test routine completed
without error or no self-test has ever
been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection: (35760) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
Suspend Offline collection upon new
command.
Offline surface scan supported.
Self-test supported.
Conveyance Self-test supported.
Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities: (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
power-saving mode.
Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability: (0x01) Error logging supported.
General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 255) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 5) minutes.
SCT capabilities: (0x3035) SCT Status supported.
SCT Feature Control supported.
SCT Data Table supported.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f 200 200 051 Pre-fail Always - 0
3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0027 232 232 021 Pre-fail Always - 3400
4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 20
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 200 200 140 Pre-fail Always - 0
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x002e 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 1124
10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0
11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 13
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 10
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 168 168 000 Old_age Always - 97340
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 115 114 000 Old_age Always - 35
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0030 200 200 000 Old_age Offline - 0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0008 200 200 000 Old_age Offline - 0

SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
No self-tests have been logged. [To run self-tests, use: smartctl -t]


SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
SPAN MIN_LBA MAX_LBA CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
1 0 0 Not_testing
2 0 0 Not_testing
3 0 0 Not_testing
4 0 0 Not_testing
5 0 0 Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.