WD EARS Drives
Not long ago Western Digital released the EARS series drive to the market. All models contain 64MB of cache and came from the factory with a 4k sector size referred to as “Advanced Format”. The issue is that out of the box, only Windows Vista, Server 2008, and Windows 7 work with Advanced Format while XP and Server 2003 do not. To make things even more interesting, it is expected that most if not all drives will be released with this format from all major manufacturers by end of 2011. As expected many users bought these drives for their WHS servers as well as their XP machines and performance problems started showing up everywhere. Dozens of threads were started and the word got around. Many people stayed away from these units concerned about compatibility issues and worried about severe performance degradation which is what happens when these drives are not setup correctly on older operating systems. There have been many test reviews done on these drives on various types of operating systems, however I could not find much information directly related to WHS/2003 and whether or not they would actually work together. I wanted to validate that when setup correctly, these drives would work with WHS and give the performance they were intended to.
Setting up the drive
When you first get your drive the first thing that stands out is a warning label of sorts which is attached to the ESD bag, as well as printed directly on the label of the drive itself. The instructions are somewhat unclear and a bit intimidating the first time you look at them as it does not directly refer to server 2003 or WHS in their instructions. What it boils down to is that you cannot use the drive as is. You have to either re-align the drive using a WD align program from their web site, or install a jumper on pins 7 and 8 “PRIOR” to adding the drive to your WHS. There are a couple more ways of aligning the drive that are listed on the WD web site. However they do not supported so I did not even attempt them for this review. As for the two recommended options, you can use the WD align program (it should not be used while the drive is attached to the pool) or use a jumper on pins 7 and 8. If you clone another drive onto this drive (for a client PC) you cannot use the jumper and you “must” use the WD Align software. Also, if you use these drives on a desktop with multiple partitions then you “cannot” use the jumpers and you must use the WD Align software. The jumpers are strictly for a single partition use which applies to all WHS “pool” drives but not the OS drive. For WHS users, the easiest and safest way is to simply jumper pins 7 and 8 (WD does not supply a jumper so you will have to find one somewhere) prior to installing the drive in your server then you can simply add it to the pool with very little effort. It is a hardware hack that provides an offset but it does work effectively on a single partition and it does resolve the performance issue. WARNING! Once you install the jumper and add data, it must remain there or your drive will not be able to read the data. This is not usually a problem for WHS users as we go through a removal process when taking out a drive in which case there is no data on the drive.
Test methods
In order to ensure that results where not skewed by native support from Windows 7, I tried to replicate actual use and ran all my benchmarks using one of my WHS servers. I first installed the jumper onto the drive, installed it into my WHS server and added it to the storage pool. Once it was added and ready to accept data, I removed it from the pool so that it would be a stand alone drive in the system and ran all my benchmarks from within WHS. For comparison, I repeated the same procedure on an older EACS drive so that I could compare the results and determine if there was going to be a performance problem. I also added the results from a 300 Gig VelociRaptor for comparison as it is one of the fastest mechanical drives sold today.
Results
I used HD Tach as my benchmark mainly to avoid having to install unnecessary software and drivers onto my WHS. In addition, historically it has done a pretty good job of indicating performance variations between devices. As you can see from the charts below, the EARS out performs the older EACS model by about 10% on read performance and both perform equally in burst mode. There certainly is not any performance degradation when the drive is setup correctly. Performance matches what you would expect from this type of drive.
Conclusion
Given that you follow the precautions and understand how to prepare the drive, I believe that these drives will perform equal to or better than similar non-EARS drives. I think the drives got some initial bad press in that they where installed in systems without the proper preparation or configuration severely degrading there performance. Ultimately, most drives will be in this configuration in the near future, but hopefully direct support for the Advanced Format will be implemented in the next release of WHS negating the need for aligning utilities or jumpers. Until then, If you do pick one up make sure that you set it up correctly and you will be quite happy with it.
EARS Results
EACS Results
300 Gig VelociRaptor (for comparison)
After testing, drive is installed in its new home in my main server
Check the homeservershow.com forums for more discussion on EARS drives.
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Category: BYOB Hardware, Home Server Storage, Review, Windows Home Server
[...] WD EARS Drives : Home Server Sһοw [...]
Great Post!
Very informative!
I have been looking at the new WD 2TB drive to add to my WHS pool. I new there was some controversy out there on them, so I backed off. Thanks for the explanation.
Thanks for Article.
I have a question. I purchased 2 WD15EARS drives about 2 months ago and took them out of their boxes and installed them directly into a new WHS. I did not do any of the things that you mentioned and didn't have any problems. There have been a few times where I have had performance issues.
If I do what you mentioned above will I get better performance. Also, what happens if I shut down the server, take out one of the drives, put on the jumper, and put the drive back into the server. Do I lose all of the data on the drive? If I set up duplication on all of my folders then take out one of the drives and set the jumper and put it back in will all of my data be safe?
Thanks
[...] The guys test the drive and report its results which you can find here. [...]
So what do you need to do to use one of these drives as your OS drive? Just use the jumper or perform the alignment (on another machine) prior to installing the WHS OS?
As I stated in the article DO NOT add the jumper if data is on the drive you will loose what is on that drive. Do a reomove drive process which will move all the data off, then remove the drive, add the jumper, and re-install in the system. Alternatively, after the drive is reomoved, you can run the utility to re-align the drive and re-install. What you experienced is exactly what others did. Works, but very low performance. At times 3-4x slower. Thanks for the comment.
Thanks for this information. I did a rebuild of my WHS several months ago with a 2TB EARS drive as the system drive. I’ve been pulling my hair out ever since trying to figure out what was going on!
Would it be safe for me to run WDAlign on my system drive? Or will I need to remove all the data first and do another reinstall?
psprowls,
It is not recommended to use WD align on any drive while in the pool. You could remove physically and install it on antoher machine and run the align program however there is a risk so I would back up my data first before you try it.
RamHawk,
Multi parttion like the OS you must us the alignment program. The jumper is for single partition only.
@pcdoc: Thanks!
Since I have a brand new HP EX490, I’m going to pull the OEM 1TB drive, install brand new WD20EARS as primary drive, then install the OS (WHS). At first chance I can, pull the drive and connect to Win7 machine and run the WD align tool; no jumper on the drive throughout this whole process. Once that is done, it should be good to go back in my EX490 and never look back. I’ll then install a 2nd WD20EARS into the unit/pool. I’ll add the jumper to pins 7-8 and nothing else should need to be done… Same thing to the 3rd and 4th drive if I get more EARS drives.
RamHawk,
You are correct. My suggestion though is to leave your OS drive alone and just add/replace the storage drives. The OS drive is not used by WHS unless all the other drives are full or if you have folder duplication on with only two drives in your system. Although you are correct, my advice is add two or three for the storage pool only and leave the OS drive as it will not buy you much.
Good luck.
[...] Western Digital EARS Drives [...]
[...] Western Digital EARS Drives [...]
[...] Western Digital EARS Drives [...]
I am building a Home Media Server with WHS
I am going to use a Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD4 motherboard with on board raid set up as RAID 5 using 6 x WD20EARS drives.
Do I need to leave the drives unchanged, set the jumper or plug each drive into a PC and run WD Align on them before installing into the server?
Thanks in advance,
Doug
darcher,
I really would not recommend any raid configuration on WHS as it is not officially supported by WHS. It is better to use the folder duplication as required rather than adding the complication of RAID. Some have had success with it but most (including me) have regretted there decision and ended up going back to a standard configuration as WHS in RAID bypasses much of the functionality provided by WHS. If you use raid, you will not be able to use some of the key features such as duplication. As for you question, WD does not specifically address a raid configuration in there documentation. In my understanding of the issue, I would use WD align "INSTEAD" of the jumper to avoid problems in the RAID configuration. I have experimented with various configurations but do have experience with EARS in RAID so I would definitely approach this with caution. Good luck with your build and I still encourage you to reconsider your thoughts on RAID in WHS. I have 12 drives in one server and gain the flexibility of protecting what I need to with none of the side effects of using RAID, specifically when doing a re-install if you software get corrupted.
Thanks for the comment.
Mike
Thanks for the responce pcdoc.
I am intending to put a 500GB wdblack as the system drive & the 6 x 2TB drives as a RAID 5 10TB usable data drive.
Are there any issues using Gigabyte MB raid with WHS?
Thanks again,
Doug
Do these instructions apply if you use the WD EAR drives in an attached enclosure (e.g. Sans Digital TR5UT-B). I am using the external enclosure to provide a backup drive for my WHS shares. Not clear to me since the TR5UT is a RAID enclosure if WHS really knows anything about the drives.
Thanks
socialavatar,
Absolutely unless you are running it on Vista or Windows 7. If this is used on WHS or XP then yes.
well, I took my system drive out put it into another machine and ran WDAlign on it. 4 days later it finished, I put it back into the WHS and it failed to boot. I was also unable to remove anything off the drive after WDAlign had been run.
Your mileage may vary
Thank you PcDoc for taking the time to test the new EARS features for us. So many have installed these in their WHS without knowing of the 4k sectors or about the jumper settings.
This saves a lot of readers the time and pain of installing the drives wrong.
Thanks for taking the time to do this article. Just last week I bought a WD EARS 1.5TB drive unaware of this problem. Luckily I read this before getting around to putting it in my server. I'm going to hunt around for a jumper now.
Rich,
I am glad you visited the homeservershow and that you found the article helpful. I have received allot of feedback on this article and I appreciate you taking the time to comment. Please let us know of your results.
Mike
PS: One great place to find old jumpers is off of old hard drives as the old IDE drives all came with them as well as CD ROM units. Really wish they would have included a jumper with the drive. Good luck.
I know it’s been a while since the last comment pcdoc, so I wanted to post to let you know the article is still valuable. I have a WD15EARS-00Z5B1 in my WHS pool right now, but I never did any kind of alignment or jumpering on it. It also did NOT come with a warning sticker on it like the newer ones do.
Although I haven’t noticed any particular performance issues with my H340, I remoted in to my H340 from work and started a remove process on the WD, When I get home I will take it out and jumper it.
I figure I should be able to just add it back to the pool because the process should reformat the drive anyway. Do you see any issues with that?
I am hoping you can answer this Question as Adaptec and WD have not been able to …
I have an Adaptec 5085 Raid Card
would I have to use the jumper setting to use the WD20EARS Drive with this card ( as the array keeps failing me ) depending on what settings i use for stripe size an quick format can take seconds to .. days to complete ..I thought I found an good combination .. untill I lost 16 TB Worth of data after a week of it running .. Currently recovering … happened the day I shiped of the old array HDD’s on Ebay .. and i had ran 2 Checks during that week making sure it was 100% :S
or Align Partitions with the software ( tho i am not sure if the tool can be used to partition an logical drive in raid array ) .. or just keep playing with the stripe size / windows format cluster size combinations ?
Currently tinkering with the 3 spare drives I have here .. of cause you don’t find this stuff out until something goes wrong .. didn’t even know about the 4k sector stuff .. and neither did the Raid Recovery Experts …
If I understand correctly than yes. The issue with these drives is the operating system not the hardware or the drivers. You will have to use the jumpers. Personally I would not use these drives in an array on a raid controller. Just the storage pool using the jumper. If you want to try than make sure you have a backup and use the jumpers. I do not think the align works well in Raid.
Good Luck.
Update: I added a jumper to my WD EARS 1.5TB drive and added it to my WHS storage pool succesfully. It's been running ok for 4 weeks now and I haven't noticed any issues with the drive.
Well it took 3 mnths to recover the data , seems to be all their apart from 10% of it going by the 3 x HDD’s ( that where shipped back to me after pleading
) that I used to copy back data from original Drives to crc check ( how ever I did notice these particular missing files elswhere in the recovery backup so unsure if i Dupe Deleted them before crash or recovery program stuffed up their locations 
)
any how for take 2 I used 2008 server instead of 2003 server .. quick format was instant .. and formate was only a few hrs … tinkered some more and i could not get them to run as slow as 2003 server had them going as ( i guess i should have droped back to 2003 and did a re test just incase the BIOS update helped )
any how I have them back in an array jumperless … currently having them doing an expantion / reconfiguartion after adding the drives I used for data recovery into the array pool eta a few months … been a day and still not 1%
fingers crossed they do not fail me
another thing I did was remove the 8 sec IDLE head WD had on these drives
google wdidle3.zip
still got me how an OS can affect the 4k sector start on an Raid array …
[...] Western Digital EARS Drives [...]
a few weeks allready i have problems with my x510. the complaints are most of a kind it will disturb my network, and it will be non responsive to logging in.
i have rebooted the x510 several times, and that worked…. until yesterday. since it is showing a blinking health light, no hdd lights. i have 1 system disk (ST31000528AS) and a 1Tb WD EARS.
after reading several articles i came to this and it is very interesting. most off all i have no jumper inserted, and also did not do the caalibration on the EARS disk.
i have pulled it out, and now my x510 has rebooted, i can log into it with rdp and the client software. at this moment i hear a lot of rumbling from the system disk, and it is telling in the server storage tab:
system disk (bay 1) healthy, EARS (bay 2) missing. also now calculating space.
well so far the story, now my questions, or how i think i can solve my problems.
first off all let the calculating of the free space run until it is finished.
i had folderduplicating marked, so does this mean that hopefully all my data will be still there?? (i have a weekly backup to a NAS, so i won’t loose all)
then we have the EARS. i understand using the jumper option deletes all the data. i have attached it to an usb interface, and i can see my maps and files. but it was all very slowly. if i use the WD tool for alignment, will the data be gone??
well i think it will be the only option for me, because if i stick the EARS in the X510, it won’t boot.
so hopefully with the alignment it will work.
i must say that the x510 was also sometimes very slow.
ok one more remark. i also understand from above it is better to fill bays 2 and 3, so duplication will not be used on bay 1. but when i insert bay 2 and 3, wil the duplicated data then be moved from the first bay, or can i delete it myself.
or just start from scratch??
hopfully somebody can understand anything i wrote, but hopefully somebody can advise me
rgds
Patrick
A little late to the party I Know. But I have a question about my EARS drive.
I bought a WD EARS drive several months ago for my WHS. I ran the WD Align Tool on the drive and used it as my System drive. It worked fine but was a lot of wasted storage space. I have now bought a 500 GB drive and pulled the EARS drive, installed the 500 GB as SYS drive. I now plan to use the EARS drive as a storage drive in my WHS. Will I need to use the jumper when I put the drive in? Should I format the drive on a WIN 7 machine before installing into WHS? Or will I just add it to the pool and let WHS format and take care of the drive since I have already ran the WD Align tool on it?