D-Link Forums
The Graveyard - Products No Longer Supported => D-Link Storage => DNS-321 => Topic started by: D-Link Multimedia on May 07, 2010, 12:02:17 PM
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ShareCenter Users,
We regret to inform you that we can not support Western Digital’s new Desktop disk drives with Advanced Formatting Technology for use in our ShareCenter NAS devices.
WD does not recommend (and will not support) the use ANY of their Desktop disk drives in NAS devices, including their new drives with the Advanced Formatting Technology. WD has no intention of rectifying this issue for NAS support.
According to WD, even if we were to solve the issues caused by their Advanced Formatting Technology in the standard mode, these drives may still cause problems when used in RAID configurations (especially with RAID 5).
This issue is not unique to D-Link nor the ShareCenter product line but rather relates to WD’s strategy moving forward.
WD will only guarantee the compatibility of their Enterprise disk drives with NAS devices, as they are not integrated with their Advanced Formatting Technology.
As a result, we will NOT support the use of any WD disk drive with Advanced Formatting Technology.
Thank you for your understanding. Please do not hesitate to contact our team directly with any questions or concerns.
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How do I know if my WD drives use this "advanced format"? I have just bought two 1.5TB Green Caviar disks for a RAID1 configuration. I havent seen any notes regarding the format technology on the WD website during my 5min research.
Regardless of the format question, the WD harddisks seem to work fine. Would you still recommend exchanging them by other disks?
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Hi, I'm ready to buy a NAS-321 but having caught the forum posts regarding compatable SATA drives, as well as the D Link warnings about Compatability in their sales information,; I have tried and failed to find any published information on the D Link Web site except posts here in the forum.
Where can I find this list on the web site.? The link in the sales brochure says "see support". All that did was take me to the support screen. No mention of Drive Compatability. A search using various key words failed me. So what Seagate SATA or WD SATA drives, THAT ARE ON THE LIST,can I use? or how can I access the list on the D link Web Site?
Thanks!
Woody
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Hi, I'm ready to buy a NAS-321 but having caught the forum posts regarding compatable SATA drives, as well as the D Link warnings about Compatability in their sales information,; I have tried and failed to find any published information on the D Link Web site except posts here in the forum.
Where can I find this list on the web site.? The link in the sales brochure says "see support". All that did was take me to the support screen. No mention of Drive Compatability. A search using various key words failed me. So what Seagate SATA or WD SATA drives, THAT ARE ON THE LIST,can I use? or how can I access the list on the D link Web Site?
Thanks!
Woody
A good reference site for information is http://sharecenter.dlink.com.
Most if not all seagate drives are supported. WD Drives are mostly supported however drives that use Advanced Formatting, I believe the EADS models, are not supported.
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A good reference site for information is http://sharecenter.dlink.com.
Most if not all seagate drives are supported. WD Drives are mostly supported however drives that use Advanced Formatting, I believe the EADS models, are not supported.
D-L M, I believe the last 4 letters of the advanced formatting drives from WD are EARS, or at least that's what mine were. I received the drives and there were stickers on the stat bags about how to properly format them under given circumstances.
Hope this helps,
Ryder
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Frankly your position of not supporting the new 4k sector drives makes no sense from a technical standpoint and is a poor business decision.
Western Digital, as you correctly point out, does not support RAID use of ANY of their non-Enterprise drives. As far as I know, that's also true of every other major manufacturer although WD has taken this to an extreme by eliminating access to TLER. (Seagate ERC, Samsung and Hitachi CCTL). This clearly has no impact on users using your NAS products in non-RAID mode. It also hasn't stopped hordes of users from using them in RAID mode.
At some point in the future, ALL new higher capacity drives are going to be using 4k sectors. By not supporting them, you are effectively doing an End-of Life" on your current products.
I was planning on purchasing a dozen DNS-321 for field offices in August. Based on your unfortunate decision on supporting current drive technology, D-Link is no longer being considered for any new purchasers and I am warning our employees about purchasing your products for personal use.
I'd suggest you add a warning on the packaging of your existing products immediately or it's only a matter of time before you face a class action lawsuit.
I'm always amazed when a company damages itself so badly to avoid what is frankly a trivial software change. Sad...
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Updating their Linux Kernel to 2.6.31 or higher would fix it. How hard could that be?
Has anybody done a hack of these to update the OS before?
http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=5655 (http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=5655)
Linux
Linux as an operating system is a combination of a kernel, user space utilities and customized packaging provided within the "distributions" such as Ubuntu, SuSE and Redhat.
The Linux kernel has had specific support for the alternate sector sizes and offsets used by WD Advanced Format disk drives since version 2.6.31. However, distributions based on Linux 2.6.34, the latest stable version of Linux, will provide the most thorough support. Advanced Format parameters are available in the sysfs file system from this kernel version onwards. Kernel versions older than 2.6.31 will not specifically detect Advanced Format Drives, but with proper alignment the system performance will be maintained. To ensure the best performance, it is important to:
Align partitions to the internal 4KB sector boundaries of the drive.
Make sure that data writes are aligned to 4KB sector boundaries.
Partitions are created by a number of possible utilities under Linux with "fdisk" and "parted" being typical command line tools. Parted is one of the better tools and from version 2.1 onwards it includes support for aligning Advanced Format drives. Fdisk and earlier versions of Parted won't automatically align partitions but can be used manually to set up the correct partition boundaries.
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I have 2 WD20EARS drives and DNS-321 is working without issue.. it recognizes it and formatted with no complaint.. am I only lucky?
(I just opened the DNS-321 last nite and that's all I did.. i didn't even copied files there yet...)
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You haven't used them yet, so they haven't had to do an automatic recovery. You'll see when you start using them in a RAID configuration. :)
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I did a RAID 1 configuration already.. so far so good..
What problem would I see? I am a bit worry
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Typically, when it goes into the recovery cycle, one of the drives will drop out of the array and it'll be degraded.
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it's confusing.
someone said Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARS is Ok, someone said the NAS can't find the hard drive.
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Frankly your position of not supporting the new 4k sector drives makes no sense from a technical standpoint and is a poor business decision.
Western Digital, as you correctly point out, does not support RAID use of ANY of their non-Enterprise drives. As far as I know, that's also true of every other major manufacturer although WD has taken this to an extreme by eliminating access to TLER. (Seagate ERC, Samsung and Hitachi CCTL). This clearly has no impact on users using your NAS products in non-RAID mode. It also hasn't stopped hordes of users from using them in RAID mode.
At some point in the future, ALL new higher capacity drives are going to be using 4k sectors. By not supporting them, you are effectively doing an End-of Life" on your current products.
I was planning on purchasing a dozen DNS-321 for field offices in August. Based on your unfortunate decision on supporting current drive technology, D-Link is no longer being considered for any new purchasers and I am warning our employees about purchasing your products for personal use.
I'd suggest you add a warning on the packaging of your existing products immediately or it's only a matter of time before you face a class action lawsuit.
I'm always amazed when a company damages itself so badly to avoid what is frankly a trivial software change. Sad...
+1
It always seemed like the DNS-321 has been the red-headed bastard step-child in Dlink's product line. I'll be watching this development closely to see whether I will continue to support Dlink. My pocketbook is closing fast...
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I just had a WD10EADS drive go bad....in my quest to find a correct replacement, I discovered this page on WD's site -
http://support.wdc.com/product/kb.asp?groupid=608&lang=en
As you can see, the drives that end in EARS and AARS are the advance format drives....mine was a EARS unit and they are replacing it....
Hope the info helps someone else.
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I'm using (2) WD green WD7500AADS drives in my DNS-321 in a RAID-1 configuration and have had no problem with eith the configuration of the NAS or copying over 200GB of data so far. I've checked my drives for errors and so far, so good.
According to WD, for their green drives anyway, it is the model numbers that end in 'RS' or 'RSDTL' that use their advance formatting technology. So, if you have others such as I did you may still be able to use them.
Here's the link to WD's KB on their green drives, model #'s listed in the KB doc.
http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1679&p_created=&p_pv=2.294&p_prods=227%2C294
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This may be good news if you are starting with a fresh install. I have found out that advanced formatting does not work with "Legacy" operating systems, such as XP. As a workaround, advanced formatting can be turned off by installing a jumper to pins 7-8 on the hard drive. In addition, there is a software solution if you are working with an existing install. http://www.wdc.com/en/products/advancedformat/
It stands to reason that this would also provide proper functionality for the DNS-321.
This problem is not limited to D-Link, as this solution was cross checked through anouther brand of network server. Will be trying this out later this week when the parts arrive.
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I've been called out twice for not posting results, so here it goes...On a fresh install, I have not noticed any ill effects on a WD Green drive with the jumpers set to 7-8. We're configured for RAID 1 and have a fairly large iTunes library that is stored on our DNS-321. As a test, I noted the amount of songs in the library, ejected one of the drives, added a couple of songs and then reinstalled the drive. After a lengthy rebuild, I went back and checked the song count and found that it matched. Then I exported the library to flush out any broken links and found none.
The only down side is that using the jumper setting caused the first HD sector to not be used, which is to be expected. It causes a minor loss of total storage space.
Also to be noted, this problem is being experienced by all NAS manufacturers, not just D-Link. Disk that use advanced formatting are not meant to be used as a mirrored set in a NAS. (unless you use jumpers)
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is it correct to say that for WD Green EARS AFT hdd to work with RAID 1 setting, as long as pins 7-8 are jumpered, the hdd will emulate as 512 sector size and can be used as normal non-AFT hdd?
I've been called out twice for not posting results, so here it goes...On a fresh install, I have not noticed any ill effects on a WD Green drive with the jumpers set to 7-8. We're configured for RAID 1 and have a fairly large iTunes library that is stored on our DNS-321. As a test, I noted the amount of songs in the library, ejected one of the drives, added a couple of songs and then reinstalled the drive. After a lengthy rebuild, I went back and checked the song count and found that it matched. Then I exported the library to flush out any broken links and found none.
The only down side is that using the jumper setting caused the first HD sector to not be used, which is to be expected. It causes a minor loss of total storage space.
Also to be noted, this problem is being experienced by all NAS manufacturers, not just D-Link. Disk that use advanced formatting are not meant to be used as a mirrored set in a NAS. (unless you use jumpers)
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People here are mixing two separate issues into one.
Issue 1: Advanced format (4k sectors)
All new models of hard drives that will come out will be Advanced format, it's a necessity in order to support the high capacities that are coming now and in the future.
Currently all AF drives support emulating 512Byte sectors for operating systems that don't support 4k sectors. WD using jumpers, Samsung does it automatically.
The only problem this is causing is performance drop when writing to the disk. This drop is not a problem for the current generation of D-Link NAS'es. They are limited by their CPU to much lower write speeds.
This issue has no influence on whether a disk is suitable for RAID or not.
Issue 2: Desktop drives not supported in RAID
All disk manufacturers have a separate line of disks that are supported for use in RAID configuration. These drives have the fabled TLER, ERC, CCTL enabled, and may be manufactured to better standards (nobody knows). Where I live they cost more than double what the desktop drives cost, so it's not strange that I will try to use a desktop drive in my home setup.
It's also not strange that the disk manufacturers will say that their desktop drives are not supported in RAID arrays. They want the higher profit margin from their professional customers. If desktop drives had TLER and was working fine in RAID arrays for home users then their pro customers might try them as well (since nobody knows if there really is any hardware difference between pro/raid disks and desktop disks)
So what's the problem?
When a desktop HDD encounter an error when reading/writing it will keep trying for a considerable time, and will then try to reallocate the sector to another place on the disk. If it succeeds there will be no error for me as a PC user, I will not be aware that anything happened.
High performance professional hardware RAID controllers don't want any of that.
If a read/write error occurs the RAID controller wants to handle that. It can recreate the bad sector from the other disks in the array, and will reallocate it without help from the disk.
The delay that the desktop drive does when correcting the error can instead cause the RAID controller to remove the disk from the array, as it thinks the disk has died.
Home NAS'es like the D-Link ones don't have to behave like the pro hardware controllers. The D-Links do RAID in software, and we users have other priorities than lightning quick error recovery. I would rather wait a minute while the NAS is fixing a read error than have the RAID array degraded.
I hope the software developers behind my D-Link NAS have adapted the RAID software to account for the behaviour of desktop drives. It would be stupid not to, but I don't know if they do...
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I have a situation where I have the DNS-321 with two 2tb WD20EADS-00S2B0 drives in a Raid 1 configuration. everything was fine until one drive failed and will not pass the quick or extended diagnostics. The drives are still under warranty so I put in for a replacement from WD.
However, even thought I called and specifically asked them to ship another WD20EADS drive they are shipping the WD20EARS drive (it is truly amazing to me that even though you call a company an explain your issue, they don't listen).
Can anyone please advise me on how to proceed, will the use of the jumper allow these two different drives to work together?
Thanks
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bought 2 Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARS , $79.00 each.. been working fine.. The only thing I have seen is my xfer rates max out at 14MB per sec.. but in these forums, Ive seen alot of xfer rates in that range on a gig network.. I am running a raid 0..
found this on WD website about the green drives..
Desktop / Consumer RAID Environments - WD Caviar Green Hard Drives are tested and recommended for use in consumer-type RAID applications (RAID-0 /
RAID-1)
sooooo what is the anwser?? heck if I know.. Ive had mine about 2 months in the raid 0
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We have installed 9 DNS-321 units for various clients with WD Advanced Format Tech green drives. Three of the units have failed causing a total loss of all data, and we have lost two valuable clients forever with serious damage to our business reputation. We are in the process of replacing the drives in the remaining units, at our own expense, before they fail.
Needless to say, we couldn't be more ticked-off!! The literature we relied on assured us that ALL WD GREEN DRIVES were compatible... (there is STILL literature on D-Link's website that implies all WD GREEN DRIVES are compatible) then after 30+ man-hours of trying to diagnose these problems and salvage lost data, we stumble upon this forum thread! WHY isn't this information distributed better??? Unacceptable!
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bought 2 Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARS , $79.00 each.. been working fine.. The only thing I have seen is my xfer rates max out at 14MB per sec.. but in these forums, Ive seen alot of xfer rates in that range on a gig network.. I am running a raid 0..
found this on WD website about the green drives..
Desktop / Consumer RAID Environments - WD Caviar Green Hard Drives are tested and recommended for use in consumer-type RAID applications (RAID-0 /
RAID-1)
sooooo what is the anwser?? heck if I know.. Ive had mine about 2 months in the raid 0
my prediction Doogie, from our experience.... your WD20EARS's will continue to work.... until they experience a minor problem... then all your data you think that is backed up by RAID format will be gone...