WD 500GB SATA 3.0 HD $171 Shipped ZZF 5yr warranty

Western Digital RE2 WD5000YS 500GB Serial ATA 3.0
$170.90 shipped
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=101258-9

Keep in mind this is the RE2, not the SE16. They are essentially the same drive, performance, noise, power consumption, with a few small variations.

The most important difference for this forum is the RE2 has what is called TLER, or time-limited error recovery, which essentially turns off error correction within the drive so the RAID controller can do it and so a slowly responding drive due to its own error correction does not get dropped from an array.

UPDATE: I contacted WD and they emailed me a utility to disable TLER, though it requires booting off a floppy to do so.. Get this drive instead of the SE16!

This is important because if you get this drive for anything other than a fault tolerant RAID setup(RAID 5), you'll need to disable TLER, as you will want error correction. If you use it for RAID 0 you'll still want to disable TLER afaik. Not sure about RAID 1, maybe someone can clear that up.

Oh, it comes with a 5 year warranty, not 3 years like the SE16

Price per Gb is still above 300-400Gb drives on sale, if only by a hair. But, if you must have the biggest WD...

I'll wait for these babies to be @ $100 and I'll buy 4 for my Jukebox

Interesting comment regarding running the RE2 as standalone drive (not in RAID). Read Isochroma's comments in the following thread:

http://forums.storagereview.net/index.php?showtopic=20980&pid=228371&st=75

***Update: Find this WD Caviar RE2 500GB one at CHIEFPICK.COM for $161.00 A/C
Coupon Code: fest2006

Happy HuntingWDC RE2 WD5000YS shipped

UPDATE: I contacted WD and they emailed me a utility to disable TLER, though it requires booting off a floppy to do so.. Get this drive instead of the SE16!

FastEddieG said: Rundiikadost said: I'll wait for these babies to be @ $100 and I'll buy 4 for my Jukebox

These drives are in an entirely different class than standard SATA drives. These are built to last. Definitely a HOT deal - picking up 3 now.

Thanks OP!
-Ed

so is WD like back with a Vengeance? ie. is this the drive we would want to get for maximum reliability?

previously i was going with Seagate, but have actually been a bit disappointed because of a failure with my 7200.8. i was sent a refurb 7200.9 as a replacement, but it also failed (within a week).

i am now using the latest replacement refurb 7200.9 along side another 7200.9 that i've had for about a year and a half (with no probs). so, both of my 7200.9's seem to be running OK now, although both make a clinking sound every time i shut my puter off.

nice thing about the Seagates has always been the 5yr warranty, but if these new WD's are more reliable and have a 5yr warranty as well, i'd be more than open to jumping ship.

jolo said:
nice thing about the Seagates has always been the 5yr warranty, but if these new WD's are more reliable and have a 5yr warranty as well, i'd be more than open to jumping ship.
Reportedly it's a WD site misprint...may have to call them up after registering(& receiving 3Y-warranty only)& TRY to get an adjustment...

jnmunsey said: UPDATE: I contacted WD and they emailed me a utility to disable TLER, though it requires booting off a floppy to do so.. Get this drive instead of the SE16!

So can you please share this utility with us? I tried emailing wd also, and they told me no such utility existed, but that using them in a non-raid should be fine, and if i was really worried just to always keep a backup of my data.... how sweet I want to buy a new big drive, but don't want to buy the RE2 if that feature can't be disabled really want to get the RE2 for all the other benefits, but damn this TLER feature

docinthebox said: ParadoxSeven said: jnmunsey said: UPDATE: I contacted WD and they emailed me a utility to disable TLER, though it requires booting off a floppy to do so.. Get this drive instead of the SE16!

So can you please share this utility with us? I tried emailing wd also, and they told me no such utility existed, but that using them in a non-raid should be fine, and if i was really worried just to always keep a backup of my data.... how sweet I want to buy a new big drive, but don't want to buy the RE2 if that feature can't be disabled really want to get the RE2 for all the other benefits, but damn this TLER feature

Did you write to them from here or here? (so that I can try the other link) Thanks!


First one the http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/ask.php is the one i asked the question on. If you try the other link, let me know what happens.

EDIT: I just looked at your second link closer, and that isn't a ask wd a question, that is a send this page to a friend link...

Can we attached files here? I'm not going to host it on my server for long.

http://70.120.178.168/wd/WDTLER.zip

Please do not linkify.

Message from WD:

Thank you for your reply.

Attached is the WD TLER Utility. You’ll need to perform the following steps to disable TLER on our SATA drives.

1.Create a DOS-bootable floppy

Title: Create an MS-DOS Startup Disk
URL: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/learnmore/tips/renken1.mspx

2.Unzip the contents of “WDTLER.zip” to the boot floppy
3.Insert the boot floppy into the computer with the WD SATA drives
4.Boot the computer off the floppy
5.At the DOS prompt, type “TLER-OFF” and press ENTER
6.Wait for the program to finish and then remove the boot floppy
7.Restart the computer with the WD SATA drives


Please let us know if we can be of further assistance.

Western Digital Service and Support
http://support.wdc.com

I have not tried it and I may not since my drives will be in a RAID 1 setup, but trying to verify if TLER should be on or off when doing RAID 1 on an NForce4 for AMD.

jnmunsey, thanks for the download. I wrote WD earlier and got a response today after waiting for 4 days. They're saying that "The TLER feature is built into the drive and it cannot be disabled." The support guy wrote a big paragraph explaining to me what TLER means. Basically he's saying that Enterprise edition drives should only be used in RAID config, and Desktop edition drives should be used in non-RAID configs.

It seems that for some reason, WD does not want the RE2 drives to be sold to people who would turn off TLER. Maybe it's because SE drives only carry 3 year warranty and sell for about the same price so they figure SE drives require less support and would be more profitable that way? I dunno.

Anyway, I unzipped the WDTLER.zip file, and glanced through the files. One thing that's interesting is that the DOS script specifies HDAccess.exe to be run first. But if you use notepad to look into HDAccess.exe, apparently it's a utility written by 3Ware. If you google this filename, this HDAccess.exe seems to be used to update WD drives connected to a 3Ware RAID controller. So I don't know if HDAccess needs to be run first. Or should we just run WDTLER.exe directly if the drive is not hooked up to a RAID controller?

Here's the help screen for wdtler:

F:\\WD_TLER\\WDTLER>wdtler /?
WDTLER Version 1.03
Copyright (C) 2004-2006 Western Digital Corporation
Western Digital Time Limit Error Recovery Utility
Using DT32.LIB version 08A

Syntax:
WDTLER [-R<time>] [-W<time>] [-?]
Parameters:
-R<time> Set read TLER seconds. Use 0 to disable.
-W<time> Set write TLER seconds. Use 0 to disable.

/? This help screen.

Apparently, to turn on TLER, you run it with -R7 and -W7. To turn it off, you run with -R0 and -W0. Then there's a mode called scan where you run it with no argument. I think scan may be the mode you're looking for where you can find out whether TLER is on or off. That would be my guess.

http://rapidshare.com/files/2821776/WDTLER.zip.html

sketch50 said: Has anyone successfully used this utility to disable TLER on the WD5000YS?

This utility looks to be pretty straight forward. The only reason I can see WD giving you a hard time about actually getting the tool is that it makes it all so easy to get the 5 year warranty.

AuricG said: Thanks for the TLER Utility.

Note that while the "On" batch sets both Read & Write to 7 seconds, the factory setting is actually r7 & w0 (write disabled).

So, if for normal use you choose to disable both (or more accurately disable Read and leave Write disabled) then later want to configure for RAID use, be sure to then set Write appropriately rather than blindly enabling it.

AuricG, did you have to run HDAccess.exe first, or did you just run WDTLER.exe?

Okay, I finally used wdtler to turn off TLER on my WD5000YS and it worked fine. Used the command "wdtler -r0" as AuricG suggested. Thanks to Jnmunsey for posting it.

DCAC said: Any way to run that utility off a bootable USB thumb drive?

First, make your USB drive bootable by following these instructions. Then copy the WDTLER.exe program file to the USB drive.

Is the 5 year warranty legit? Not that I'm likely to keep a drive for that long but I guess it would be good to have just in case. The Caviar version is $169 so I'm probably just going to get a couple of those.

found it