Can WD RED 2tb be succesfully patched with wdtler tool?

Kozak · 19 Feb 2013 at 17:50

HI there,

I was just wondering.

Did anyone succesfully patch their WD RED 2tb drive to have TLER disabled with the wdtler tool?
Just wondering bc WD is scaring people saying it could render the disk's firmware useless on "newer" drives. But whats newer?
(source wikipedia).

Mine's from september 28 2012

Thanks

Kozak · 20 Feb 2013 at 12:34

Anyone?

bremen1874 · 21 Feb 2013 at 02:44

I don't know the answer, but why would you want to disable TLER?

zakblood · 21 Feb 2013 at 07:35

Time-Limited Error Recovery is used for the good of a drive and raid array, same as Error Recovery Control, plus Command Completion Time Limit

what would be the usefulness of not having it on?

if you say none raid, then why have this drive?

found this, but still didn't see the point,

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/292441-14-wdtler-disable-tler-western-digital

The Wikipedia page said that WD warns that it can break a drive.

so to final the point, if you want it off, sell it and buy the right drive, eg single go black, raid go red, mission critical go blue, normal / power saving low spin go green

Kozak · 21 Feb 2013 at 11:54

When I bought it i didn't know about the tler on this drive. Selling it would mean a price loss. The wd green drives had bad reviews on breaking down. My trusty samsung f drives are now made by seagate which also has a bad rep. Supposedly seagate barracuda rebranded to samsung f4. See newegg reviews.
That is why.
Hope you can see the point now.

bremen1874 · 21 Feb 2013 at 11:59

But why don't you want TLER?

There's no serious downside to having enabled that I'm aware of.

Kozak · 21 Feb 2013 at 15:43

bremen1874 said:
But why don't you want TLER?

There's no serious downside to having enabled that I'm aware of.

Godjeezus for ****s sake thas why wd has this feature totally disabled on their desktop line right? If it could not have an impact for desktop use why disable it ? Might as well couldve just set it to on for all wd drives right ?

Let people decide whether they want this feature or set to whatever time

Sin_Chase · 21 Feb 2013 at 15:48

There are VERY serious downsides to TLER. It is a nightmare if you want to RAID driver. If it stalls the drive for too long the RAID controller will see this as an unrecoverable error and drop the drive from the RAID array. You then possibly have TOTAL data loss on RAID-0 stripe or are forced to wait for a forced rebuild on 1, 5 etc. Ideally you want TLER configured so the RAID controller will do what it is designed to do.

The 'RAID Certified' disks are often just regular consumer disks with TLER tweaked to a value that sits within the threshold of RAID controllers.

Being able to manually tweak it with tools/firmware means you can spend FAR FAR less on disks that are suitable for use in a RAID array. Disk manufacturers got wind of this and started blocking the usage of said tools and modification of TLER values, basically forcing you to run the risk of HDDs dropping from your RAID arrays or spending more on 'Raid Certified' disks that would not.

We are consumers who want consumer grade RAID arrays and normal desktop disks are fine for that, with modified TLER values. We do not want to pay enterprise price premiums for certified disks in a consumer grade RAID array on consumer grade RAID controllers.

beavis · 21 Feb 2013 at 15:59

Sin_Chase said:
There are VERY serious downsides to TLER. It is a nightmare if you want to RAID drivers. It stalls the drive for too long and the RAID controller will see this as an unrecoverable error and drop the drive from the RAID array.

Unless I've misunderstood, TLER limits the time (hence the TL) that a drive is able to try and correct an error. This prevents it being dropped from the array, rather than causes it. I'd imagine you want TLER for RAID drives.

Sin_Chase · 21 Feb 2013 at 16:02

beavis said:
Unless I've misunderstood, TLER limits the time (hence the TL) that a drive is able to try and correct an error. This prevents it being dropped from the array, rather than causes it. I'd imagine you want TLER for RAID drives.

In a RAID array it is the job of the controller to do this, NOT the HDD.

A TLER value of 7 seconds might see the RAID controller drop the drive before it completes.

Perhaps a rephrase of what I have posted would clear things up. Manufacturers are blocking modification of TLER and only putting it/allowing it on certified disks.

Locked TLER values can cause nightmares in RAID applications on non certified disks.

beavis · 21 Feb 2013 at 16:17

I thought the whole problem with WD desktop drives was them removing TLER, so an error could take minutes to correct, which certainly will drop them from the array. I don't know if the red has TLER, I know that the other flavours certainly don't.

From wikipedia:

Generally, Western Digital enterprise drives such as Raptor, Caviar RE2 and RE2-GP (RAID Edition) come with TLER Read "Enabled" (7 seconds) and TLER Write "Disabled" (0 seconds) while desktop drives such as Caviar SE, SE16, and GP come with TLER Read and Write Disabled (0 seconds).