WD10EADS Advanced Format???

Forum History General Discussion
1

Just a heads up for those that might care. I put a WD10EADS that I’ve have for at least a year into a Linux server to play with a Raid 5 setup. When I formatted it I got Advanced Format performance warnings and telling me to repartition. I thought the formatter was nuts until I did an hdparm and really looked at it.

Drobos with current FW don’t care but in my case I at least like to know which drives might not play well with my XP machine, even if I buy them for the Drobo. My old Drobo drives live on in another life but this one will have to live on with my Win7 server, I guess :frowning:

I wonder if they’ve done that with the higher cap EADS drives since some people pay extra now to avoid the 4K sector issues.

Noter the Physical Sector size below…

[code]neil@ANTECUBSV:/mnt$ sudo hdparm -I /dev/sdd

/dev/sdd:

ATA device, with non-removable media
Model Number: WDC WD10EADS-11M2B1
Serial Number: WD-WCAV5436xxxx
Firmware Revision: 80.00A80
Transport: Serial, SATA 1.0a, SATA II Extensions, SATA Rev 2.5, SATA Rev 2.6
Standards:
Supported: 8 7 6 5
Likely used: 8
Configuration:
Logical max current
cylinders 16383 16383
heads 16 16
sectors/track 63 63
–
CHS current addressable sectors: 16514064
LBA user addressable sectors: 268435455
LBA48 user addressable sectors: 1953525168
Logical Sector size: 512 bytes
Physical Sector size: 4096 bytes
Logical Sector-0 offset: 0 bytes
device size with M = 10241024: 953869 MBytes
device size with M = 10001000: 1000204 MBytes (1000 GB)
cache/buffer size = unknown
Capabilities:
LBA, IORDY(can be disabled)
Queue depth: 32
Standby timer values: spec’d by Standard, with device specific minimum
R/W multiple sector transfer: Max = 16 Current = 16
Recommended acoustic management value: 128, current value: 254
DMA: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6
Cycle time: min=120ns recommended=120ns
PIO: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
Cycle time: no flow control=120ns IORDY flow control=120ns
Commands/features:
Enabled Supported:
* SMART feature set
Security Mode feature set
* Power Management feature set
* Write cache
* Look-ahead
* Host Protected Area feature set
* WRITE_BUFFER command
* READ_BUFFER command
* NOP cmd
* DOWNLOAD_MICROCODE
Power-Up In Standby feature set
* SET_FEATURES required to spinup after power up
SET_MAX security extension
Automatic Acoustic Management feature set
* 48-bit Address feature set
* Device Configuration Overlay feature set
* Mandatory FLUSH_CACHE
* FLUSH_CACHE_EXT
* SMART error logging
* SMART self-test
* General Purpose Logging feature set
* 64-bit World wide name
* {READ,WRITE}_DMA_EXT_GPL commands
* Segmented DOWNLOAD_MICROCODE
* Gen1 signaling speed (1.5Gb/s)
* Gen2 signaling speed (3.0Gb/s)
* Native Command Queueing (NCQ)
* Host-initiated interface power management
* Phy event counters
* NCQ priority information
DMA Setup Auto-Activate optimization
* Software settings preservation
* SMART Command Transport (SCT) feature set
* SCT Features Control (AC4)
* SCT Data Tables (AC5)
unknown 206[12] (vendor specific)
unknown 206[13] (vendor specific)
Security:
Master password revision code = 65534
supported
not enabled
not locked
not frozen
not expired: security count
supported: enhanced erase
204min for SECURITY ERASE UNIT. 204min for ENHANCED SECURITY ERASE UNIT.
Logical Unit WWN Device Identifier: 50014ee203a1ee63
NAA : 5
IEEE OUI : 0014ee
Unique ID : 203a1ee63
Checksum: correct[/code]

2

Update: I realized last night that this is a fairly recent drive that I got from WD in Aug 2010 when I RMA’d a much older EADS drive under warranty. So they returned an Advance Format drive when I RMA’d a regular drive. The label does have the standard Advanced Format blurb but I never bothered to read it. I just popped it in a dock and ran with it.

3

interesting…
all this time ive specifically been looking for WDxxEADS drives (to specifically get non-ADF bare drives)

if you now have an EADS (not ears) which is natively ADF, then that screws my search criteria :slight_smile:

4

That’s exactly why I thought this post might be of interest to someone :-(.

I know that “specifications are subject to change” but I think that was quite a stretch. I don’t recall ever seeing EADS drives listed on WD’s site as “Advanced Format”.

At the current time Newegg has no EADS drives for sale except some recertified WD10EADS. No WD15 or WD20 at all. My drive was acquired as a result of an RMA, not a sale. It would not surprise me if it isn’t a WD10EARS with a “custom label” although the reasoning escapes me. The label on the drive clearly indicates Advanced Format (although I did not notice it until just recently).

My Advanced Format full model# is WD10EADS-11M2B1 with firmware 80.00A80

My other 6 WD10EADS drives are all WD10EADS-00L5B1, and I think they all have firmware 01.01A01 although I am still tracking that down. I thought it might make a nice set of matched drives for Raid someday :-). And I’m too cheap to buy that many drives all at once :-). Those 6 were manufactured between 10/31/08 and 04/14/09.

5

ahh yes it is of intererest indeed - thanks for the information.
i’ve still got those 7xWD15EADS that I bought and will need to reinspect them more closely.

ive bought them since xmas or early new year i think, so am stuck with them but i got a good deal and will need to start a new thread soon about the “upgrade plan” :slight_smile:

(edit) thanks Rmeyer)

6

Just a heads up.

www.westerndigital.com

and I quote
“*Business Critical RAID Environments – WD Caviar Green Hard Drives are not recommended for and are not warranted for use in RAID environments utilizing Enterprise HBAs and/or expanders and in multi-bay chassis, as they are not designed for, nor tested in, these specific types of RAID applications. For all Business Critical RAID applications, please consider WD’s Enterprise Hard Drives that are specifically designed with RAID-specific, time-limited error recovery (TLER), are tested extensively in 24x7 RAID applications, and include features like enhanced RAFF technology and thermal extended burn-in testing”