Release non 512-byte sector emulated firmware for WD?EARS

Count me in!!!

dont wait any longer. give us that real firmware.

Please let us know what is going on. This by far the top idea for the Internal-Drive-Ideas.

Hello WD, could someone please reply? Maybe a firmware upgrade would not be so difficult?

Same issue here.  We just bought 13 WD20EARS drives from newegg for a zfs based server, and it looks like they are going to get RMA’d based on this.

yes, fix your firmware, pls

I bought two WD10EARS for a CentOS server. Drives are not recognized. Installed them in a Mac OS X box, and the disk utility claims they are 80GB drives.

Really ?

I have to take these back, and buy something else. Three hours of my time plus a restocking fee wasted just to find out a major manufacturer goofed royally.

I would like WD to pay for the restocking fee of $8.00. Trivial, yes? Absolutely, and so is providing a firmware update to resolve the problem.

Shame on WD for this one.

I just bought a Hitachi Travelstar 5K750 that does not emulate the 512-byte sector. Still waiting for firmware or jumper setting to eliminate this on my WD 500 GB drive.

As of v2.6.33, Linux ATA drivers do not support drives with 4KiB logical sector size although there is a development branch containing experimental support.
https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_4_KiB_sector_issues#L-1._Kernel_support

Western Digital technical support only provides jumper configuration (for EIDE hard drive) and physical installation support for hard drives used in systems running the Linux/Unix operating systems. For setup or other questions beyond physical installation of your Western Digital hard drive, please contact your Linux/Unix vendor.
http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/987/related/1/session/L2F2LzEvdGltZS8xMzEyMDc4MTE1L3NpZC9BKlI5V2pBaw%3D%3D

Are you guys serious ?    Or just dense ?

    Linux has had hardware compatibility problems since day one.
There used to be lists of what hardware would run on Linux, (still may exist).
Much of the hardware listed will run, but with reduced functionality, features &  convience.

    No manufacturer in his right mind would even attempt to support 500 or so different Linux
distributions, much less the myrid obscure file systems used.

Feel free to whine and moan about mainstream hardware.  Or write your own software,
to make the hardware work for your specific “roll your own”  distribution / file system.

            Have none of you read reviews of the product ?
Not designed for raid.  Not designed for speed as main goal.

 “Gee wizz, my Volkswagon runs fine”, but Mr Manufacturer please make it go
like an Indy car.  Please.  It would be easy.  I want it to go faster.
Just  for me make it easier to go like an Indy car.  PS: I don’t want
to have to change the spark plugs just because I burn used
McDonalds fryer grease to make it go.  Other cars burn fryer grease.
So just make my Bug run Indy laps on fryer grease.  It would be
real easy for you to rewrite the ignition timing firmware.

    Oh yes,  almost forgot, my cousin has been making corn alcohol
out in the woods for years.  Now that the government pays farmers
more than the cost, to produce alcohol for combustion,
would you please make some firmware to run his “moonshine”.
It would be easy.

Cheers:
anMeToo

Dear WD Developers,

I join all guys above in urging you to release a FIRMWARE UPDATE : not just an updated hardware version, but a software patch for anyone who purchased one a disk affected by this issue.

BACKWARD COMPATIBILITY SHOULD BE “SEAMLESS” TO ALL OTHER USERS. IN THIS CASE, TO PREVENT A “BACKWARD” COMPATIBILITY ISSUE, YOU CREATED A “FORWARD” COMPATIBILITY ISSUE TO A SIGNIFICANT NUMBER OF YOUR CLIENTS.

Looking forward to hearing the good news from you.

Thanks.

mm201156

Actually this issue runs very deep. I would like to point Western Digital at the following MSDN article: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh182553%28v=vs.85%29.aspx which states “512-byte Emulation (512e): This media has an emulation layer as discussed in the previous section and exposes 512-bytes as its logical sector size (similar to a regular disk today), but makes its physical sector size information (4 KB) available.” Which would enable the OS to make intelligent decisions about how to interface with such a disk. And with the 4K update, windows 7 now has support for 4K drives. HOWEVER: The EARS range (and probably other 4K drives from Western Digital) are bald faced liars. Rather than return the correct answer then queried for their PHYSICAL block size they respond with the LOGICAL block size of 512 bytes, which is both out of compliance with the 512e standard and also takes away the option for Windows 7 to honour the underlying disk geometry by properly lining up its IO in chunks of 4K at a time. Exactly why WD have chosen to actually write code in firmware that actively sabotages the user is beyond me - there is certainly no technical reason why this must be so. Let’s just say that my motivations for ever purchasing a western digital drive again, professionally or privately, are pretty low. They seem to have lost it.

I was delighted to find out that my Hitachi 3TB external properly exposes 4K sectors. I can actually use it on older operating systems, and access the entire drive.

I like WD drives. It’s too bad the firmware lies for some models, making them way more awkward to use. Now it comes down to price for me - if the price is low enough to make up for the extra time, I’ll use them. If not, then I won’t. If a Hitachi drive is only ~$10-20 extra, I’d go for that instead.

The ATA standard specifies how you are supposed to deal with this: the old sector size field can still report 512 bytes for backward compatability, and a new size field specifies the true hardware sector size.  The Linux tools have had support for years now to read the new field and properly align partitions to this size.  When will WD start following the standard?

This feels like beating a dead horse. At this point I have the following to say:

  •  When judging the intentions of a company or person the best yardstick to go by is their actions. In the absense of a statement expressly stating a policy, you can get a pretty good idea of what a company “thinks” from how it acts.
  • Based on the actions of Western Digital in the last 3 years it is pretty obvious that they think of the consumers as their useful idiots who will never stop throwing money at WD regardless of how bad the product is.
  •  Those consumers who like to think of themselves as “experts” have a specific product range, in the Caviar series of HDDs, which are WDs equivalent of the Monster HDMI cable - the product is no more expensive to manufacture, does not receive any additional testing, but does not have an intentional failure point in its firmware. This non-faulty version is sold at a 2-3x markup. 

The only problem I see with this rationale is the following: 

  • I am personally responsible for managing ~200TB of active data.
  • I will never again intentionally buy any product which contains a western digital drive. This does not preclude me from using vendors who source their drives from WD, they just better not tell me about it.

I just purchased a WD Scorpio Black, and was unaware of the issues with this drive until I read the label, and researched “Advanced Format” – I have the drive installed, partitioned, and my 3 OSs running great, but I still HATE the idea that the drive is set up differently than it says it is… C’mon WD, it’s been TWO YEARS that this format has been out – listen to your customers and fix this!!! I’ve ALWAYS only purchased (and recommended) WD, in my opinion the quality and value is second to none. I’d hate to have to change my tune.

another optimist likes this idea!!