I’m with the other ZFSers. I was thinking I would build a low power NAS with those drives and OpenSolaris (or maybe use in my ReadyNAS NV+). Lucky I did some research before I went out and got four to eight drives.
I say some WD20EARS on sale and so I went WD to see if the issues have been resolved. I guess not. I would guess other drive makers are going to make 4K drives that are green so I guess it is time to look around. I’m kind of a WD man, but if they don’t have it, I can’t buy it.
It’s hard to find any information about the firmware on the drive. For example, ReadyNAS says drive of a specific model or firmware will work. However, WD doesn’t have anything saying (that I found yet) when the new firmware rolled out so if you buy a drive from an online store you can guess if you get a new firmware drive or not. I couldn’t even find how to flash the drive. I thought the green drives were having problems, if that is true, why is it so hard to find the information. If I knew it was easy to update the firmware, I would buy the drive knowing if it came with bad firmware I could fix it easy.
Well, I guess it’s time to look around for drive to use with OpenSolaris. Thanks to everyone for sharing your pain, you are saving others from the same heartache.
