Degraded drive in RAID5 in WDSS 8TB - what replacement drive to buy?

Hi everybody,
I have quite important work this week and need to replace one failed drive in my 8TB WDSS running RAID5. I tried to format the drive, clear it inside WDSS and after two days of endless attempts to restore followed by restart, I decided to fill the warranty RMA etc… But it will take long time and I need to fix it tomorrow.

Decided to buy one replacement drive, but it looks like nobody offers WD20EADS anymore and computer stores offer WD20EARS now.
I know I must replace the failed drive with the same as are the others. But what to do, when WD20EADS is not available? Will EARS work or not?

After they will replace my failed drive under warranty, I can keep it as spare… But I need quick fix.

Thanks

Tomas

It will still be degraded because the sectors on the drives are not the same (EARS are advance format drives). You’d have to upgrade all drives to EARS and you’ll lose the data if so. If you need the data out soon then try the Linux Fedora Core 14 Live CD.