Disable TLER in WD RE4, still available?

WD Internal Drives Desktop & Mobile Drives
1

I was thinking on buying 2 WD RE4 harddrives, but to use as desktop drives, no RAID. I have heard that there was a tool that could be used to change the TLER time or to disable it on this drives, in order to do this kind of thing. I was looking for it in the downloads section but I havent been able to locate it. Is this software still available? Can this be done in the latest RE4 version? Thank you very much

2

Hi Karlsson. TLER was only available to a select few drives that are no longer available. That is why the software was removed from the site. A RAID drive should work fine in a non-RAID environment, the difference is that a RAID drive will not enter a deep recovery cycle, if needed, because a RAID controller typically controls error handling.

3

Hi LB_WD, thanks for your response. Does this mean TLER is not available at all or just that is not ā€œeditableā€ as it was in those particular drives? I guess itā€™s this last since you say raid drives donā€™t go into deep recovery mode, feature that I would assume similar to TLER, that limited time so it wouldnā€™t drop drives from the raid?

So if this is the case, can this be a disadvantage if using them in a non raid environment? I am thinking in this kind of enterprise drive in order to get the most reliable drive I can, but maybe this can be a bit if a disadvantage against regular desktop drives?

Thanks

4

TLER is still used on WDā€™s RAID drives. That is one feature that makes them compatible with RAIDs to prevent dropoffs. You are correct in saying that it isnā€™t ā€œeditableā€ like it was on a few mondels. The TLER feature only lets a drive go into a deep recovery mode for 7 seconds before it hands over the recovery to a RAID controller. Whereas a Desktop drive could go into a deep recovery for up to 2 minutes. I donā€™t think that a deep recovery happens very often. Itā€™s up to you if you want to use the drive in a non-RAID environment. If the deep recovery is something that would bother you, you may want to use a drive from the Black line since it is a performance drive for standard use, not RAID.

Iā€™ve had users use RAID drives and the VelociRaptor in non-RAID environemtns and havenā€™t heard of any bad experience. I even use a VelociRaptor as my main boot drive and havneā€™t had any problems. Itā€™s more of a preference I guess. Some people like having theĀ ā€˜peace of mindā€™, I guess you can call it,Ā of the deep recovery mode that a desktop drive can go in to.

1 Like
5

Hi LB_WD, thanks a lot for your response. It clarifies a lot. Actually you gave me a good tip in order to make a decission. You mentioned that velociraptor have TLER. I do have an older WD740ADFD Raptor that Ihave been using for more than 5 years as the primary drive of my old computer. Does this one have TLER? If so, then I have already been using a raid drive in non raid environment without any issues for a long time. Concerning this deep recovery you mention I dont think its important for me. Actually I have never seen any of my WD drives stuck for 30 sec-1 min- 2 min trying to recover a sector or whatever, and if would have, I probably would have freaked out and feared for the whole integrity of all the data in the drive, as it would be doing ā€œweird thingsā€.Ā  In this particular case, I think I even prefer the piece of mind of having enterprise reliability drives than the deep recovery thing, that if it would to happen, it would make me fear for the whole drive.

About the Black line, that was my first idea, and I purchased two of them. It didnt come out good, I have issues that havent been resolved. Check out this other thread here, your input would be appreciatted.

http://community.wd.com/t5/Desktop-Mobile-Drives/WD-2002FAEX-busy-timeout-issues/td-p/681679

6

Iā€™m glad that I was able to help you Karlsson. All of the VelociRaptor drives should have TLER. Iā€™m also checking into the other post that you referenced.

1 Like
7

Hi Karlsson,

This is my first post here and Iā€™m not sure who to quote text.

I was looking for similar information and I have good reasons.

You say:

Concerning this deep recovery you mention I dont think its important for me. Actually I have never seen any of my WD drives stuck for 30 sec-1 min- 2 min trying to recover a sector or whatever, and if would have, I probably would have freaked out and feared for the whole integrity of all the data in the drive, as it would be doing ā€œweird thingsā€.Ā  In this particular case, I think I even prefer the piece of mind of having enterprise reliability drives than the deep recovery thing, that if it would to happen, it would make me fear for the whole drive.

I can tell you how it feels the ā€œlong recovery cycleā€ on a WD Caviar Black AALS 4 years old, rather seldom used. And itā€™s not necessarly a bad thing to have, I guess.

First your drive becomes irresonsive while being accessed - e.g. during disk cleanup. After 2 minutes explorer freezes, you try to restart it then you get a message about sytem being unable to start explorer due to some I/O error (or something). Then you get some MF$ error and some BSOD not neccesarly in this order (I have them all written down somewhere, but I guess they are not that relevant and Iā€™m so tired after hours of searching the net for a good HDD to buyā€¦).

Then the system canā€™t boot, some dll or sys files cannot be found;Ā  the Windows 7 repair utility runs hours and does nothing, chkdsk finds bad sectorsā€¦

Then you delete partition Windows setup would see the drive only after multiple triesā€¦ Reinstall windows eventually (glad all the data was on the other partition which luckily was unnafected), run WD Data Lifeguard, Quick test fails, Long test fails with unrecoverable errors/ damaged blocks. The same result in HDtune and Active@ - boths utiliesā€™ surface scan show about 12-14 damanged blocks. Chkdsk showes about 64 (kb?) bad sectors iirc. Also smart infor showed some re-loccated sectors and another parameter not optimal.

So was ā€œlong recovery cycleā€ good? Maybe. Maybe helped me realize I had a dying drive. Lucky me, WD Black as 5 years guarranty and it was accepted. But the drive was not very used (unfortuantelly I forgot to hours count), it was the only drive in a case with 120mm front fan and 2x80 mm Arctic Cooliong back fansā€¦ the unit was never moved or exposed to shocks.

Maybe I was just unlicky (and still lucky with the warranty) but Iā€™d think twice before buying another WD Black.

The problem Iā€™ve consistently seen with WD drives, especially blacks (this dead one was not my first one) is that they run quite hot. Right now in my other PC I have these temperatures (in an Antec Case NSK6000, it only has the 120mm back fan, no front fan):

  • WD3200AAKSĀ Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  = 37 celsius

  • Samsung HD642JJĀ  = 26 deg.C

  • Samsung HD103SJ = 29 deg.C

Iā€™ve had Seagates in the past too, and they were also cooler.

Now to cut this short I was looking for information if 1TB RE4 is better than 1TB WD Black. Iā€™ve read on tomā€™s hardware that the engine is tuned /modified to resist shocks or something like that:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/2tb-hdd-7200,2430-4.html

I suppose this is good. So Iā€™t rather buy a RE4. I just canā€™t trust the WD Black anymore.

But Iā€™m worried about the TLER and the LACK of the LONG error correct/recover (?) cycle. So if an error is found, the drive wonā€™t stay 30 seconds or more to try to recover but what next? Will I know there was an error?

I see from your other post that you had problems with intel controller. I would like to install the drive in single mode onĀ  a Z77X-UD3H, also intel, also in AHCI mode :frowning: