MAC Software RAID using WD20EARS

WD Internal Drives Desktop & Mobile Drives
1

I have setup a 4TB Raid0 on my Mac Pro for Storage of digital clips, sound clips and other large files. The stripe depth is 256KB (average file size is about 300MB) and it is formatted using Extended Journaling (as per normal). The drives are working fine, but I get a clicking sound every so often and the file browser goes unresponsive for about 5 secs. I don’t think this is to do with the dynamic power down as I can be browsing the filesystem and hit a random folder causing the problem to occur. None of the logs show any faults (kernel log is usually where disk issue show up). This is not my boot drive (that is an SSD), it’s pure data storage and is backup up daily via automated sync scripts, so I can burn it if needed.

Can WD comment on what the issue might be? If I can’t solve the issue they will be going back in favour of another vendor’s drives.

2

No comment from WD, well I guess I’ll have to return these in favour for so decent HDD from another vendor. Not impressed with WD at all.

3

As a matter of interest under Drive Genius 3, the RAID volume shows up as formatted with 512byte blocks. I thought this drive user 4K blocks?

4

AFD emulates 512, but uses 4K blocks.  It is probably a good idea not to use those in a software raid, since depending on which Mac OS you’re using, they might not partition and format correctly.

5

Removed from software raid and now seems ok. Shame but I will have to live with that.