I am upgrading my storage to 2x 2TB Western Digital WD20EARS Caviar Green drives. Reading on forums it seems after they were released they had some issues - but I am unsure if they have been resolved after their release end of last year. Can anyone tell me (as I have found conflicting info) if i need to use the advanced formatting application when using Win 7, using it as a separate drive - one partition and if needed, where do I grab the updated firmware for it (can’t seem to find anything on the WD sites).
Also there seems to be an issue with the heads parking too often (after 5sec) causing it ‘age’ very quickly. There is an application (wdidle) that you can run to set the parking to 69minutes. Is this the only thing I need to do with the drives in order to get the best from them?
Also, after I’ve done all this how can I I benchmark the hdd’s performance. I am copying files to it now (overnight) from my old hdd’s as well as my NAS, seems the drive started off copying across at 69mbps then dropped down to 17.9 (loads of small files - this was one session of copying). I want to make sure I am utilising the drives to their fullest capacity.
Hi there, You shoul be able to use Advanced Format to obtain maximum performance from this drive, If your computer supports a drive with this capacity, you should not have any issues with this configuration. To confirm the drive is working at its full capacity and make sure is fine you can test it with Data Lifeguard Diagnostics.
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Afternoon
Thank you very much for the reply. I tried to grab the AFD last night but it said as I was not using the disk as a primary drive / OS or looking to partition it I did not need it. Should I ignore this and just d/l / format the drives with the WD Tool?
You shouldn’t need to do anything from Win7 to get it working happily. My Advanced Format Caviar Greens were all Plug-‘n’-Play.
It’s only XP that you need to mess around. It even says so on the drive itself:
"Advanced Format Drive. To Achieve fill performance:
- Windows XP, multi partition and cloning software users - use WD Align software avaiable on www…
- Windows XP single partition - set jumpers 7-8 prior to installation or use WD Align SW
- All other OS configurations - drive is ready for use as is"
Morning All
Quick question. What software can I use to see what my heads are doing. I have run the WDIDLE app and need to make sure it is all running as expected and the drives are not parking every few seconds.
I have run the SMART app and that doesn’t seem to give me the info I need.
