Greetings,
I’ve been using 2x WD7502ABYS RE3 drives in a RAID 1 on SATA II on a Windows 7 x64 system for about a year now. Everything has been fine.
Question: Can these RE3 drives be used successfully in a non-RAID environment?
I’m considering ditching the RAID and converting these RE3 drives to normal drive service with one drive holding the O/S and the other drive serving as a data drive. I’ve read all the documents regarding the TLER issue and how these drives perform best in RAID environments (which is why I originally bought them).
According to WD’s own document, http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1397/kw/raid/related/1, a drive with TLER enabled will work with no performance decrease when used in non-RAID environments. But this doesn’t answer the question. Since the deep recovery cycle can no longer take effect, I would think that this could cause problems.
When I emailed support about this, the rep was equally vague and said, “To be honest, I am not able to tell you that these drives are not recommended because you can use them in a non RAID environment, these drives will work on a non RAID environment but, these drives were designed for RAID environments.”
Basically, I’m just looking for a solid answer to my question: Can I successfully use my RE3 drives in a non-RAID environment without causing issues?
Thank you.
James
