Hi;
I’m confused about various WD drives, TLER, and suitability for Non-Raid/Desktop use. I was looking at several different WD drives to possibly use for ‘single’/Non-RAID use (as well as possible RAID use) on my ‘Desktop’ system.
I looked at the RE4 as a possible ‘improved’ WD Black 2TB. But the community forum article at http://community.wdc.com/t5/Other-Internal-Drives/Western-Digital-RE4-drives-not-meant-running-single/m-p/114622/highlight/true#M720 seems to say that the RE4 (as an Enterprise drive) has TLER, and this is bad for Non-RAID use because it has truncated error recovery.
I looked at the VelociRaptor WD6000HLHX, which says it is an Enterprise drive, but intended “for performance enthusiast systems, workstations,”. See http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-701284.pdf
I don’t see any mention of this drive using ‘TLER’ in the specifications, but another entry at http://community.wdc.com/t5/Desktop/VelociRaptor-WD6000HLHX-RAID-and-TLER/m-p/28261/highlight/true#M1674 seems to say that this drive does feature TLER (and is usable in RAID configurations).
So, does all this mean that mean the WD6000HLHX has TLER (and therefore is only meant to be use used in RAID)? Or something else? I got the impression that having TLER meant it wasn’t suitable for Desktop/single/non-RAID use.
I’m trying to get a clear picture of which drive is suitable for Raid and Non-Raid use.:
Drive - Suitable for non-Raid - Suitable for RAID
RE4 2TB - ? - ?
WD6000HLHX - ? - ?
It would seem that this wouldn’t be an issue if this ‘feature’ was still configurable (as it apparently was in the past drives).
-Greg
