WD Red Drives (WD20EFRX) on WHS v1 - Jumper Settings

Hi

I have a Windows Home Server v1 with seven WD drives (variety of EURS, EARS and EARX). As all of these are advanced format drives i have always jumpered pins 7 and 8 to address the advanced format incompatibility of WHSv1.

They have been excellent! Now i want to add two more drives and like the sound of the WD Red Drives for NAS (WD20EFRX).

Q. Do these drives support jumpering of pins 7 and 8 to disable advanced format?

Thanks

Yes,

I spoke to someone in WD and they do.

Hi

Thanks for your response. How sure are you about your source? 

Since i posted, WD in New Zealand came back to me saying “the jumper alignment feature is no longer supported in these drives”. Though it is entirely possible that they just don’t know.

Just an update, for anyone following this thread…

I opted instead to go for 2 x WD20EZRX. WD NZ reported that the jumpers were no longer required as it would “Auto align” but as i could not see this confirmed elsewhere i jumpered them anyway.

I then connected them to a Windows 7 box to initialize them (MBR), before finally putting them in their final home, a Lian Li EX-50B that is connected via eSata to my Acer Easystore H340 Windows Home Server v1 box. 

They work great. I checked their speed and was impressed to find they were faster than the WD20EARS, WD20EURS and WD20EARXs in the config.

This gives me a total 7 x 2TB + 1 x 1TB for a total disk space of almost of 14TB.