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I just purchased a Vantec Nexstar MX NST-400MX-S2 DUal 3.5" Sata to USB HDD enclosure, and one of these 2TB Western Digital Caviar WD20EARS hard drive. I obviously want to use it inside the USB hdd enclosure, and will buy a second one of these drives in the future. In any case I would like to know the answers to the following questions. It would be great if you could answer them all, if you don’t know the answer please answer what you can:
What jumper settings should I use on the hard drive for it to be in the USB enclosure used to store data for backup purposes only? [I want to have one partition on it, oh and I’ll be using Win XP]
Will I need to use the “WD Align” software on this drive even though it’ll only be used a backup in a usb enclosure? [ie: will be used with XP, but obviously no OS on the hdd. I ask because the hdd sticker says something about it having to be used if the drive will be running under XP]
What in the world is this “WDIDLE3” software/firmware I keep hearing that people are applying to this drive? Is it for this drive model or for other WD hdd’s? If you have the link for it please list it and an explanation as to what it does, also the pros/cons.
When I create the partition on this drive in XP it has to be set as “Primary” correct? With default allocation size, etc?
The only jumper setting you should be worrying about is the one to align the drive for use on XP. Just do what the label says and jumper the pins it tells you.
I actually choose to install the drive jumperless, partition/format it using XP, and than used Paragons WD Align software to re-align the drive for optimal use. My question to you now is if I ever partition/format the drive again using XP’s Disk Management, will I need to also use the WD Align software again to re-align the drive? Or is it re-aligned forever now that I already did it once before?
If you delete the partition, then yes, you will need to re-do the alignment after re-partitioning. However, if you just format the drive, without recreating the partition, then no, you won’t have to re-do the alignment.
What in the world is this “WDIDLE3” software/firmware I keep hearing that people are applying to this drive? Is it for this drive model or for other WD hdd’s? If you have the link for it please list it and an explanation as to what it does, also the pros/cons.
Some of these drives park the heads after 8 seconds which leads to high Load/Unload cycle count. If that concerns you, WDIDLE3 allows increasing the timeout.
It’s just a matter of naking a bootable USB thumb drive and copying the program onto it. You’ll need to take drive out of USB enclosure and connect to the motherboard for this procedure.
Yah but I keep wondering what the best idle time is if I’m setting my WD20EARS drive with Wdidle3? Apart from that I keep hearing from other people on different forums saying that this tool isn’t for my specific model drive, but yet here in the WD community there’s a few people applying a new idle time to their WD20EARS drives… I don’t know what to think or what to believe. If I should use it or not. Because WD hasn’t officially listed my drive under that name on the Wdidle download page.
