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Thread: n7700 - WD 2TB and firmware XFS

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    n7700 - WD 2TB and firmware XFS

    I have 2 questions for the THECUS team,

    1)
    WD just realease 2TB hds.
    (http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/w...d-friends-han/)
    May one use them within n7700 without problems ? Your HDD compatibility list has updated since last year and I guess it is time for doing so. Filling n7700 with 2TB drives will allow 14TB to the end user !!!
    That is without having that all bad issues Seagate's 1.5TB drive did have (due to Seagate's fault that is)
    Please let us know if the drive is compatible with our NAS device!

    2)
    Last but not least, there was a whole thread regarding XFS. WIll there be a firmware update that will let the user use such an option ?

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    Re: n7700 - WD 2TB and firmware XFS

    Quote Originally Posted by msx8280 View Post
    Filling n7700 with 2TB drives will allow 14TB to the end user !!!
    No it definitely won't.

    You will loose 1TB in the megabyte mibibyte conversion then some more in file system overheard. Do you really want to run 7 drives as RAID-0? really??? No way on earth I would, so that’s another drive down due to RAID-5 at least, I'd even consider RAID-6 making it five drives worth of space.

    Also, the N7700 is limited to RAID volumes of 8TB because of the EXT3 file system.


    The 2TB drives are not readily available quite yet. Thecus don't get access to new drives any earlier that regular consumers. So once they get drives, it will take a while to run enough tests for Thecus to be happy to verify the drives for use in its products. So basically, be patient, no-one has them in stock in the UK yet anyway.

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    Re: n7700 - WD 2TB and firmware XFS

    I was talking about total capacity. I choose raid6 myself but that is just a preference.
    ZFS in n7700 doesn't have the same limit as ext3 has, so that is not a problem!!

    I would really like to hear an ooficial announcement to those two issues.

    Yvon ?

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    Re: n7700 - WD 2TB and firmware XFS

    Don't want to burst your bubble, but ZFS is a DOG on the Thecus units.

    It is about 60% SLOWER than EXT and everytime I attempted a large number of files to transfer, it locked out and made folders invisible until I reformated. If I were you, get the beta and use XFS. Much faster

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    Re: n7700 - WD 2TB and firmware XFS

    Then took xfs.
    If i copy a BD-rip from 10TB R6 at an adaptec 51245 to a 7700 7x1,5TB Seagae R5with ext3 the transfer is between 76 & 79MB/sec. By using xfs the transfer is between 86 to 92MB/sec.

    So using xfs with 7x2TB HDD's (to get 11 - 11,5TB R5) should not be the problem

    Hope they would integrate xfs in the new Fw and update Samba for using Active-Directory in native mode

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    Re: n7700 - WD 2TB and firmware XFS

    I am using ZFS without issues here. I don't know about speed differnce as I can't compare.
    On the other hand, using the XFS from the beta is something that I would like to keep away right now, as I need THECUS's official announcement that everything is fine while using it. I really don't want to lose any data due to any beta bug.

    So YVON, is there an official announcement regarding this feature ?
    Will it ever and when will be available ?

    How about WD 2TB drives ?

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    Re: n7700 - WD 2TB and firmware XFS

    What I did was write a rsync script that copiies/syncs all my data to 2 2TB USB drives. So if XFS dies a bad death, my data is still intact on the USB drives.

    The job runs every night at 3am, and works like a champ. I posted the rsync script.

    So between that and rsnapshot, I think I am covered completely.

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    Re: n7700 - WD 2TB and firmware XFS

    Just a thought...

    These 2TB drives (like the seagate 1.5TB that cause so much grief) are rated "domestic". The "enterprise" GREEN drive range stops at 1TB. I might be tempted to wait until the enterprise version appears.

    This is a quote of the difference and might explain the "random" RAID drop-out of some of these large drives. Don't be mis-led by the fact you are not an enterprise...they define enterprise use as....

    enterprise = a disk connected to a RAID controller!

    Western Digital manufactures desktop edition hard drives and RAID Edition hard drives. Each type of hard drive is designed to work specifically in either a desktop computer environment or a demanding enterprise environment.

    If you install and use a desktop edition hard drive connected to a RAID controller, the drive may not work correctly unless jointly qualified by an enterprise OEM. This is caused by the normal error recovery procedure that a desktop edition hard drive uses.

    When an error is found on a desktop edition hard drive, the drive will enter into a deep recovery cycle to attempt to repair the error, recover the data from the problematic area, and then reallocate a dedicated area to replace the problematic area. This process can take up to 2 minutes depending on the severity of the issue. Most RAID controllers allow a very short amount of time for a hard drive to recover from an error. If a hard drive takes too long to complete this process, the drive will be dropped from the RAID array. Most RAID controllers allow from 7 to 15 seconds for error recovery before dropping a hard drive from an array. Western Digital does not recommend installing desktop edition hard drives in an enterprise environment (on a RAID controller).

    Western Digital RAID edition hard drives have a feature called TLER (Time Limited Error Recovery) which stops the hard drive from entering into a deep recovery cycle. The hard drive will only spend 7 seconds to attempt to recover. This means that the hard drive will not be dropped from a RAID array. Though TLER is designed for RAID environments, it is fully compatible and will not be detrimental when used in non-RAID environments.

    --------------

    But you might be able to toggle TLER on/ff using WDTLER.EXE. Search for Time-Limited_Error_Recovery on wikipedia
    Last edited by charker; 10-03-2009 at 02:01 PM.

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    Re: n7700 - WD 2TB and firmware XFS

    So what is that you are saying ? That 2TB WD drives may not be used with n7700 in a raid setup ?

    Any OFFICIAL feedback will be highly appreciated by the community!

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    Cool Re: n7700 - WD 2TB and firmware XFS

    I don't have an N7700 yet, but I have been tracking it on the forums. One of the things I was waiting for was the early March firmware release.
    It was put out tonight at the Thecus website in \Downloads (sorry for no URL - I'm a newbie and not allowed to post URLs ) as N7700_FW_2.01.08.bin Dated 10-Mar-2009 06:18 and is 36.2M

    I'm hoping to hear some feedback on the firmware and new drives/XFS so I can go ahead and buy a pair of the N7700s

    Mark Adams

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    Re: n7700 - WD 2TB and firmware XFS

    Quote Originally Posted by msx8280 View Post
    So what is that you are saying ? That 2TB WD drives may not be used with n7700 in a raid setup ?

    Any OFFICIAL feedback will be highly appreciated by the community!
    What it is saying is that a retail WD 2TB Green has "long running" error recovery enabled as default. This may or may not cause problems with RAID controllers.

    This "long running" error recovery can be disabled it seems so maybe that would make them more RAID friendly.

    Until somebody takes the plunge we just don't know and given the grief I have had with Seagate 1.5TB and my M3800 I'm happy to let someone else try

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    Re: n7700 - WD 2TB and firmware XFS

    Quote Originally Posted by charker View Post
    What it is saying is that a retail WD 2TB Green has "long running" error recovery enabled as default. This may or may not cause problems with RAID controllers.

    This "long running" error recovery can be disabled it seems so maybe that would make them more RAID friendly.

    Until somebody takes the plunge we just don't know and given the grief I have had with Seagate 1.5TB and my M3800 I'm happy to let someone else try
    Hello everyone,

    I am very interested in the subject as well, and I was thinking too that it should be possible to use WDTLER to make the WD20eads more raid friendly. Has anone tried?

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    Re: n7700 - WD 2TB and firmware XFS

    Dear Sir,

    We just new add the WD WD20EADS 2TB from following link:
    http://www.thecus.com/download.php?pid=94&type=h
    http://www.thecus.com/Downloads/HDD_...2009-04-09.pdf

    As the note from the HDD list, there is an 8 TB limitation for EXT3 file system, even ZFS & XFS support more than 8TB, but the ZFS for SNAPSHOT funciton mainly, thus for 8TB or above RAID volume we could choose the XFS file system would be better.

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    Re: n7700 - WD 2TB and firmware XFS

    Yvon,

    Thank you very much for this. Would you advise to use WDTLER on the WD20EADS or WD15EADS in order to reduce the risk of the drives dropping out of the array, or is this handled by the N7700 directly?

    Also, what is the limit of the XFS system? Is it 16TB?

    Many thanks,

    Manni

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    Re: n7700 - WD 2TB and firmware XFS

    Dear Sir,

    We afraid doing such modification on the HDD disk, we just order the HDDs and install into N8800/N7700 to verify compatibility firectly.
    The XFS specification support up to 16 exabytes for volume and 8 exabytes for single file size, so far we tested the N8800 RAID5 from 8 pcs WD20EADS for 14TB.

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    Re: n7700 - WD 2TB and firmware XFS

    Quote Originally Posted by Thecus - Yvon View Post
    Dear Sir,

    We afraid doing such modification on the HDD disk, we just order the HDDs and install into N8800/N7700 to verify compatibility firectly.
    The XFS specification support up to 16 exabytes for volume and 8 exabytes for single file size, so far we tested the N8800 RAID5 from 8 pcs WD20EADS for 14TB.
    Thanks again for this quick reply, but this way of testing only tests the hard drive when everything is working well. If there is an uncorrectable error on one of the WD20EADS, as TLER is not enabled (these are desktop drives, not RE drives), the drive will try to correct the error for up to 30s, which can lead to the drive dropping out of the array (max 8s is allowed before dropping a disk).

    Do you have a way to simulate this in your testing procedure? Otherwise, although the drives are going to work until an error occurs, the integrity of the raid may be compromised if an uncorrectable error occurs and wdtler is not enabled on the drives. Using wdtler allows to enable tler and make sure the drive doesn't try to correct an error for more than 7 seconds or so, so that it's not dropped out of the array. As you know TLER is enabled by default on RE drives, not on desktop drives.

    I was also wondering why none of the RE WD drives was on the compatibility list for the n7700 (while they are on the 5200). Is it just because you haven't tested them on the 7700/8800 platform?

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