What is everyones experience with the wd 2 tb internal drives for the mac pro. I'm planning on purchasing 6 and software raiding them and I've been reading reviews on sites like newegg that say they're not working out well for some people. So I wanted to know how it was going for those that purchased them for their macs.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
WD 2 TB drives
- Thread starter kboller07
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I have these in my Mac Pro and I have never had a problem with one. That's just me. I would back up any important info. when using them just incase.
No I did not Raid them. Each drive is specific to what I need. I do have an external HD that I use for any important backups. It's a little redundant, but, that's how I'm used to using them.
Yeah.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16822136344
1 and 4 say that they don't support raid.
Lots of DOA's.
People saying they have "drive reject issues"
Thats why I wanted to see how they worked in macs in a raid set.
The DOA's I don't mind so much because that comes with most drives anyways. Sometimes you just get a bad batch. But it not supporting raid will be a problem for me.
I'm on the fence now because Seagate is supposed to come out with 2tb ones later this year and they're not green so the performance would be better.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16822136344
1 and 4 say that they don't support raid.
Lots of DOA's.
People saying they have "drive reject issues"
Thats why I wanted to see how they worked in macs in a raid set.
The DOA's I don't mind so much because that comes with most drives anyways. Sometimes you just get a bad batch. But it not supporting raid will be a problem for me.
I'm on the fence now because Seagate is supposed to come out with 2tb ones later this year and they're not green so the performance would be better.
Seagate had some problems with their 1.5TB's. I would wait to see if this is true for the 2TB's. Just wait, don't be an earlier adopter.
I personally would go for the WD hard drives. They are the only drives I have owned/used (knock on wood) and they have never failed me.
I read somewhere that TLER is disabled so thats why they can't be used in a raid setup but it can be enabled by a WDTLER utility. I'm just trying to find instructions on how to use it on a mac. WD support doesn't give you the download so I located one by googling.
Oh yeah.
It was on newegg as well.
"Pros: Great drives. I bought 4 seagate 1.5TB's originally. 2 arrived DOA and I would get repeated drive errors when trying to setup a RAID 5 array after those 2 were replaced. I ended up returning all of the drives and getting 3 of these. I enabled TLER on the drives immediately when I received them and then proceeded to configure the RAID 5 array. It took 11 hours to initialize, but once that was done everything has been working flawless. I was worried about having the same problems that I did with the seagate drives and with any "green" drive, but I have not had any problems with these in a RAID 5 configuration. If you want to RAID these drives then read up on enabling TLER."
Oh yeah.
It was on newegg as well.
"Pros: Great drives. I bought 4 seagate 1.5TB's originally. 2 arrived DOA and I would get repeated drive errors when trying to setup a RAID 5 array after those 2 were replaced. I ended up returning all of the drives and getting 3 of these. I enabled TLER on the drives immediately when I received them and then proceeded to configure the RAID 5 array. It took 11 hours to initialize, but once that was done everything has been working flawless. I was worried about having the same problems that I did with the seagate drives and with any "green" drive, but I have not had any problems with these in a RAID 5 configuration. If you want to RAID these drives then read up on enabling TLER."
This is where I can't help you. My drives are not setup for raid so I don't know about this and have had no experience with it. I am quite sure someone else can help you from here. I will research it and if no one has helped you (and if I can understand it) I will be more than happy to help you out.
TLER are timing values, and are set differently on these drives than their RAID counterparts. The WDTLER utility allows you to change them.
The original setting would be 0,0 and need to be changed to 0,7. (values are in seconds)
A USB floppy makes this easier to do, as the utility is rather old (DOS based). Download.
Yeah.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16822136344
1 and 4 say that they don't support raid.
Lots of DOA's.
People saying they have "drive reject issues"
Thats why I wanted to see how they worked in macs in a raid set.
The DOA's I don't mind so much because that comes with most drives anyways. Sometimes you just get a bad batch. But it not supporting raid will be a problem for me.
I'm on the fence now because Seagate is supposed to come out with 2tb ones later this year and they're not green so the performance would be better.
OK, thanks for that.
WOW! I dunno if I've ever read so many bad and troubled reviews like this before. I think it's either a conspiracy or it's true - in which case I would stay away from them all together.
Also @ mac88,
This doesn't mean all WesternDigital products but rather would apply to this particular WD model. Different models will be different.
EDIT:
OK, I just checked like 8 other drives at newegg and they were all like that except for a Samsung drive that only had 5 user reviews. DOA after DOA endlessly. WTH? This must be what happens when you have things shipped to you by a reseller instead of factory direct or in-store purchases. I've purchased cases and cases of HDDs (usually 24 to a case) and never seen like this before. I'd say "Strange" but apparently it's not. ;p
For everyone that is concerned about the DOA reviews on Newegg...
Newegg is notorious for shipping their OEM hard drives with absolutely terrible packaging. There are a lot of stories about a layer of bubble wrap around a bare drive being dropped in a box and shipped with the drive rattling around inside.
I've personally never had an issue with any Newegg OEM drives but given all of the poor packaging stories it's no surprise that they have a lot of DOA.
Newegg is notorious for shipping their OEM hard drives with absolutely terrible packaging. There are a lot of stories about a layer of bubble wrap around a bare drive being dropped in a box and shipped with the drive rattling around inside.
I've personally never had an issue with any Newegg OEM drives but given all of the poor packaging stories it's no surprise that they have a lot of DOA.
I have more than a dozen WD drives here in use right now I don't have a problem with any of them. But one bad batch can ruin a person's opinion of the brand. I've had WD fail in the past, none recently. But the same can be said for any brand of HDD.
The Seagate 1.5TB model had firmware issues, they have supposedly fixed the problem with a firmware update. But the firmware issue(s) is still effecting peoples opinion of Seagate drives.
The Seagate 1.5TB model had firmware issues, they have supposedly fixed the problem with a firmware update. But the firmware issue(s) is still effecting peoples opinion of Seagate drives.
Yeah, but we all know what opinions are like. ....everyone has one.
Very True.
I've had plenty of quality long lasting drives from Seagate. But for now I'm staying away until the problems with the higher capacity drives is sorted out.
2tb WD GP Drives
I have 4 of them, although purchased them retail (best buy had a deal at $239) and using them in an external SAS/SATA enclosure to a highpoint 4322. They formatted and work great in Raid5 (I use them for offline/nearline storage) and although they are not the fastest drives around, they run cool and do the job. I get around 350Mb/s read/write with these, but running an good raid card under pcie x8. I have ordered many OEM drives in the past, Zipzoomfly has the best packaging, provantage does a good job, Newegg so so, but all the drives they have shipped have worked for me. Had one bad OEM Seagate drive and provantage took like 4 weeks to RMA and replace it.
Noushy
I have 4 of them, although purchased them retail (best buy had a deal at $239) and using them in an external SAS/SATA enclosure to a highpoint 4322. They formatted and work great in Raid5 (I use them for offline/nearline storage) and although they are not the fastest drives around, they run cool and do the job. I get around 350Mb/s read/write with these, but running an good raid card under pcie x8. I have ordered many OEM drives in the past, Zipzoomfly has the best packaging, provantage does a good job, Newegg so so, but all the drives they have shipped have worked for me. Had one bad OEM Seagate drive and provantage took like 4 weeks to RMA and replace it.
Noushy
It even affected the enterprise line (ES.2) on multiple capacities. Boot of Death.
Given the platter density keeps climbing (at 500GB/platter now), but not the Unrecoverable Bit Error rates, I'd think we are about to see a notable increase in drive failures accross all brands in the not too distant future.