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Difference between WD RE4 and Caviar Black 1tb

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Now I know what the difference of these two drives are, but i don't completely understand what the TLER option on the RE4 does completely. I know it prevents the drive from falling out of RAID by stopping a long recovery process. So if it stops the recovery process, does that mean you lose the data on the drive that failed. And can you use them out of RAID and have them work like a normal drive?

Here they are:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Productcompare.aspx?Submi...

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TLER is WDs error recovery control that allows you to set the time that your drive will spend recovering from read/write errors. It is only useful in RAID and not recommended for use in desktop non-RAID drives, and should be set to zero in that use. If a RAID drive spends too long trying to correct an error it can be dropped from the array.

RealBeast said:
TLER is WDs error recovery control that allows you to set the time that your drive will spend recovering from read/write errors. It is only useful in RAID and not recommended for use in desktop non-RAID drives, and should be set to zero in that use. If a RAID drive spends too long trying to correct an error it can be dropped from the array.


So when it's dropped from the array, do you lose the contents if that drive?
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OCGL16 said:
So when it's dropped from the array, do you lose the contents if that drive?
Not if the array is a parity type like RAID 5 or 6 -- the RAID controller will just check the drive and then start rebuilding the array. Of course, if it's RAID 0, and a drive drops out the array is broken and probably unrecoverable without recovery software (that might work if you are lucky).

On most of my RAID 5 arrays I have a hot spare so that one drive going out will allow the array to rebuild using the hot spare and I can replace the drive.

Also understand that a RAID 5 or 6 array will continue to work with the loss of one drive (or 2 drives for RAID 6), it's just that the array is at much greater risk when there are no drives that are left to fail without data loss and the performance is degraded substantially.

@apache I'm not going to be using it at first but i'm pretty sure that i will in the near future

@Ubrales thanks for that link!

And @RealBeast, thanks for more helpful responses. Storage was always my weak side. :) 

The RE4 (WD5003ABYX) 500GB 64MB cache is the very best mechanical HDD that I've owned, even better than the 1TB Caviar Black (WD1001FALS). I bought the RE4 on sale at Newegg for $79.99. No vibration (most WD 64MB cache is bad for this), faster than the Caviar Black, & runs cooler also.

The RE4 was purchased for the Windows 8 Pro + Media Center promo, beginning on 10/26, currently I'm running Win 8 RP x64 on it.

Aside from a SSD, I don't see how anyone could go wrong. Plus those who do number crunching (like the folding@home project) should be fine, this drive is built for 24/7 nonstop use.

Don't be afraid of the 500GB RE4. For $20 more (the 500GB is regular priced $99) one can get a 1TB RE4, but experience has showed me that 1TB+ drives are best for storage, not for OS installs.

Cat
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