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Please help me!!!!!!!!

Tags:
  • NAS / RAID
  • Storage
  • Hard Drives
  • Alienware
Last response: in Storage
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January 16, 2014 1:49:32 PM

Ok first of let me just say two things before ppl start complaining

1) im a total noob when it comes to computers so the less jargon you use the better and please dont judge me if i make a mistake >_<
2) i know desktops are better but im going away to college and will be moving around a lot so laptop it is

Ok so im getting an alienware 17 laptop, i want to get two hard drives to set up in raid 0 for data storage as i will put the os on the msata ssd. i have no clue what would be good and or work. i was gonna get 2x wd black 1tb but then read they dont work in raid so now im back at the beginning any suggestions? btw i will be using it for gaming, photoshop and heavy duty multi tasking, any help will be greatly appreciated

More about : question

a b G Storage
January 16, 2014 2:43:18 PM

IMHO, the two drives you listed will be more than sufficient. Are these drives the 2.5" or 3.5" units?
January 16, 2014 3:22:49 PM

2.5 but it says they wont work in raid
Related resources
a b G Storage
January 16, 2014 3:37:52 PM

CodeZero68 said:
2.5 but it says they wont work in raid


Who and why would they not work?

There are enclosures out there for 2.5" drives for either RAID0 or RAID1 or JBOD. If you are planning on staging an array for RAID 5, 6 or 10 then yeah, the recommendation would be to get NAS capable drives like the WD Reds however those are the 3.5" type.

January 16, 2014 3:58:20 PM

wd website says the black is not good in raid and read somewhere that it has some function disabled
a b G Storage
January 16, 2014 8:27:50 PM

CodeZero68 said:
wd website says the black is not good in raid and read somewhere that it has some function disabled


If you are using the drives for RAID0 or RAID1 then you will not have an issue. I currently have the following:

Array 1:
2x1TB WD Black in RAID0

Array2:
2x1.5TB WD Green in RAID0

Please note the above are *soft* Array's as they are configured via Windows 8.1 Pro.

At one point I had the 2x1.5TB WD Greens in RAID1 and though the performance was slow, I decided that it was a waste of drive space and reconfigured for RAID0 and I have all my data backed up to external HDD's instead.

The system has been up and running for months without a glitch actually the only glitch was that one of the drives failed on me (Samsung) a mechanical failure nothing to do with RAID.

January 17, 2014 7:50:01 AM

what is tler cause i keep reading that blacks dont have it, what does that mean?
a c 971 G Storage
January 17, 2014 6:38:17 PM

TLER = time limited error recovery. Raid drives need it so that the raid controller wont drop the drive from the array should a drive enter into error recovery. Raid drives have a limit on how long they will spend trying to read a data sector and desktop drives dont.

With a raid controller the drive having a problem reading should time out and tell the controller to basically 'get the data from somewhere else' {with raids (except raid0) the data sector can always be gotten from somewhere else}. Now consumers with desktops don't normally run raids so if their drive is having a problem reading a sector - there is nowhere else it knows about to get the data so the drive needs to do all it can to recover the data (and move it to a replacement sector if the original one tests bad)

so you see in desktop drives TLER= off the drive can spend all day trying to self recover data
and in raid drives TLER=on so the controller wont think the drive has failed and drop it from the array.

Also in raid0 if one drive gets dropped the whole array is lost. Raid 0 is built for pure speed, there is no redundancy and sector data cannot be gotten from anywhere else.

In a pc you should be ok with a 2 drive raid0 or 1. If a drive gets dropped usually a reboot will resync the drives and form the array again - unless one of the drives truly does have a problem.

I hope you sense that with raid0 especially that being good on making backup copies is important.
January 17, 2014 8:32:12 PM

popatim said:
TLER = time limited error recovery. Raid drives need it so that the raid controller wont drop the drive from the array should a drive enter into error recovery. Raid drives have a limit on how long they will spend trying to read a data sector and desktop drives dont.

With a raid controller the drive having a problem reading should time out and tell the controller to basically 'get the data from somewhere else' {with raids (except raid0) the data sector can always be gotten from somewhere else}. Now consumers with desktops don't normally run raids so if their drive is having a problem reading a sector - there is nowhere else it knows about to get the data so the drive needs to do all it can to recover the data (and move it to a replacement sector if the original one tests bad)

so you see in desktop drives TLER= off the drive can spend all day trying to self recover data
and in raid drives TLER=on so the controller wont think the drive has failed and drop it from the array.

Also in raid0 if one drive gets dropped the whole array is lost. Raid 0 is built for pure speed, there is no redundancy and sector data cannot be gotten from anywhere else.

In a pc you should be ok with a 2 drive raid0 or 1. If a drive gets dropped usually a reboot will resync the drives and form the array again - unless one of the drives truly does have a problem.

I hope you sense that with raid0 especially that being good on making backup copies is important.


so if im using a laptop and raid0 i want drives that have tler?
a b G Storage
January 20, 2014 8:26:02 PM

If you are that concerned about the drives having TLER then you will need to purchase the WD Red Drives which are designed for NAS/RAID setups however please note the RED Drives are more in price.
a c 971 G Storage
January 21, 2014 7:49:54 PM

TLER isn't real important in a 2 drive raid. Whats important is you being good in backing up your important files and knowing that theres a possibility you can lose the array and have to reinstall everything.

I have 4 raids in my desktop alone. While normally I run drives compatible with raids I do have 2 toshiba's in there and recently tested two 3tb seagates which worked fine for 3 months before I moved them to my server.
!