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Western Digital advanced format drive
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Author:  cantator [ Tue Jul 20, 2010 7:44 pm ]
Post subject:  Western Digital advanced format drive
Has anyone had any experience with these drives?

Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARS 2TB 64MB Cache

Just wondering how the advanced format plays with LinHes..
Author:  nicom [ Tue Jul 20, 2010 8:53 pm ]
Post subject: 
I added a 1TB version, the WD10EARS, to my system. The new drive now contains the operating system and it works fine. My old 500GB drive is just there for additional capacity.
Author:  graysky [ Thu Jul 22, 2010 2:33 pm ]
Post subject: 
I have the WD20EARS as my 'backup' drive. I also wrote a wiki article with some good info on it you can read here.
Author:  nicom [ Thu Jul 22, 2010 9:41 pm ]
Post subject: 
It looks like I did not do enough research. I guess I will need to reformat and re-install as per graysky's wiki if I want to get max performance. I have noticed some hesitation in the menus and the time to get to Grub screen on boot is very slow. Could that be a result of misalignment?
Author:  TVBox [ Fri Jul 23, 2010 3:38 am ]
Post subject: 
graysky
Thanks for your wiki. I been looking for another hard drive. Now I won't blind sided by the new technology.

in your wiki article you have one of those spell check errors.
Quote:
will attempt to part the read heads once every 8 seconds

I think you mean
Quote:
will attempt to park the read heads once every 8 seconds


Seems to be a firmware update for this problem. (Note: I spent little time reading this so it could all be BS)

Quote:
Before you consider to buy / use one of the Western Digital GreenPower drives you should be aware of their high Load_Cycle_Count value as a factory settings. What it meas that WD GREEN drive parks its head every 8 seconds which rapidly decreases its usability. WD support provides tool called RE2GP Idle Mode Update Utility short for "wdidle" to fix this problem. RE2GP Idle Mode Update

wdidle utility can be downloaded here:

http://support.wdc.com/product/download ... 09&sid=113

READ MORE ABOUT THIS ISSUE HERE:

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/l ... nel/903485

TVBox
Author:  cantator [ Fri Jul 23, 2010 9:53 am ]
Post subject: 
Yes, graysky, thank you for the wiki article. It was very enlightening. It would seem that I have nothing to fear (but fear itself).

The new HDD is sitting on the steps waiting for me, so I will be playing with it tonight. I have to transfer about 1.7TB of data from my backend to this, refresh my install (need to make larger OS partition so I can play with diskless frontend), and have it all back together before the family gets back from the Dominican. I am imagining that I can format this, creating a /tv directory, and transfer the data to it. Then, once I re-install, I should be able to add it back in as a storage group, not losing any data (of course, I will have saved and uploaded the database). Does this sound right to everyone? I would hate to lose my seven year olds 249 episodes of "Bewitched", not to mention my wife's data.

Thanks again everyone for all your input!
Author:  graysky [ Sun Jul 25, 2010 6:01 pm ]
Post subject: 
Glad you found the wiki page useful. Have you considered transcoding those 249 episodes from mpeg-2 to x264? Probably take up 1/3-1/4 of the space...
Author:  cantator [ Sun Jul 25, 2010 8:32 pm ]
Post subject: 
Good thinking. No, I hadn't, but will consider it for the future. Perhaps I'll throw a quad core chip in there come my birthday...

I'm transferring the last of the data now. So far so good. I went with the xfs file system this time after five years of ext 3/4.

LinHES is a far cry from all the diddling that was done with R4, especially with the PVR350 TV out. Thank you Cecil et al!!!
Author:  nicom [ Mon Jul 26, 2010 12:43 am ]
Post subject: 
I currently have my OS installed on the WD10EARS with default partitioning so I assume I have an alignment issue. Would my best bet be to reinstall LinHES onto my old 500GB drive and use the WD10EARS as pure storage area? That way its a single partitioning job in fdisk.

Also I have searched the man page and the net but am unable to find what the -s option does in fdisk. Is that what puts it into sector mode?
Author:  graysky [ Mon Jul 26, 2010 1:11 am ]
Post subject: 
nicom wrote:
I currently have my OS installed on the WD10EARS with default partitioning so I assume I have an alignment issue. Would my best bet be to reinstall LinHES onto my old 500GB drive and use the WD10EARS as pure storage area? That way its a single partitioning job in fdisk.

Also I have searched the man page and the net but am unable to find what the -s option does in fdisk. Is that what puts it into sector mode?


Firstly, you might be aligned now... post the output of:
Code:
# fdisk -lu


Secondly, it doesn't matter if you have a single partition or four primary partitions if fdisk did it correctly. I forget the details, but I read there are caveats about using extended and logical partitions.
Author:  cantator [ Mon Jul 26, 2010 6:45 am ]
Post subject: 
I'm curious about mine. It would appear that I got it aligned correctly, but if you could look at it, I would appreciate it.

Code:
Disk /dev/sdb: 2000.3 GB, 2000398934016 bytes
81 heads, 63 sectors/track, 765633 cylinders, total 3907029168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000ba3ab

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1              64  3907029167  1953514552   83  Linux


:D
Author:  nicom [ Tue Jul 27, 2010 2:48 am ]
Post subject: 
Here is the output
Code:
[mythtv@Silverstone ~]$ sudo fdisk -lu

Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000e1212

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *          63    10233404     5116671   83  Linux
/dev/sda2        10233405    12257594     1012095   83  Linux
/dev/sda3        12257595  1953520064   970631235   83  Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x7afd569b

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *          63     9783584     4891761   83  Linux
/dev/sdb2         9783585    13703444     1959930   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb3        13703445   976768064   481532310   83  Linux
sda is the WD10EARS. Since it starts at sector 63 my guess is it is not right.

Also looking at the output I notice that the swap partition is my old one on sdb although when I installed the intention was for sda2 to be the swap partition. Is that likely to cause a problem? My original intention was to reformate sdb to a single xfs partition for tv storage. I guess before I do that I need to make sda2 swap.
Author:  cantator [ Tue Jul 27, 2010 12:56 pm ]
Post subject: 
Comparing mine to yours, it would seem that yours is misaligned. And your /dev/sdb drive was not wiped out to one partition. You're probably losing 7-8 gigs of space.

I finally was able to finish up my new/refreshed install last night. Even went with the diskless front end. Woohoo! I had tried it before, but never had any success. This time, it rocks! That'll help save energy, and I can use the HDD for something else. God I love Mythtv/LinHES! (my wife says "why don't you marry it then?" -if she only knew... :wink: :lol: )
Author:  graysky [ Wed Jul 28, 2010 2:23 pm ]
Post subject: 
@cantator - 81 heads and 63 sectors/track is not alligned I think. Also, starting at 64 is not aligned.
@nicom - 255 heads and 63 sectors/track is not alligned I think. Also, starting at 63 is not aligned.

I can't verify now because I'm not near the system I have with the WD20EARS. I show you the output of my SSD which is aligned:

Code:
Disk /dev/sdb: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
32 heads, 32 sectors/track, 152638 cylinders, total 156301488 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x76b978dc

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1            1024    25167871    12583424   83  Linux
/dev/sdb2        25167872   156301311    65566720   83  Linux


32 heads and 32 sectors/track and it starts on 1024.

My memory is that my WD20EARS starts on 2048 but I can't remember the heads and sectors/track.
Author:  cantator [ Thu Jul 29, 2010 12:23 pm ]
Post subject: 
I did an hdparm on my WD EARS, and it turned back a pretty reasonable read time:

Code:
[root@Mythtv crazyhorse]# hdparm -t --direct /dev/sdb

/dev/sdb:
 Timing O_DIRECT disk reads:  346 MB in  3.00 seconds = 115.30 MB/sec
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