This morning I received a tweet about WD Red drives not supporting Time Limited Error Recovery. TLER is the feature which allows a RAID comprised of Reds to much more gracefully handle drive failures and/or read errors. It's carried down from enterprise drives like the RE4 and RE4-GP.
I'm posting this quick note here to let the masses know that the Red drives *do* in fact support TLER. It's a primary component of NASware – the NAS aware firmware that drives the Reds. Here's the official reply I received from Western Digital:
WD does enable intelligent error recovery controls, which is not the same as a desktop drive. WD's exclusive NASware technology is built in each WD Red drive, which reduces the concern with using desktop drives in a RAID environment.
More info on details of NASware can be found here: http://www.wd.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=810
Western Digital has assured me they are tracking down where the miscommunication occurred.
Many thanks, Allyn, for this
Many thanks, Allyn, for this clarification.
I know that, in the past, I’ve noticed quite a few complaints posted at Newegg, when WDC’s non-TLER HDDs started to fail in RAID configurations e.g. Caviar Black series.
RTFM (Read The [F]ine Manual!! … not always “Fine” however :]
KEEP UP THE GOOD STORAGE WORK, Allyn!
MRFS
I think the confusion might
I think the confusion might stem from the fact that the WD TLER (TLERSCAN.EXE) reports that these drives do not in fact support TLER, at least not TLER as we’ve come to know it. I have 2 2TB WD Reds I just purchased and tested before finding your site in a google-rage. My drives do not support the TLER utility that works with RE3/4, some Blacks, Blues, and Greens
This page is hilarious!
This page is hilarious! Nowhere in the linked document does it state that TLER is supported by WD Reds. They dance around the whole issue by alluding to things that might sound like TLER, but they never actually use the term. I believe that the reds are simply greens with error recovery disabled; I’m not certain of that, but it seems to be what they’re describing.