[wellylug] western digital??

Wed Nov 6 08:57:19 NZDT 2002

On Wed, 2002-11-06 at 08:44, Centurion Computer Technology Limited
wrote:
> Well here is a box I've spec'd for a firewall/gateway mailserver and
> webserver.
> 
> 1 Ghz Celeron, 128Mb PC133 ram, MB with built in Lan,snd,video,
> Mid tower case w 300W psu, floppy, 20Gb 7200RPM WD hdd, 2nd network
> card.
>

Hi Daniel,,

I thought you might like to read this email on Western Digital hard
drives, and their incompatibility with Linux (because of their
incompatibility with the industry specifications).

Perhaps things have changed since May, but you may find it interesting
all the same.

Damon

-----Forwarded Message-----

From: civileme <civileme at civileme.net>
To: expert at linux-mandrake.com
Subject: Re: [expert] Hard drives: any thoughts?
Date: 19 May 2002 12:26:32 -0800

Nelson Bartley wrote:

>Question for you guys, why do you dislike WD hard drives?
>
>I've currently got a 20GB 7200 in my server and it runs beautifully.
>It's quiet, I've never had a problem with it, and it's plenty fast. I
>know of all the IBM hard drive problems, however where are these WD
>problems comming from?
>
>NB
>
OK

Firest of all, WD is made about as cheap as possible.  It has a single 
platter and two heads, which makes the track density about as high as 
the technology will allow.  Other manufactirers tend to use more 
platters and more heads, and sometimes dedicate one head to clocking the
data on the others.

WD reps have stated unequivocally at several shows that they DO NOT 
support linux at all, only Windows and Solaris.  That tends to indicate 
that there is something seriously out of spec with there stuff since 
they are unwilling to risk broad scrutiny with highly optimized linux 
drivers.  It also suggests that they have submitted their own drivers to
those op systems which tend to cover deficiencies in hardware.

My experience with WD drives includes a WD200AB which ran on a RedHat 
system at a whopping 1.62Mb/s when set to UDMA66..   I tinkered with the
settings using hdparm and eventually settled on UDMA33 with a 
performance increase to over 9M/s.

I use a WD64AA to reproduce disk errors and find workarounds for support
purposes.  It does signal service.  I can always count on it for

"Seems like memory missing as install crashes"
"hda: lost interrupt"
"0x51 {DriveReadySeekComplete}"

Type errors on a randomly occurring basis.  I know if I can tweak the 
chipset and the kernel to manage that drive, I can tell the customer 
what to do to get running, besides swapping out his horrid disks.

WD has an extended track record of failures and bad drives.  I once 
called them about a faulty drive, and it was the smoothest sales 
experience I EVER had. They obviously do not short their customer 
relations department.  But then that is spending money to do over the 
job that wasn't done properly the first time, and seems to me to be a 
scary mismanagement.  Build it right the first time,,,  An airline tha 
has a VP in charge of lost luggage would scare me just as much.

Now, on to facts about testing by Mr. Linux-ide himself.

http://kt.linuxcare.com/kernel-traffic/kt20000214_54.epl#2

Yes, it is not recent, but WD hasn't changed.  They still have odd 
timing and they still have a very bad workaround for leaving out the 
hardware to do 57-byte CRCs and the result is a noise in transmission 
from the computer becomes a permanent error on read-back.  The blow-off 
makes it look like the drive is faster but at the expense of a gamble on
data integrity.  Anyone around computers for a while knows that if an 
error has nonzero probability, it doesn't matter what the odds against 
it are, it WILL occur, and the probability only tells you how often to 
expect it.  And the hardware/software implementation had better chack 
for it and setup a recovery.  And WD seems to rely on the low 
probability, which is just how Andre Hedrick characterizes it.

And I am still seeing 8 times as many reports of problems with install 
or stability from WD owners as from Seagate owners.  I rarely see any 
from Maxtor owners, and even the slew of reports lately from owners of 
recent IBM disks who are running them 24/7 does not match the continured
high level of complaints (about our OS) from WD owners.

Civileme

  .-.   Wellington
  /V\   Linux
 // \\  Users       
/(   )\ Group
 ^^-^^
        http://wlug.paradise.net.nz/

To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
wellylug-unsubscribe at egroups.com

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ 