Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

TLER Utility - WDTLER.ZIP Western Digital Utility

Collapse
This is a sticky topic.
X
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • #16
    PK442,

    Are you using Hardware raid or on board raid? As far as your drives, I am pretty sure that WD is shipping all their drives with TLER set on. And to tell you the truth, I ran my raid 5 with 3 drives for 9 months with TLER set off, and had no issues what-so-ever.

    Set up your raid, and don't worry about it. If you are using an actual hardware raid card, you will not have any problems. It seems like all the issues revolve around on-board raid setups, which are in reality "software" raids, and performance wise, you wasting your time and money.

    I did extensive testing with on-board raids, and most times the performance was the same or less then using a single drive.

    Good luck!

    Comment


    • #17
      Posted by: pk442

      Thanks for the Reply. If it is true that WD is shipping all their Drives (even the non-raid edition models - like the Caviars) with TLER on, then that would be great. Where did you get that information, or are you sure it is true?

      I am concerned because I've read a few posts where people are saying that the TLER Utility is not working on the newer batches of WD drives. Since it is a DOS routine how do you check to see if it was successful? (Sorry if this was already answered - maybe I need to go through and re-read this thread).

      I recently purchased 6 of these drives and have not even opened them yet. 4 of them will be in the raid, and the other two will be stand alone drives - one with the Win 7 OS on it. If they are not going to work in a raid, then I would prefer to return them and buy a different brand of drive that will work in a Raid.

      I currently have a 4 year old system with a raid of 4 old Maxtor 250g drives. It is a Silicon Image Sata raid - that came on my ASUS mother board. I do a lot of HD video editing, so they get a work out and have not given me even one hiccup.

      I am building a new P55 system with a Gigabyte mobo, and was planning to use the on board raid. From what you say, a hardware raid would be better, but the software one has been sufficient for my needs in the past. While the drives have to be able to stream full HD in real time, I believe the reason the HD rendering takes so long is based more on processor limitations as the program is trying to render edits with color correction, effects, etc. - but maybe I'm wrong on that.

      Thanks again for the info and any feedback you may have. Have a Great day - PK

      Comment


      • #18
        Ok, Let me see if I can answer all your questions. I bought a WD Black drive and TLER was enabled from the factory. I have also just bought a Velociraptor drive and it also had the TLER on from the factory.

        So I would imagine all their high end drives have TLER enabled, but I cannot give you a 100% confirmation. I do know I have ran a raid setup with TLER on and with it off, and never experienced any issues.

        Yes, TLER is DOS driven, when you run it, you can do a scan, and it shows you the TLER status. Make sure you have the drives you want to check/adjust hooked into the motherboard, and motherboard set on IDE, or TLER won't recognize your drives.

        When you enable or disable TLER, it gives you a confirmation. So even though it is DOS driven, it does give you the status.

        If you are truly concerned about the whole TLER option and using the correct drives, return your Black drives and get the Western Digital RE3 Drives. These are enterprise drives made for Raid, and definitely come with TLER ON! They are not much more expensive, but there is a cost difference.

        If you are spending all this money on a system designed for Video streaming, don't waste your time with on board raid. Motherboard raid is a totally software driven raid that uses your processor/memory to do the work. So essentially you are losing performance. This will most definitely impact your video performance.

        I have done tests using on board raid, and the results were actually slower then a single drive most of the time. If you want true performance, and a huge step above on board raid. Get a TRUE hardware raid card. Be careful, there is plenty of raid cards that are cheap and still USE software!!!

        Go with something like the Areca I use. The speeds are incredible.

        High Voltage

        Comment


        • #19
          Posted by: pk442

          Thanks for your reply, sorry It took so long to get back, but I've been on the road again.
          Looking on Newegg and other forums, I'm finding a lot of comment like the ones I've copied below. IF these people are correct and this is a "NEW" feature - ie: disabling the ability to use the TLER utility and forcing you to pay for their RE edition drives - that cost twice as much, then I don't want screw these drives up and find I can't return them. I prefer to use these if at all possible due to good performance/reliability/cost. I will look to other brands if WD is forcing me to pay big $$ for their RE edition.
          So I hope you are right . You suggest hooking it up via IDE. It's a SATA 2 drive, how do I hook it via IDE?? Can I check the current status of TLER on these drives first? Or do I just run the dos utility and see what happens. Sorry to ask so many questions, but I really do appreciate all the help and info I can get. Thanks again - PK

          Comment


          • #20
            No No, Misunderstood. In order for the TLER program to recognize your drive, you must set your motherboard to IDE. So you can set/adjust the TLER in DOS with the program on startup. YOu have to startup with a DOS disk, then use the TLER program. If you have your motherboard set on RAID, or AHCI, then TLER will not see any drives. Do you must set up the motherboard as IDE, to use the TLER DOS disk only!

            After you set the TLER, then you set your motherboard up as RAID, or AHCI. Thing only thing I highly suggest is using the drives with an ACTUAL raid hardware card.

            As far as the TLER settings on the drives, Western Digital would be best to answer that for you. Remember, I ran my raid 5 with 3 drives for over 9 months, with TLER OFF, and never had any issues, but I was using a hardware raid card. I then turned TLER ON, and never have had any problems at all.

            ALL hard drive manufacturers recommend using drives made to be RAIDED, hence, the WD RE drives. If you ask Seagate, Samsung, Toshiba, Hitachi, etc. They all will tell you that your at your own risk with using normal desktop drives in a raid configuration.

            To test the drives, you must use the TLER utility, copied on a DOS startup disk. Change your motherboard from Raid, or AHCI to IDE (even though you use a SATA drive) your motherboard will consider it a IDE configuration with the sata drive. Then boot up with your tler startup disk. Once you get the dos prompt, type:
            TLERSCAN and it will tell you the settings on the drives. MAKE SURE YOU ONLY HAVE THE WD DRIVES HOOKED TO THE MOTHERBOARD, no other drives should be installed except for the hard drives you want to check or change TLER on, and your floppy.

            Most of this as WD would tell you is at your own trial and error, and at your own risk. None of the drive makers are going to recommend regular desk top drives for a Raid environment. BUT, like I said, a good hardware raid card, will take care of all the work, and utilize most good quality desktop drives.

            Comment


            • #21
              Posted by: DaXearo

              Hello,

              I currently run 3 WD20EARS drives in a RAID5 array on a Adaptec 5805 RAID controller under Windows 7. (with a backup battery on the controller)
              I've got a strange problem: Once in few shut downs and boot ups, my array gets degraded and I have to rebuild it.
              I never have I 'degradation' when my computer is running, it always happens after a few hours of shut down.
              It's always the same drives that 'failed' so I thought that it was a hw problem with this drive.
              But since I did several 'scans' on this disk and never finds a single hw problem.. I thinks it's related to the power down or maybe the TLER settings? (Since those drives have TLER disabled).
              Or is it something else?
              The controller also reports " Event Description: The battery-backup cache device needs a new battery: controller 1. " after my computer was shut down for a few hours. And then after +- 10 minutes it reports: " Event Description: The battery voltage is normal: controller 1. "
              I already jumpered my drives to 1500SATA since Adaptec support advised me to do so.
              But the problem is recurring...
              My motherboard is an Asus P7P55 WS SuperComputer. (default BIOS settings)

              Can anyone help me out on this?

              Comment


              • #22
                Hi Daxearo,

                Wow you have a really odd problem. Did you disconnect the battery backup and see if you still have problems? I run an areca card, without any battery backup, but I have a UPS on my system.

                I do not know much about the "Green" WD drives, but you may not even be able to mess with the TLER settings. Western Digital only recommends their Enterprise Drives for Raid Configurations, but honestly, I don't think your issue has ANYTHING to do with TLER. TLER failures would happen when the system is running and under a disk intensive load. Not while it is off.

                The fact that you get event messages revolving around the Battery backup tells me that either it is a bad/shorted battery, or you have a bad Raid card. I am leaning towards the bad raid card.

                The battery backup only holds the cache if a power interruption happens when your system is running. It then stores the cache and writes it once your system is running. Again, this would have nothing to do with a drive failing in the raid. Hence why I think to disconnect that battery first and see if problem reoccurs, if it does, I would recommend replacing the raid card.

                Comment


                • #23
                  Posted by: OnData

                  Hi, I'm using two 320 Caviar Blue HDs. First I configured them in Raid 0, all went fast and well for about a month, then the raid program showed a warning telling one disk was failling and that I should back-up all data. But still worked well for another month (with the warning) until one day it wouldn't boot.
                  Now I'm using the same drives in a Raid 1 configuration, again all worked well for about a month, and then almost every week, the program tells me that one disk is being recovered, (it's been three months now) and gets slower every day.
                  Would changing the TLER settings help? Can I do so, in a working PC, or should I reload all software and data again, after swithching TLER ?
                  Core2Duo 3Ghz 6Mb L2, Asus P5K3 Deluxe, 4Gb OCZ- 1600s, Intel P35 - H9R, Intel Matrix Storage 8.9.0.1023,
                  W-D Caviar Blue WDC-WD3200AAKS-00V1A0 X 2
                  Thanks for you help.

                  Comment


                  • #24
                    Honestly, with all the problems people are having, and 99.9% of them are when people are using "on-board" raid, I wouldn't recommend a raid configuration with any on-board raid. If you choose to use your on-board raid, the only recommendation I would have is to use enterprise drives designed for raid.

                    TLER is not going to fix your problems.

                    Comment


                    • #25
                      Posted by:xndyr

                      I've been reading through this thread, and I have a 3ware (now LSI) hardware RAID card. I have 3 WD Caviar Black drives in a RAID 5. I have started to see a couple of errors from the 3ware error reporting tool, and started to wonder if the TLER setting could be a contributing factor.


                      I have a couple of questions, since it appears you have a fair amount of experience with using this utility.


                      1) is using this utility destructive to any data? I have about 1TB of data on the drives and I would hate to loose it by running this utility. (Yes I know it is always a good idea to back up any data before doing anything like this, but it's also a bit more problematic backing up that much data )


                      2) a couple of times in the thread here, it sounds like the TLER setting should be set to OFF for RAID drives, but other times it sounds as though the TLER should be set to ON for RAID drives. Which is it? I thought it was supposed to be ON for RAID and OFF for non-RAID, but just want to triple check before trying anything.


                      3) in your experience, if i'm having some errors on this array, reported through the RAID card diagnostic software, do you believe that this TLER setting isn't going to affect anything (since this is a high-end hardware RAID Card, and you have several times suggested that this setting is really only important in software RAID situations)?


                      thanks for any assistance you can offer.

                      Comment


                      • #26
                        Hey there.

                        When you see the errors, is it from just one of the drives, or all 3 drives? I know my raid card allows me to see which drive is causing an error.

                        I'll try to answer all your questions:


                        • I have switched the TLER on and off without destruction to my data, but, I would not even try it without a backup. If you are to attempt to turn TLER on or off, make sure you take your raid card out of the computer/disconnected. The only way to turn the TLER on or off is setting your BIOS up as IDE and hook the drive onto the motherboard as IDE. Then run the dos utility. If the raid card is left in the computer and you turn on it on, the raid will show up as failed, and you will lose everything. Then again, like I said, I strongly would make a backup before attempting anything.
                        • I have ran my raid setup fine with TLER off and also with TLER on. No problems either way. I think the reason is that a good hardware raid card does all the work anyway, with cache, etc, so there is not a need for TLER. The correct "settings" for TLER is ON for Raid, and OFF for non-raid. But guess what, Western digital is shipping all there drives capable of TLER with it on, so you can use it with raid or without raid.
                        • I wouldn't even attempt a raid with a "software raid" configuration. It is a waste of time. The performance I have found is slower then a single drive. Unless you are doing a raid "mirror", then it may be ok, cause you are just making a duplicate of your drives, but even so performance suffers.
                        • In you situation, from what I have seen, you can get a few errors and it would be ok. Every drive experiences errors and every raid experiences errors. Now, if you were having a TLER problem, most likely you would have a drive fall out of the raid. Most of the time, the errors here and there will be equal or close to equal amounts across all the drives, which is normal. If you get 1 drive that is loaded with errors and the other drives aren't, then I would say you have a bad drive, or one that is going bad.
                        • As always, any changes to drives is at your own risk, and a backup is always recommended before changing anything.
                        • Good luck.

                        Comment


                        • #27
                          Posted by: xndyr

                          Great, thanks for the reply. I would back up any critical data on the raid before doing anything like this.. and that's about half of the full size, but the other half is less important, so while it would be a bummer to lose, it wouldn't break my heart or anything .. backing up and restoring all the data would a bit of a hassle, and the question was mostly just to prepare myself for the likelihood that it might be necessary


                          I think though, as you said, that I may wait to see on the raid array before trying to change any settings on the drives. i may remove them from the raid card and run the scan just to see how they're currently configured (just for peace of mind though).


                          I'm not at home to check the error, and whether it was specific to one drive or all of them, but i'll be checking that when i get home, and then also watch to see if it's consistently the same drive reporting the error or if it is randomly any of the three. perhaps it's just one of the drive having issues


                          thanks again for the info, i'll post any findings or addtional information if it's something that may be helpful to others trying to resolve similar problems.


                          Cheers,
                          X

                          Comment


                          • #28
                            Posted by:codeslycer

                            Not sure if my previous post made it through due to an error so I apologize in advance for the duplicate post.I plan on using a Areca ARC-1231ML-4G PCI-Express x8 SATA II Controller Card in my new workstation which has a 4GB cache and can support up to 12 drives. The following is my proposed drive configuration:

                            4 x WD Black 500GB: RAID 10 Boot Array for Windows 7 and applications
                            6 x WD Black 1TB: RAID 5 or 6 Data Array
                            2 x WD Green 1TB: RAID 1 Backup Array for critical files

                            Given the full complement of drives, I felt the 4GB cache would help performance. Do you see any potential issues with this configuration given that WD is now confirmed to have disabled TLER on all new drives? Since this is a dedicated hardware RAID controller, I'm hoping there are no issues as you suggestion my I know my mileage may vary. Any suggestions you can offer to ensure optimal performance would be great.

                            Thanks

                            Joe

                            Comment


                            • #29
                              Hi Joe,

                              Well, I have not received an actual confirmation from WD that they have turned off TLER on all drives. I have heard from several people that they bought drives with TLER are on from the factory.

                              In your situation though, you are running a highly complex unit. With Running 3 raids like you are at the same time, I would not even attempt to do it without using a WD enterprise drive, such as their WD RE4, or WD RE3
                              enterprise drives that are designed for raid environments. They may cast slightly more, but you will get better performance in the long run and they are actually designed and built for what you want to do.

                              Keep in mind, in my situation, I am using WD velociraptor drives, which ARE in the Enterprise drive selection. They are made for raid configurations. Using extensive raid configurations like you are going to do with regular desktop drives is a bad idea.

                              They may last for a while, but I can only imagine you will run into issues sooner or later.

                              Good Luck!

                              Comment


                              • #30
                                Posted by:codeslycer

                                Thanks for the prompt response. After consideration, I've decided to just go with 12 500 RE3 drives and use 4 for the boot array and the rest for data. This way I have some peace of mind and keep my cost relatively low compared to using the 1TB drives.

                                Thanks again.

                                Joe

                                Comment

                                Working...
                                X