Hard Drive Transfer Issues


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I just got 5 new WD Green 3TB internal drives and I am having issues with transfers.

 

From one on those 3TB to another, 16GB worth of files, it keeps going from 0/bytes/s up to 45MB/s. Up and down. Sometimes staying on 0 for awhile. But up and back down. It's basically resulting in the slowest transfer possible.

 

I have never seen this before in my life.

 

Ideas? I am using Windows 8.1.

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Black WD drives are the fastest.

 

Green and others vary in speed.

 

You could try replacing or tightening the drive cable.

 

Maybe it is caused by file Indexing.

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File Indexing? It's a new system...

 

Now the system is having all kinds of issues.

I downloaded WDs test program, it loads fine, but when I do a test, it just stays there and does nothing, I have to End Task in Task Manager to get out.

 

Explorer loads slow, now one of the drives takes 30 seconds to be recognized each time I click on it, it randomly changed its name back to Local Disk.

 

The system seems to be acting weird, all related to the drives.

 

Also, I had to cancel a transfer (which took a reboot to remove) and started another, both basically stopped and didn't continue around 40%. Then tried again, and it was transferring at 125MB/s until 97% where it stopped.

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there might be an issue with one of the drives or a Sata cable the drive is using. 

 

try doing a speedtest on the drives to see if any of them give a diffrent reading so you can work out which one might have an issue.

 

HD Tune

http://www.hdtune.com/

 

try testing the speed of the drives in safe mode also.

 

might also try disabling System restore if your running windows, as windows will make copies.

 

when you first install windows, it does start out slow, usually down to Indexing service, Hyperfetch service and system restore. disable indexing and system restore in the control panel, administrative tools, Services, or in the start menu type 'services'.

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Something not right with those drives then. I have 2TB Greens here and they do full 130MB/s all the time.

 

What file system as you using on them?

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Windows 8.1, NTFS.

 

I am going to give it some time, as at times it seems normal, others not. I will play with HD Tune, but WDs own software didn't seem to work (just was stuck).

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How exactly are you connecting the drives to the PC?

 

Have you tried different cables?

Does your mobo have more than one sata controller?

 

Have/can you try the drive in another machine?

 

Is it only happening with one of the new drives?

 

Have you tried using a 3rd party file copy application, like KillCopy.

 

Try a Live Linux CD <-- This has helped me with dodgy drives in the past.

 

If you haven't already, in Disk Managment, convert the new disks to GPT. (Just as par for the course. I wouldn't expect this to make a difference)

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So it appears to be a bad drive. It seemed the issues were happening while the drive was dying, as now that the software shows it as failed, things seem better. I could even transfer files off of it (backup) at normal fast speeds.

 

I ran HD Tune, and then finally got WD's software to work. One of the drives, where the files were being moved from shows as failed (raw read error).

 

So now I am worried. I bought these 5 drives from a person, suppose to be new, looked new, acted new when I plugged them in (was not formatted before), but now if one failed, kinda worried others are going to have issues.

 

See if I can get money back/replacement from this person, and/or get a warrenty from WD.

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Take a look at the reviews, I think they say enough about the drive.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA2W00YW3509

 

Here is the very first review:

Pros: NONE

Cons: I ordered 3 at once and 2 of them were DOA, i usually buy Seagate Drives but i wanted to try out the green version. But i guess these aren't as reliable.

Other Thoughts: I have tried the BLACK version WD drives and they have been working fine for the last 2 years but green ones aren't as robust

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you can see in the SMART of those drives the work hours those drives have; if they are new the work hours should be very low.

 

Also green drives... :x

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I don't see work hours anywhere in either software.

 

I see power on hours, but no information for it....it looks like the rest of the reports.

 

I think it is just the one bad one...so maybe he will replace it for me (he has the ability to do so, its a matter if he will)

 

Also, I got Greens because it was my only option. I just spent a fair amount on the system, and found this deal, 5 3TB drives for $375. Can't come close to that anywhere.

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Because of this situation, am now considering RAID.

 

The reason I was not doing it because it took more effort to setup (I assumed), I always hear about people losing the RAID config or something and then losing everything, and because from my understanding, you lose space with RAID (depending).

 

So I have 5 3TB drives (or at least I will when I get one replaced) and this is what I want.

 

I want 15TB of space,

I want the files to be redundant (I think that's the term, basically can't lose the files, as it's kinda backed up already)

I want to be able to pull out a 3TB drive, replace it with another, or maybe a 4TB, or a 6TB when they come.

I don't want to think about it or worry about it.

 

Ideas, suggestions?

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That would be a raid 0 no redundancy, loose one drive loose the whole set. If you want redundancy/protection you will be looking space by 1 drive in a raid 5. You have 5 drives, you could do raid 5, 6 or 10. I would probably do raid 10 but you loose half your drive space but allow for two drive failures.

Raid 0 combines all of the drives and adds no redundancy.

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sorry it's power on hours, not work hours :D :D :D

green disks aren't RAID friendly; WD RED disks are the official RAID supported in many NAS.

 

Also green disks have the head parking feature that annoys the hell of it and kills performance (although it can be extended from the default seconds to minutes).

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Here are your raid options:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

 

Simply

Raid 0 = combination of all drive space, 5x3TB= 15 TB of drive space.  One drive failure = complete loss of data.

Raid 1 = mirror.  1 drive mirrors another drive, need an even amount of drives.  4/2=2drives worth of space.  2x3TB = 6TB.  Allows for 1/2 of the array to fail, but only on one side (you have 2 sides)

Raid 2-4 not commonly used.

Raid 5 = striping and parity.  Need 3 drives minimum.  You end up losing 1 drives worth of space.  This allows for 1 drive failure.

Raid 6 = striping and double parity.  Need 4 drives minimum.  You end up losing 2 drives worth of space.  This allows for 2 simultaneous drive failures. 

Raid 10 = 1+0, so it is a mirror and a combination.  In your situation it will give the same TB as a Raid 1 but give the ability of 2 drive failures in opposite clusters.  You will need an even amount of drives for this.  This is also considered the fastest/best performer out of all of the other options.

 

The best situation for you would be a raid 6.  But you do lose 2/5ths of your total drive space going only to about 9TB.  That would give you the max space and be the most fault tolerant. 

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There is no way to provide parity without loss of space - its just impossible. There is no way to see 15TB with 5x3TB drives if you use any sort of raid parity.

So what was the power on time for these new drives you bought.. So for example here is one of the newer 3TB drives I have

post-14624-0-20950000-1385043357.png

And here is one of my OLD drives 750GB

post-14624-0-60969200-1385043380.png

Bit of difference in power on hours ;)

So question for you on how best to use these drives - how much space of the possible 15TB are you going to be using right off the bat? What is on these drives - I have to assume this is new home for your media library that is better than netflix ;)

I have to assume these files can be gotten again? Or this is going to be backup for your library?

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Can't use Green drives in RAID so you'll see something like DrivePool or BitPool i think it's called (Budman or someone can correct me) or even Storage Spaces on Windows 8/8.1 or Server 2012/R2.

 

The pooling options work best with those drives as they can have some fault tolerance but also provide lots of space by combining all drives into 1 large one. There's no real other choice for you when it comes to that. 

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Roger, I believe this is what you are referring to:

 

Western Digital manufactures desktop edition hard drives and RAID Edition hard drives. Each type of hard drive is designed to work specifically in either a desktop computer environment or a demanding enterprise environment.

If you install and use a desktop edition hard drive connected to a RAID controller, the drive may not work correctly unless jointly qualified by an enterprise OEM. This is caused by the normal error recovery procedure that a desktop edition hard drive uses.

When an error is found on a desktop edition hard drive, the drive will enter into a deep recovery cycle to attempt to repair the error, recover the data from the problematic area, and then reallocate a dedicated area to replace the problematic area. This process can take up to 2 minutes depending on the severity of the issue. Most RAID controllers allow a very short amount of time for a hard drive to recover from an error. If a hard drive takes too long to complete this process, the drive will be dropped from the RAID array. Most RAID controllers allow from 7 to 15 seconds for error recovery before dropping a hard drive from an array. Western Digital does not recommend installing desktop edition hard drives in an enterprise environment (on a RAID controller).

Western Digital RAID edition hard drives have a feature called TLER (Time Limited Error Recovery) which stops the hard drive from entering into a deep recovery cycle. The hard drive will only spend 7 seconds to attempt to recover. This means that the hard drive will not be dropped from a RAID array. Though TLER is designed for RAID environments, it is fully compatible and will not be detrimental when used in non-RAID environments.
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With how much storage drives have now doing redundancy even with RAID 5 and 5 drives is not recommended plus it wouldn?t give you 15TB with 3TB drive and to say you want to pull out a 3TB drive likely to all one by one for more storage that really is not recommended not with todays drives and the amount of rebuilding the array you would have to do. So for RAID 5 with the storage drives are you really should only do a array with 3 drives and RAID 6 with 5 drives would be a good option but still your never going to get your 15TB with the amount of drives you have and expect it to be safe and then you need to run checks on it.

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Yeah I use drivepool http://stablebit.com/ and love it - I personally see no point to raid in the home other than say 0 for performance, stuff that is stored is not critical to warrant the cost. I don't need my movie library up 24/7/365, etc.. I don't need to hedge against hardware failure in my cost model for storage - so traditional raids are not worth the buck if you ask me.

I believe the point that PeterUK is trying to make is with the size of disks these days and the size of the array - even on failure of disk.. The likely hood that you will hit a bit error on the recovery is HIGH.. I believe something around 10TB you have like a 50% change of not being able to restore the array on loss of disk, because you will hit an error on reading the parity, etc. Would have to recheck the math but creating large typical raid 5 with large disks is not good idea. Also I do believe are all aware he wont see really 15TB -- just using that as easier way talking about the size of 5x3TB in jbod, it will be something smaller than actually 15TB yes

What I feel is a good home storage idea is pooling your disks so they look like 1 share, lots of ways to go about this. But having them look like 1 large storage makes it easier to work with. Let the software deal with where the files actually get placed, etc.

Now for files your worried about - home movies, etc. And want to hedge your bets with - you can do duplication of those files/folders so they are on more than 1 disk in your pool. This is NOT a actual replacement of good backup or DR, but does hedge your bits a bit that if you loose a drive you won't have to recover those more important files, etc.

This gives you most bang for your buck in storage space, and allows you hedge loss of disk loosing specific files. Also this model if you do loose a disk.. Only the files on that disk are lost - so less files you have to recover from your backup, or rerip from your bluray or dvd, etc

Keep in mind with home usage - and use of smart info, or drive scanners - except for just out of the blue failure, you should hopefully be rotating your disks out of your pool before they actually fail. For example that 750GB disk with 4+ years is not currently in my pool, it was replaced with a 2TB drive a while back when my scanner noticed some issues with it. I just have it in the machine because have not had time to pull it out yet and was using it for temp storage as I moved some files around and played with the some issues was having with the 3TB disk and windows seeing the gpt partitions, etc.

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Interesting topic this has developed into.

Slightly off topic (though no majorly)... Is it possible to pool storage across multiple machines, with redundancy, using something like drivebender/drivepool??

Eg 3 desktop systems with 200-300Gb free space on each, pooled together over a LAN

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