# Ok, So I am an idiot....



## Luckydawg (Apr 1, 2004)

So my Premiere XL4 was making intermittent noise like the HD was starting to go. It's got a WD20EURS and so I ran out and bought a WD20EFRX Red series so I could back it up before it crapped out. Took the cover off, and it's the #&@^# fan that was making the noise.

So, I figure I may as well make a backup while I can.

First - should I reinstall the old drive and keep the new one pristine, or figure that I've already got a couple of years out of the old drive and put the old one on the shelf?

Second - Any preference around here for ddrescue remix v12.04 vs. using JMFS v104? I have 316HD hours now and it seems I would have to run JMFS and not expand (both are 2TB), but it's not clear to me if I'd have to supersize? Somehow I think the bit for bit copy of ddrescue is somehow more logical, but I'd appreciate any thoughts.


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## L David Matheny (Jan 29, 2011)

Luckydawg said:


> First - should I reinstall the old drive and keep the new one pristine, or figure that I've already got a couple of years out of the old drive and put the old one on the shelf?
> 
> Second - Any preference around here for ddrescue remix v12.04 vs. using JMFS v104? I have 316HD hours now and it seems I would have to run JMFS and not expand (both are 2TB), but it's not clear to me if I'd have to supersize? Somehow I think the bit for bit copy of ddrescue is somehow more logical, but I'd appreciate any thoughts.


Before you do anything else, you want to run the WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostics long test on the new drive to make sure it's OK. Then I would probably clone the old drive to it using ddrescue and put the new drive on the shelf. But it might make more sense to retire the old drive to backup duty.

If using only ddrescue for cloning, I did prefer the Ubuntu Rescue Remix CD because ddrescue seemed to run faster, but I recently had it fail to boot properly when I was cloning a Linux drive. So I have now switched to the SystemRescueCD, which has a slightly newer version of ddrescue plus a nice GUI with terminal mode (for hdparm, ddrescue, etc), GParted, Midori browser and some other stuff. GParted seemed to have an issue copying a small FAT32 partition from one drive to another, but that's the only glitch I've seen so far. It's my new favorite rescue CD.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

If they have identical LBA numbers, I'd use 

ddrescue 

or 

dd_rescue

and bypass any need for the software to understand anything about the partioning.

Supersize is either turned on at present or it is not. If it is, it will be in the copy, and if it is not, it won't be in the copy.

Make the copy and test the copy in the TiVo.

I'm not qualified to tell you whether to use a WD Red in a TiVo long term or not, but I think user nooneyouknow has opined on the subject somewhat extensively around here somewhere. Search his posts.


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## nooneuknow (Feb 5, 2011)

unitron said:


> I'm not qualified to tell you whether to use a WD Red in a TiVo long term or not, but I think user noone*you*know has opined on the subject somewhat extensively around here somewhere. Search his posts.


It's noone*u*know, for the record, to help assist those actually interested in my opinions, which I try to make based on facts, datasheets, and (the least amount of) marketing material. I also incorporate the least biased tech news and review sites I can find data from, like AnandTech.

Find posts by me with this: http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/search.php?do=finduser&u=258633 Due to a few members who can't dislike me without being petty, or disagree peacefully, you'll have to dig for relevant posts, due to dilution of relevant material.

Find the most current hard drive info on the latter section of this thread (not the beginning, or middle, as some things have become outdated, or have changed): http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=507695 It's in the Roamio area. But, the info isn't confined to Roamios, unless it's about increased workload, due to tuner count, or capacities not supported by older models.

The WD Red NAS has TLER/ERC, for RAID use, which can be an issue, if the drive can't read/write a sector, and the drive essentially hides the problem from the TiVo, by timing out and moving on (without reporting a read/write failure to the TiVo). I had to pull a drive and do a full overwrite with zeroes, just because I had some weakly-written sectors, in areas critical to core TiVo function. The sectors were not bad, were not reallocated, and were simply recovered. While the drive was in the TiVo, the TiVo was unable to "deal with" the problem, even using the kickstarts.

This only happened on one of three base-Roamios, all running 3TB WD Red NAS drives. The others may have sectors with the same type of issue, but if not in critical areas, all they might do is cause a glitch in a recording.

If not for TLER/ERC, I'd put the WD Red NAS at the top of my recommended drives for TiVo use. Many are running them, and never had an issue like the one I had (or any weakly written sectors were not in critical areas, and have gone unnoticed).

If TLER/ERC didn't hide such issues from the TiVo, the TiVo would be able to deal with such issues. This behavior is great for RAID, but clearly a downside for TiVo, should TLER/ERC prevent the TiVo from dealing with a read/write issue in a critical area of the disk.

I'm not going to stop using WD Red NAS for my TiVos, due to this scenario, which I seem to be the first to experience, isolate, confirm, and report on, even though I spent months trying to figure out what was going on, before pulling the drive and using a PC to find what was hidden from the TiVo. The internal drive logging made it clear what was going on, once telemark pointed me to an article about "weak writes", what can cause them, and how it explained the sectors being recovered/reclaimed, without reallocation.

It really sucks that the ONLY way to deal with weak writes, on a TLER/ERC drive (being used for a TiVo drive), is a full read test, followed by a full overwrite with zeroes. If the drive didn't have the TLER/ERC function, the TiVo would deal with them.

Due to people who found they could download a WD tool, take many WD non-RAID drives, and enable TLER, using the tool meant for adjusting it on RAID drives, WD has locked users out of adjusting the setting.

If/when I find a way to disabled TLER on WD Red NAS drives, I'll make sure to share the details on TCF. I welcome any suggestions, as I'm not 100% convinced there's no way to disable TLER on them.

I recommend avoiding the WD Purple PURX drives. Besides them having a very low 60TB/yr workload rating, they also have TLER/ERC, and are NOT a newer model AV-GP EURX drive, as Newegg (and other resellers) have started flagging them as. They have a great deal of other highly specialized feature sets, of no use in a TiVo, which could add even more problems, like what I just wrote about.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

Apologies, I was going from memory.

You'd think by now I'd remember not to do that.


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## Luckydawg (Apr 1, 2004)

Thanks guys. At then end of they day, this is television, not life and death! I don't want to lose my recordings, but if I did (and I have before), my life won't end. Ironically, the larger my drive capacity, the more crap I tend to accumulate.

Now that I don't think my EURS is in dire straits, I'm going to make an image of the drive and return the EFRX until things settle down a bit in terms of what drives are the best options looking forward. 

I've been reading Noone's posts, and they sadly remind me of the progression in Windows -- everything is moving towards so-called idiot proofed locked down devices. Eventually, we'll be forced to pay whatever ransom is demanded for the functionality we need. Of course, the manufacturers will slowly and carefully change our perceptions from that which we now "want" to that which we will later conclude we "need".

George Orwell was right. He was just off by a few years.


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## ravingfans (Jan 12, 2009)

nooneuknow said:


> I recommend avoiding the WD Purple PURX drives. Besides them having a very low 60TB/yr workload rating, they also have TLER/ERC, and are NOT a newer model AV-GP EURX drive, as Newegg (and other resellers) have started flagging them as. They have a great deal of other highly specialized feature sets, of no use in a TiVo, which could add even more problems, like what I just wrote about.


Thanks for all the advice/info, here are a couple of interesting data points I discovered today: 

 My new Roamio Plus had the WD10EURX Green drive installed. 
 The Upgrade kit from WK replaces that drive with the WD40PURX Purple Drive. 
 I will say that when I first bought my S3 and upgraded with the WK kit at the time--that kit lasted about 3 years and the external drive died. Don't know if it was the eSATA chassis or the drive itself, but by that time I was able to get a 2TB internal drive working, so fewer points of failure to deal with.

*Noone: *I fully agree with your logic and discussion. For the 3TB upgrade on my parent's Roamio basic I will go with the WD30EURS Green, as I really need problems to be minimal since they live a full day's drive away.


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## nooneuknow (Feb 5, 2011)

ravingfans said:


> Thanks for all the advice/info, here are a couple of interesting data points I discovered today:
> 
> My new Roamio Plus had the WD10E*Z*RX Green drive installed.
> The Upgrade kit from WK replaces that drive with the WD40PURX Purple Drive.
> ...


Is that "*Z*" I *underlined* a typo, or mistake? This would be the first report of a new, never tampered with, TiVo coming with an EZRX drive.
If it's not a typo, or mistake, I'd worry that you bought a unit that was purchased, drive-swapped, and returned.
Please confirm what the stock drive is, and look for the label TiVo adds, which has a barcode, and the shipping software version.
I'm not surprised that WK uses the PURX. It's cheaper than the AV-GP, and the odds are in WK's favor, that the drive will last as long as the warranty. Beyond that, it's hard to say much about a drive not around long enough to gauge the lifespan on, once verified not DOA, or an infant mortality case...
If you ever start experiencing periods of long-spinning blue circles in the menus, combined with stuttering playback of the intro video, and it taking more than 1 second for the System Information screen to fully populate, those are signs of problems related to TLER/ERC.
Oh, and the current model of AV-GP drive is EURX (EURS was the SATA-II model, before it).

Thank you for your vote of confidence. I'll be needing a lot of them, or I'm a dead member walking. I almost feel like quitting, before the other shoe drops, just to leave on my own terms...


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## ravingfans (Jan 12, 2009)

nooneuknow said:


> Is that "*Z*" I *underlined* a typo, or mistake? This would be the first report of a new, never tampered with, TiVo coming with an EZRX drive.


Man I whiffed on that one! You are correct it was the EURX so I edited my post. I'm going to blame it on eyesight! Picture below shows the upgraded WK WD40PURX drive on Left and the original TiVo WD10EURX drive on Right

I don't see a TiVo barcode sticker on the drive though

I'm not sure if the $141 WDEURS (yes an *S*) that I have on order will arrive in time for my trip to upgrade the new Roamio Basic I sent my folks, so I picked up the WD 3TB Red that I found at MicroCenter for $120. Looks like from the dialogue here it is the best choice I had locally (TLER/ERC notwithstanding). If the Green EURS gets here in time I think I'll use it, but if not, the Red seems like a good fallback plan.


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## nooneuknow (Feb 5, 2011)

ravingfans said:


> Man I whiffed on that one! You are correct it was the EURX so I edited my post. I'm going to blame it on eyesight! Picture below shows the upgraded WK WD40PURX drive on Left and the original TiVo WD10EURX drive on Right
> 
> I don't see a TiVo barcode sticker on the drive though
> 
> I'm not sure if the $141 WDEURS (yes an *S*) that I have on order will arrive in time for my trip to upgrade the new Roamio Basic I sent my folks, so I picked up the WD 3TB Red that I found at MicroCenter for $120. Looks like from the dialogue here it is the best choice I had locally (TLER/ERC notwithstanding). If the Green EURS gets here in time I think I'll use it, but if not, the Red seems like a good fallback plan.


Sounds like a solid, fully-educated, approach/plan to me.

My bad, on the "shipping software version" sticker, for a Roamio. They ship with blank drives, making the shipping version number obsolete. I'll have to see if I can find any new TiVo-added sticker that is on any of my stock Roamio drives, when I dig them out of their safe storage place. I was looking for a quick way to insure you could identify a drive factory-installed by TiVo.

What feels familiar about this TLER/ERC matter, is how there was all that old misinformation, virtually everywhere, about how AV-enabled drives shouldn't be used for anything else "because they have no error correction", or some other variant statement like that. But, in fact, I got a lot of those propagating that misinformation, extremely riled-up, and mad at me (some still are) by doing my homework, then verifying the facts, that the AV functions, and modified error control methods, were ONLY active, IF the host enabled them, and ONLY for the drive zones such data would be written to. I went to track down the source of the misinformation about using an AV drive in your PC being the worst thing you could do, as well as the claims of them having no error correction. It led to none other than WeaKnees! From there, it was sent around the forum circuits, taken as gospel, placed in stickies, and most everybody had been seemingly been brainwashed. Some still are, while some continue to use those outdated & incorrect stickies as their first stop.

This is like the opposite of that. But, I'm finding no shortage of reputable warnings that say using a TLER/ERC-enabled, RAID-optimized drive, for anything but RAID, or in a NAS device with a RAID controller (for ability to handle TLER/ERC on even a single drive), is absolutely advised against.

I'm curious if WK developed a "hack" to disable TLER/ERC on WD drives. WD took that ability away, using pre-existing, and older, known tools. IF WK found a new way to toggle it off, I want to know about it, get that info over to telemark (and the rest of the TCF developers), and try to create a way to give everybody that capability.

Right now, smartmontools allegedly can still be used to disable TLER/ERC on a desktop computer. But, it must be done via a script that executes at every boot, and repeated even if the PC goes into standby. This is much like how I use hdparm for Windows, to disable APM at boot, but must that be repeated every boot and every time the PC changes power saving state. Why do I do this? Even though I used WDIDLE3.EXE to disable intellipark idle mode 3 timer, the APM functions of the drive still keep parking the heads every chance it can get. I've exceeded my drive's rated number, by over 500,000 cycles, marking every park, an opportunity for failure. So hdparm script is all I can so to keep disabling a setting with no "persistence" between power cycles.

Now it seems, without a hack to beat WD's TLER change lockout, this is the only currently known way to disable TLER, at all, and isn't persistent. There's a billion old articles on a tool called WDTLER, that used to work. But, WD closed that loophole around 2010 or 2011.

If you could find a tool that will disclose the TLER/ERC state of your Purple drive from WK, I'd love to hear about it, especially if it comes up as supported, but disabled!


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## ravingfans (Jan 12, 2009)

nooneuknow said:


> If you could find a tool that will disclose the TLER/ERC state of your Purple drive from WK, I'd love to hear about it, especially if it comes up as supported, but disabled!


Thanks for all the background info. I did some casual searching for tools on the web, but think it would be a significant investment of time to find anything useful and time is at a premium (why I purchased WK in the first place). I'm happy to pull the drive though at some point and do some non-destructive analysis if it helps the cause!


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## nooneuknow (Feb 5, 2011)

ravingfans said:


> Thanks for all the background info. I did some casual searching for tools on the web, but think it would be a significant investment of time to find anything useful and time is at a premium (why I purchased WK in the first place). I'm happy to pull the drive though at some point and do some non-destructive analysis if it helps the cause!


hdparm, smartmontools, gsmartcontrol, and the likes can all instantly pull the drive's feature parameters: supported, enabled, settings, etc. Unfortunately, these are all linux tools, with the Windows versions still being pretty overwhelming to those unfamiliar with them.

I think there are some ultimate boot CD ISOs that have tools that will disclose the settings as well. Most of the trial versions of disk management and/or benchmarking suites can pull the data. This might be the easiest option.

I wish I had dug into finding the right tool for quickly checking your drive, rather than the hours spent reading outdated articles from before WD locked the setting on all their non-enterprise drives, and articles after that confirming what I've been saying.

You can pull the drive at any time, to check the setting, without worry of losing anything. I had already assumed you wanted fast, or you wouldn't have used WK, which is why I didn't jump right to finding software without a learning curve. It seems risky, IMO, for WK to use that drive without a firmware hack to disable TLER, or just set it to a long timeout period (default is 7 seconds), much like how WDIDLE3 can set Intellipark to "Disabled" or 300 seconds (max), rather than the default of just a few seconds.

When I find two easy ways (to be sure the reporting is accurate) to check it (or somebody else does), I'll pass the info along, and you can check at your leisure, like you graciously volunteered. Thanks. This is how people like ggieseke, jmbach, and telemark are enabled to replicate results, and get them to us for free, cutting out the middleman.


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## nooneuknow (Feb 5, 2011)

I'm working with some others to come up with an easy way to verify if WK has actually changed the TLER setting. I really hope they did, after all the research I've added since my last post here.

I'm working with some of the forum's best minds on this.

What sort of PC do you have, what OS, and will you be able to do a direct SATA connection? If not direct SATA, what adapter or dock might you have to use?

Would you prefer a boot CD, or a windows app?

Does the checking tool need to be automated, or are you good with command prompts and running commands with parameters in typical Linux environments?

Send me a PM, if you'd rather continue that way, or feel it is better. I'd kind of prefer that people be aware of TLER concerns, without having to fully explain it, at least until we know how WK is shipping their drives, regarding the LTER/ERC setting.

Thanks.


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