Category Archives: hard disks

WD 2TB drives not advanced format

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So, i got the WD2001FASS and after plenty of investigation, found out that even if they do support AF, they are not by default advanced format, and have decided to put this information online for anyone who is trying to install one on LINUX.

The problem is that ONLINE, there are many answers, some saying it is, some saying it is not, and some saying it is compatible (Whatever that means),

The short answer is, NO, Western Digital 2TB BLACK WD2001FASS IS NOT ADVANCED FORMAT, i am sure about that but don’t hold me liable for anything (In case some crazy American gets too excited).

Proof

1- the results of hdparm are.

hdparm -i /dev/sdd

Model=WDC WD2001FASS-00W2B0, FwRev=05.01D05, SerialNo=WD-WMAY00589096
Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec SpinMotCtl Fixed DTR>5Mbs FmtGapReq }
RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=50
BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=unknown, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=off
CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=3907029168
IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
PIO modes:  pio0 pio3 pio4
DMA modes:  mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6
AdvancedPM=yes: unknown setting WriteCache=enabled
Drive conforms to: Unspecified:  ATA/ATAPI-1,2,3,4,5,6,7

* signifies the current active mode

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and

hdparm -t /dev/sdd

gives us

Timing buffered disk reads: 418 MB in  3.01 seconds = 138.72 MB/sec

Which is the number on the Western Digital Website

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In any case, i have formatted it once assuming it is AF and once assuming it is 512b (Not AF) and the results were the same (And that is why i say it might be compatible but i don’t know how that can be done anyway)

Disk read and write measuring and monitoring

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The tools i need are in
apt-get install sysstat

this will give me the command

iostat -x 5

Where the 5 means tell mne about disk usage for all partitions and disks every 5 seconds…

When you stop the command, running it again will display data since the last run, there is much more that has to do with IOSTAT that i will come to in a bit, this one here is simply the basic command and usage for my referance

IO stat will display something like the following lines for the second disk that has 4 partitions, the first line is the totals

sdb 0.20 0.20 33.20 16.00 728.00 1392.00 43.09 3.87 41.01 3.04 14.96
sdb1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
sdb2 0.20 0.00 7.00 0.00 502.40 0.00 71.77 0.06 8.46 7.54 5.28
sdb3 0.00 0.20 25.60 15.40 204.80 1384.00 38.75 3.79 47.41 2.85 11.68

how to mount a ram hard disk in Linux

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In this post, i will show you how to create a very fast, 0 latency hard drive from the extra gigabyte or 2 on your system

1- You need to change the boot options to allow this…

Since i use debian lenny, my boot options look like this in /boot/grub/menu.lst

title        Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.26-2-686
root        (hd0,1)
kernel        /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-2-686 root=/dev/sda2 ro quiet
initrd        /boot/initrd.img-2.6.26-2-686

We need to append ramdisk_size=1572864 if we wanted a 1.5GB RAM drive, make sure you have 1.5GB EXTRA on your system, let’s say you must have a minimum of 2GB for the system to run using the 512MB you are leaving the system with

title        Debian 1.5GB Ramdisk, kernel 2.6.26-2-686
root        (hd0,1)
kernel        /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-2-686 root=/dev/sda2 ro quiet ramdisk_size=1572864
initrd        /boot/initrd.img-2.6.26-2-686

You are done for now, if you want to format and use it do this

/sbin/mkfs.ext2 /dev/ram0

Remember that you need to format as ext2 and not ext3, i have seen people format the hard drive as EXT3, why would you ever need Journaling on a RAM disk that is already volatile (Deleted when you reboot)

mkdir /ramdisk
mount /dev/ram0 /ramdisk

You can now get creative and format or load a disk image at boot time, in any case, the RAM is only allocated to the disk when you use it, but you really don’t need to know that to use your new RAM hard disk

NOTE: I chose to explain RAM disk because later on i will show you what advantages we can get from having a block level device, you can surely do this without modifying boot options by simply using tempfs or RAMFS that give you an instant ram disk, but it is not a block level device in that case

Testing Speed

So, you want to see how fast it is, but for that we need a data source that can push this thing to the maximum, the answer is /dev/zero that responds with a stream of zeros, so let us write a 1.3GB file to our new volatile hard disk

dd if=/dev/zero of=/ramdisk/pathtoimage.img bs=1M count=1300

On my computer, this took about 4.54006 seconds.

USB flash not for database

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SSD disks such as the 128GB supertalent SATA drive are good for DB applications no doubt, but USB flash disks are not, i experimented with MySQL with an operation that probably has seek issues (Latency)

So i have a database under processing where the problem is supposed to be “Latency and seek time”, so i went and got the SanDisk 16GB extreme that is supposed to be 20MB/s read and 18MB/s write, and surely, like all flash drives, no latency.

The performance was very very slow, it is probably a problem with USB or the USB controllers that work that flash memory.

Anyway, if you want to work a database from a USB flash disk, save those $85 (What i paid for the flash disk), you are better off with a SATA hard disk or even an ATA 133. but nothing USB.

S.M.A.R.T (SMART) data of hard drives under linux

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The results of the commands on this post are Here

On windows, You can use speedfan, under linux you can read the smart data as follows

Use the smartctl command, but first you must install the package

apt-get install smartmontools

1- Checking for smart support, (All recent hard drives have it but you need to enable it in BIOS)

smartctl -i /dev/sdb

2- Enable reading it

smartctl -s on -d ata /dev/sdb

See it

smartctl -d ata -H /dev/sdb

Read more

smartctl -d ata -a /dev/sdb

Now some manufacturer specific smart atributes exist, you need to google them out, Also smart is not definitive, if S.M.A.R.T data says ok but there is a ticking noise in your hard drive, Don’t trust the hardware data, get backup.

Some hard drives like the Samsung Spinpoint come with extensive diagnostics software, My 3 2.5′ disks pass the test, pass the smart test, and tick when warm, i will let you know if it was the tick of death sometime soon

Western Digital WD1001FALS 1TB drive

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Now this is a good hard drive, i am using it at the minute, and am very happy about it

Connected directly to my eVGA – nVIDIA nForce motherboard 630i/7150, Windows reports the hard disk on Windows experience index as 5.9 (Not bad for a 7200 RPM disk).
high resolution photos of the WD1001FALS.

.

Now to experience with this drive.

I have owned it for some time now, and i have used it for some time too.

I like western digital and have been a loyal customer since the 90s, they don’t break down on me like most other brands.

Western digital already released the 2TB green hard drive (Yes, you heard it right two terra bytes), but since this is the black edition (Performance), 1TB is still the maximum you can get from this category.

The hard disk has 32MB cache, and a sustained buffer to disk sustained transfer rate of 106 MB/s, Yes, the B is in capital letter, this is around 1000+ Mbit per second.

the 3 plates/disks and 6 heads (2 per disk one above and one below) make it heavy, and to eutelise more of this the hard disk needs a good processor, Western digital claims it uses a Dual Core Processor. but is the marvell chip

M (Marvell)
88i8845E-BHY2
YPME349AU
0805 D0PS
TW

really a dual processor ? Searching the marvell website (marvell.com) yields no result for this processor, Not much is available on the internet about the 88ixxxx processor range…

StableTrac (Motor shaft held at both ends), NoTouch ramp load technology, and Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) are features of the drive according to Western Digital.

Tests. In a few minutes while i see them

BELKIN SATA 2 EXPRESSCARD F5U239

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BELKIN SATA 2 EXPRESSCARD F5U239 with the SILICON IMAGE SIL3132 card

So, it may be the fastest to go with your mybook with esata, it is fast, but has many shortcomings.

To begin with, you can not boot your laptop from this card, you can if you install a software boot loader but the hardware is not bootable.

This card worked fine with a sata port multiplier by silicon image, unlike many other sata controllers.

2 LEDs are there showing disk activity, but remember that although they say it gives you a 3MBit connection to the hard drive, the maximum of the connection is much less having the expresscard bus as a bottelneck, even worse, both hard drives will have to share that expresscard bus !

All in all i am happy with the product if it were not for the boot issue.