2024-04-26

WD Hard Drives

How to configure a WD EIDE hard drive using the Alternate Jumper Settings?

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM04 mins

When NOT to use Alternate Jumper Settings:

* If you are running Windows 2000/XP/Vista.

* If the system can boot with just one jumper on the drive without locking up.

* If the drive is installed on an IDE controller card that is providing support to access the full drive capacity.

When to use Alternate Jumper Settings
The most common scenario when a drive should be configured with the Alternate Jumper Settings is when the system hangs up or freezes upon boot up after auto-detecting all IDE devices. The reason for this error is because the drive capacity is larger than what the system can support.

What happens after the drive is configured with the Alternate Jumper Settings
The full capacity of the drive is not recognized. In order for the system to boot properly, the BIOS will recognize smaller drive capacity. Depending on your BIOS, your drive will recognize one of the following sizes: 2.1GB, 8.4GB, 32GB.

WD EIDE Drive Jumper Settings

Configuring a single (alone on the IDE cable) drive with the Alternate Jumper Settings
If you are connecting your drive as the only IDE device on the cable, place the jumper shunts on pins 3 & 4 and 5 & 6. Connect the drive to the black connector at the end of the cable.

Configuring a primary or dual Master drive with the Alternate Jumper Settings
If you are connecting your drive as the Master drive on the cable with another IDE device, place the jumper shunts on pins 1 & 2 and 5 & 6. Then configure the jumper on the other IDE device as Slave. Connect the Master drive to the black connector at the end of the cable and the Slave device to the gray connector located at the middle of the cable.

Configuring a secondary or dual Slave drive with the Alternate Jumper Settings
If you are connecting your drive as the Slave drive on the cable with another IDE device, place the jumper shunts on pins 1 & 2 and 3 & 4. Then configure the jumper on the other IDE device as Master. Connect the drive to the gray connector at the middle of the cable and the other IDE device to the black connector located at the end of the cable.

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The difference between WD Desktop edition and RAID (Enterprise) edition hard drives

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM03 mins

WD Hard Drives Western Digital manufactures desktop edition hard drives and RAID Edition hard drives. Each type of hard drive is designed to work specifically as a stand-alone drive, or in a multi-drive RAID environment.

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

Note: There are a few cases where the manufacturer of the RAID controller have designed their drives to work with specific model Desktop drives. If this is the case you would need to contact the manufacturer of that enclosure for any support on that drive while it is used in a RAID environment.

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. While TLER is designed for RAID environments, a drive with TLER enabled will work with no performance decrease when used in non-RAID environments.

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