[Phoenix32]

I have been reading a lot on this subject. It seems hit and miss about 50-50 with people using the Non RE WD drives in RAID 5 arrays.

I myself am batting about 50-50 also.

I have/had a set of WD Non RE (not green either) drives that would not works in RAID 5 on any machine I had, and this means not just snaps etc. Also meaning a bunch of different controllers. They tested fine and would work solo etc just fine, but try to RAID 5 them and all would go to hell quickly. Other drives in same machines had no problems.

But, I also have a set of WD Non RE drives right now that work fine in RAID 5 in a SNAP 4400 but will puke in RAID 5 in any SNAP 4200/4500/15000 I put them in.

From my reading, various theories, etc, the consencous seems to be that WD changed their firmware a while back and this newer firmware causes problems in TLER and is why they will fail out and have issues with RAID 5, but the RE drives do not have this same firmware problem because their firmware handles TLER differently than the Non RE drives do. Its all about timing issues.

This seems to be confirmed in a round about way by the fact there used to be a downloadable firmware patch on the WD web site that corrected TLER issues in RAID arrays. But, they stopped updating the firmware and it doesn't work on the newer drives. That, and the fact they removed it from their site last year.

When people complain to WD about it, the WD reply is that they are not drives certified for RAID and thus do not go any further than telling you to buy their premium RE drives at a very premium price.

Is this a conspiracy and intentional by WD, that is for each person to figure out for themselves on what they think. Who knows for sure.

Bottom line is, they work for some, they don't for others, and as of now, WD has no intention of addressing it.

50-50, hit and miss, there is no one right answer. i.e. they do or don't work. At least not from my experiences and my research on the subject.