TLER stands for Time Limited Error Recovery which means a drive reports as bad after 7 seconds. This has nothing to do with Raid 5. I have personally seen a WD drive in Raid 0 without TLER on an Intel ICH8r lockup a PC and cause data loss even though the drive ended up being fine. WD used to allow people to enable TLER in desktop drives but quickly changed that about 2 yrs ago. When they changed the firmware, they also enabled constant spinning down which causes problems with any drive, enterprise and desktop. I tested a similar spin down with my Areca 1680ix (using the Areca software) and Seagate Constellation ES drives and it acted just like regular WD drives. This is a PITA for video editing as the drives constantly spin down.

This non-TLER issue can happen with any Raid array including 1 & 10.

Then, there is also the staggered spinup issue. If WD drives have been on a hardware controller and then moved to the onboard controller which has no staggered spinup, the drives will not work because they are waiting for a staggered signal.

One more issue is their warranty - retailers show 5yrs but most people see 3yrs when doing an RMA thru WD.

FYI, anyone using Raptors, TLER is DISABLED. This drive is what I referred to as causing data loss in a Raid 0 array I had a few years back.

Well, I am researching this one

Newegg.com - Intel Core i7-950 Bloomfield 3.06GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor BX80601950

yes Steve,
i am well aware of both potential issues.

we have never seen a spin up issue. who in their right mind would go from a serious raid 5,6 array back to onboard?
to give you an idea of how large a base i am coming from 400+ drives a month.. (not hard with minimum 5 per system up to 9 or more on bigger ones)

i am not a big fan of the raptors thruput is not much better than regular. seek times is their only benefit.
and for editing its moot. audio it helps a tad for samples

here is a comparison..
Intel SAS RS2PI080 8 Port controller with 512 DDR2 Ram
8x WD VelociRaptor 600 GB, SATA 6 Gb/s, 32 MB Cache, 10,000 RPM
8 Drive Raid 5 - 745MB/s read 735MB/s Write

8x WD 1TB SATA 6 Gb/s, 64 MB Cache, 7200 RPM
8 Drive Raid 5 - 703.8MB/s read 670MB/s Write

both are some serious thruput...

FYI wd waranty is 5yrs.. you have to be careful where you buy drives. Sams, costco, staples etc have different versions. often the warrnty is only 1 yr. buyer beware.
all oem versions are 5 yr. like what i sell as well as newegg etc.
other retail box versions are 5 as well..

Scott

the X58/950 combo is a great platform.. you could OC the 950 to 3.8GHz and get basically the SB performance.

or wait

Scott

WD's diagnostic software can't run on a drive in raid. If you have a problem with a drive, you must hook it up to the onboard sata.

Google the warranty issue to see what I am reading. People who buy a WD Black should have a 5yr warranty but many people have rma'd them and when doing so, WD's site shows only a 3yr warranty.

I don't know how you haven't seen the spin down issue. If you are constantly testing and using the drives, then you won't see it. I have seen it first hand and so have thousands of others.

wd waranty
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/internal/desktop/

drive warranties with all manufacturers change over the yrs.
the only drives a few yrs ago that had 5 yr was the enterprise drives.
most were 3 yr with several being 1 yr.

at one brief period nearly all were 1 yr. (didnt last long) one of the reasons i sold Seagate (aside from being quiet and performing well) was they had a better warranty than WD.

its very possible someone with a 3yr old drive trying to RMA it today did indeed have a 3yr warrnty when purchased. in fact i can almost guarantee it.
this 5yr is new as i said other than enterprise drives and raptors.
this would also be true for seagate.

its funny how some people get based on personal experiance.
Seagate was getting a bad rep due the the 1TB drives bricking. (we had very few) yet reading around it sounds like the end of the world.
ever forum i go to there is always someome who is passionate about hating a brand.

if there was any issues with the WDs i would not be selling them..
issues cost me employee time with support
issues cost me money in shipping, both to the client and then finally back to the manufacturer.

you can argue with me all you want fact is my clients do not have these issues. nor do we.
i have a drobo in raid 5 with WDs, i have 2 servers with 8 drive raid 6 with wds in it.
several of the tech computers act as storage as well and have raids both seagate and wd.
maybe its the drives we use, maybe its how the raid is set up.
maybe we and our clients (also in the thousands) are just absurdly lucky and you are actually right?

link please for these thousands who have experianced spin down issues.
FYI its common only is ext drives.
black drives do not have this..

Scott
ADK

Hey Scott,

I hate to do this, but I must admit I was wrong about the TLER and Raid 0. From the time I have spent reading forums today, I have come across many who say TLER only works properly when there is redundant data, ie R1, 5, 10, etc.

I appreciate your debating me. I had to test your knowledge. Just ask Harm about me constantly debating him. There aren't many here well versed in computer hardware so I like to challenge those who do including Randall (who is as knowledgeable or more so than me). I grew up around Commodore 64 and Amiga as my mother was the largest C64 seller in the midwest. Many nights of mine as a child were spent in her computer classes.

However, I still have a problem with Raid 0 for business related tasks. I am very business oriented; thus, I am very very risk averse. With drive costs and speeds these days, I can't see wasting hours of time reloading the OS or assets when I could have spent a little more money to get redundancy and thus, no downtime. I understand many who don't have tight deadlines or clients, producers and/or directors in the edit bay so they can afford to lose some downtime. BUT, isn't it Murphy's Law that states when something can go wrong at the worst possible time, it will (or something close to that :)

Just want to state that I will recommend your business to anyone needing a custom PC for video editing.

Any chance you can run some AE CS5 tests with various hardware such as the 980x and the SR-2 with ram maxed out? I would absolutely love that as I use AE everyday and would like to make my HP Z800 faster (dual 6-core, 24GB reg ecc). On a side note, I find it very funny that Premiere CS5 is now rock-solid stable and AE CS5 not at all. I have replaced the motherboard, the fans, the thermal sensor and recently, the FX3800 but AE still freezes constantly. I have also tested the same AE projects on my home PC (custom i7) and it still freezes.

Btw, I came across a WD tool that allows you to adjust the spin down time for internal drives. There has been a tool for external drives since at least 2004.

HI Steve,
all good man.
i enjoy a good debate :-) giving Harm a hard time is always fun...

and thanks for recommending us..

i personally agree that a good raid 5,6 is ideal. i have a hard enough time getting people to understand the need for back up and a good UPS.
much less getting them to buy a raid 5 or a good NAS storage back up.

of course once they do lose data they get it. (i have been there myself thus why i am double redundant)
everyone wants fast render times. raid 0 does the job!

i think we have some heavy AE projects we got from a client. i will see what we can do. Benchmark/test time is hard to come by around here as we are swamped more often than not.

FYI in some tests we did Quadro cards had no advantage over standard GTX for most animation programs.
i am sure you know this but..
the quadros are the same cards as the GTX and usually based on the lower GTX
only the 6000 is based on the 480. most are 460's

Scott
ADK

My current build
 

This is what I have building so far. I'm shooting for a bluray machine. I am certainly open to criticism of it.


Newegg.com - Once You Know, You Newegg

Two problems (and one potential problem):

1) That list does not include a case or any mass storage drives whatsoever. Do you already have a case that you can use with this build? And, do you already have some hard drives that you can use in this system?

2) Are you going to overclock the CPU? If so, that Hyper N520 may not be well-suited for much if any overclocking. You see, that HSF uses only 92mm fans - the exact same diameter as the stock Intel boxed CPU HSF. You do need an HSF with 120mm or larger fans if you're going to overclock much.

Hey Randall,

Thanks for the feed back. I'm recycling my Raptor drive for my OS and my P180 case. So I'm saving a bit of money that way. I'm not planning on overlcocking, I think the stock settings will be plenty for my needs. But thanks for the insight on the cooler. I'll look around a bit more for something with a larger fan.

While you're at it, I strongly recommend getting two to four additional hard drives for your media, project and output files. The 1TB 7200 rpm hard drives are right now the sweet spot for value. I do not recommend editing video on a machine with only one hard drive because such a task requires simultaneous reads and writes, and SATA does not allow both simultaneously since it is only a half-duplex interface.

Technically, there are a few differences between the GTX and Quadro. At least with many 3D apps excluding C4D, tests show Quadros destroying their faster GTX siblings.

If you do find time for AE tests, I prefer an i7 vs dual CPU and 2GB ram per core vs 4GB per core.

I am trying to decide whether to add another 24GB ram to my HP. Aside from the PPBM5 results, will I really see a huge increase in MPEG2 encoding speed, which is 80% of my daily rendering? Aside from dropping $20k for a Smoke on Mac, I need to make my system faster for client/producer sessions.

we have one of those crazy dual Xeon @ 4GHZ systems with 48 gig ram on the bench now...maybe Eric will have time.


Scott
ADK

Spotted an early report of Sandy Bridge not being too much to get excited about ...

Read the rest at Premiere Pro Benchmark for CS5

Andrew