# WD EARS Green Caviar, strange HD-Tach readouts



## Betty (Kung Pow) (Mar 11, 2010)

This is the hd-tach readout from my 1-2 months old drive.
Is it due to all the green power saving stuff or is it a faulty drive?

Dont have any other to test against and havnt localized any other with this problem.


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## Mussels (Mar 11, 2010)

the speeds look about right, but those dips are fairly often...

have you re-tested to make sure its repeatable, and not a one off? could be the edges of the platters in the drives, slows down as it moves around to the start of the next one.


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## Betty (Kung Pow) (Mar 11, 2010)

Dips are repeatable, occurs on the faster test as well, but less detailed.
Dont have the same pattern on my other disks.

But yeah, you might be right about the platters but i just want to be sure 





New test run, same errors but new palces.


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## W1zzard (Mar 11, 2010)

nevermind .. just realized i have an EADS, not EARS...


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## W1zzard (Mar 11, 2010)

do you have any other disk activity on the drive while the benchmark runs? dont test the physical drive that you booted off .. boot off another disk then run the test


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## Mussels (Mar 11, 2010)

w1zz: its an EADS vs an EARS, there might be differences.

That said, i think its odd too. antivirus? background defrag tools?


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## Betty (Kung Pow) (Mar 11, 2010)

W1zzard said:


> do you have any other disk activity on the drive while the benchmark runs? dont test the physical drive that you booted off .. boot off another disk then run the test



Its my booted drive, 2 partitions and i currently does not have another bootable drive.
Or does there exist a bootcd/bootusb with tools like hd-tach?

I have been running hd-tach before on my older disks, on and from the one i boot from, and no problems then.


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## RejZoR (Mar 13, 2010)

Mussels said:


> w1zz: its an EADS vs an EARS, there might be differences.
> 
> That said, i think its odd too. antivirus? background defrag tools?



It's none of that. Some drives are just bad either from firmware point or the caching part and you get those dips.


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## vbx (Mar 14, 2010)

Are you guys both using the Green as a main OS drive? 

Looks like W1zzard is using his as storage and Betty is using it has a main OS drive. 

The green series "aren't" really meant for OS.  I have the EADS and it's only for file storage.


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## slyfox2151 (Mar 14, 2010)

Green ment for OS?

i think you have that backwards, blacks are good for OS, Greens only good for storage due to the slower access time.


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## Mussels (Mar 14, 2010)

slyfox2151 said:


> Green ment for OS?
> 
> i think you have that backwards, blacks are good for OS, Greens only good for storage due to the slower access time.



greens are barely even good for storage, they're so damn slow. WD designed them to be barely above USB 2.0 speeds at times, might work well for the external line, but god they're slow compared to the other drives.


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## 95Viper (Mar 14, 2010)

@Betty (Kung Pow)> What OS are you using?  Did you clean install or clone/image the drive?

_______________________________________________________________________________

Green drives are so WD(+other HD manufacturers) and the people who use them can say they are doing their part to save energy...being Green.

And, before anyone makes a smart comment, I have one,too...so I am doing my part to offset my carbon footprint of the Three Juice sucking Veloci-Raptors in using.


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## Betty (Kung Pow) (Mar 15, 2010)

Win 7 transfered from an seagate.
I have been thinking if that might be the problem as well.

On my server i the walk-in(not out)-closet i have the 1tb ears, and no problems with that one as os drive even running server 2008.


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## 95Viper (Mar 15, 2010)

It is a good chance you need to align the drive, if cloned or imaged.
Advanced Format Hard Drive Download Utility






Quote from Characteristics Of 4K Sector Size (Advanced Format) article:

"If 512 byte data has to be written across two physical 4KB blocks, the hard drive will have to read the 4KB blocks that are affected, introduce the modifications, and write them back onto the drive. This process is referred to as read-modify-write (RMW). While this doesn’t hurt much if it happens here and there, it becomes a significant issue if the alignment of eight 512 byte sectors into only one physical 4KB block is wrong. Therefore WD offers either its Alignment software , which rearranges all data on a hard drive to fit the logical 512 byte sectors into the physical 4KB sectors."

Hopefully this will help


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## angelkiller (Mar 15, 2010)

vbx said:


> The green series "aren't" really meant for OS.  I have the EADS and it's only for file storage.


And why not? WD Green drives are perfectly able to run an operating system. They may not be the ideal/best choice for an OS drive, but they are perfectly able to do so.



Mussels said:


> greens are barely even good for storage, they're so damn slow. WD designed them to be barely above USB 2.0 speeds at times, might work well for the external line, but god they're slow compared to the other drives.


Barely above USB 2.0? When does this happen and how are you measuring this? WD Green drives are a tad faster than a 2.5in 7200rpm drive. Every laptop runs on a drive that is at least a little slower than a Green, at worst, alot slower.


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## Mussels (Mar 15, 2010)

angelkiller said:


> And why not? WD Green drives are perfectly able to run an operating system. They may not be the ideal/best choice for an OS drive, but they are perfectly able to do so.
> 
> 
> Barely above USB 2.0? When does this happen and how are you measuring this? WD Green drives are a tad faster than a 2.5in 7200rpm drive. Every laptop runs on a drive that is at least a little slower than a Green, at worst, alot slower.



all the greens i've used manage about 60MB/s reads ( 70 peak) and average writes of 40MB/s

40MB/s is barely above USB 2.0, IMO. (30-35MB/s)

I owned several (500 and 750GB) drives, and they were all terrible.


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## WhiteLotus (Mar 15, 2010)

Mussels said:


> all the greens i've used manage about 60MB/s reads ( 70 peak) and average writes of 40MB/s
> 
> 40MB/s is barely above USB 2.0, IMO. (30-35MB/s)
> 
> I owned several (500 and 750GB) drives, and they were all terrible.



Are they able to run an OS: Yes
Will there more expensive counterparts be faster: Yes

I fail to see where the issue is? I have a green drive and use it for file storage, it does its job without throwing a paddy. Just because you think they are awful drives, doesn't mean they actually are.


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## smashed_99cbr (Mar 15, 2010)

yeah I hate to tell you thats about right


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## Mussels (Mar 16, 2010)

WhiteLotus said:


> Are they able to run an OS: Yes
> Will there more expensive counterparts be faster: Yes
> 
> I fail to see where the issue is? I have a green drive and use it for file storage, it does its job without throwing a paddy. Just because you think they are awful drives, doesn't mean they actually are.



you can use floppy drives too. or CD-R.


My point was simple: why not spend a few $ more and get a drive almost twice as fast?


from the HDtach results earlier the 1.5TB models seem to be a decent amount faster anyway, so it doesnt really apply to them


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## [I.R.A]_FBi (Mar 16, 2010)

read something about ears drives behaving wierd  unless u use 7, cant remember where .. toms maybe?


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## newtekie1 (Mar 16, 2010)

The dips are almost certainly because this is your boot drive, any time the OS needs to access the drive it will slow the benchmark down, causing those dips.

Try booting off Hiren's boot CD to MiniXP, and test the drive there, I believe it has HDTach or at least HDTune.

As for the speeds and using them as OS drives, they do just fine.  I've used the seagate LP drives as OS drives, and they outpace 7200RPM drives of just a couple of years ago.  Hell my 1.5TB LP drive hangs with a 640GB WD Black drive.  Average just 10MB/s slower reads and writes, and only 1ms slower access times.  And if I short stroke it to 640GB is outpaces the WD Black.


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## smashed_99cbr (Mar 16, 2010)

newtekie1 said:


> The dips are almost certainly because this is your boot drive, any time the OS needs to access the drive it will slow the benchmark down, causing those dips.




agreed...


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