KB 10293 - Why are my WD drives dropping out of my Promise arrays?
Why when using Western Digital Caviar
Green drives in RAID configurations the
drives often drop off and out of the array?
On WD’s website, there are updates to this product documentation. WD recommends not use these drives for enterprise 24/7 use or use in expansion chassis or with enterprise class HBAs.
For more information regarding this and other recommendations see the following:
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?DriveID=773
http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-701229.pdf
Excerpt from the articles above:
“Ideal
For
Environmentally friendly PCs and external storage requiring lower power
consumption and cool, quiet operation.
Desktop / Consumer RAID Environments - WD Caviar Green Hard Drives are tested and recommended for use in consumer-type RAID applications (Raid-0 / RAID-1).*
*Business Critical RAID Environments – WD Caviar Green Hard Drives are not recommended for and are not warranted for use in RAID environments utilizing Enterprise HBAs and/or expanders and in multi-bay chassis, as they are not designed for, nor tested in, these specific types of RAID applications. For all Business Critical RAID applications, please consider WD’s Enterprise Hard Drives that are specifically designed with RAID-specific, time-limited error recovery (TLER), are tested extensively in 24x7 RAID applications, and include features like enhanced RAFF technology and thermal extended burn-in testing. “
