WDTLER - Fix TLER setting on WD Desktop hard drives
I just applied the WDTLER fix to all my 1TB WD Green drives. No visible change, but the intrawebs say it'll fix me up good. Best trust the intrawebs!
Here's some info on TLER. Start there if you're wondering what I'm talking about. Here's an abridged version of the problem for the "Oh! Shiny penny!" folks out there (like me, heh).
Some notes before we get started....
THIS IS NOT SUPPORTED BY Western Digital!!
Secondly, I did read a report saying that after they flashed a WD 2TB drive the system only recognized it as a 1TB drive in Linux. Not sure what the resolution was other than undoing the change (TLER_OFF instead of TLER_ON in the instructions above), but beware if you have anything larger than a 1TB drive.
Thirdly, you should only apply this if you have your drives in a RAID configuration. No need to do it if you have just one drive or are using a JBOD config. In fact, it's a bad thing to enable TLER, since it may unnecessarily mark sectors as bad on your drive when really they're not. You need it in a RAID set up though to keep the RAID system (hardware or software) from thinking the drive is dead and dropping the drive from the array. It's the better of two evils to enable TLER in a RAID setup, basically.
Now, to do it without a floppy was simple enough:
- Download the Ultimate Boot CD.
- Extract the ISO to C:\ubcd411
- Download the WDTLER utility below (attached to this post)
- Extract it to C:\ubcd411\dosapps\WDTLER
- Open up a command prompt and type cd C:\ubcd411\tools
- Type ubcd2iso c:\ubcd411 c:\ubcd411.iso
- When finished, burn C:\ubcd411.iso to a CD
- Unplug all drives in the victim computer that you DON'T want to update (non-WD drives are ok since the utility will figure that out)
- Boot off the CD, and select the FreeDOS image (in the menu it's something like DOS/Linux Images -> DOS Images -> FreeDOS)
- Go into the dosapps\WDTLER directory on the CD. On my system it came up as the T: drive, so I typed T: then cd dosapps\wdtler.
- Run TLERSCAN to scan your drives and see what will be done. ALL (!!) the WD drives that come up as recognized will the updated to 7 seconds read and 7 seconds write timeout.
- Run TLER_ON. It takes only a second and will output the results. Check them to make sure everything came back ok.
- All done! Type reboot. Don't forget to eject the CD during the POST, if you have your computer set to boot off your CDROM drive.
On my system, no data was impacted and nothing needed to be reconfigured. As far as I can tell, this is strictly an internal WD setting and is not visible by the system or OS at all.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| wdtler.zip | 169.62 KB |
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Problem creating iso with included WDTLER utility
Hi...can anyone help? I get to step 5 (i.e., 5. Open up a command prompt and type cd C:\ubcd411\tools) and when I type the command at the command prompt, I get the error "the system cannot find the path specified".
I am working in Windows 7 Ultimate and I am not familiar with DOS commands. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Guys just a fyi this is meant
Guys just a fyi this is meant for UBCD 4.1.1 not 5.02
WDTler
The utility says that there are no detected drives. I just purchased these Drives from Newegg. Not sure why but it says 'No drives detected If there are drives in the system perhaps the controller is not supported."
Am I missing something? :\
The only drives connected are the ones that I want to turn TLER on.
TLER is GONE
WD has disabled TLER in firmware on drives beginning in late 2009. New drives will not respond to TLER_ON.
If you want to do RAID you need TLER and need to buy RE drives to get it.
Intellipark also affected?
An earlier comment (Sun, 02/28/2010 - 20:36) suggests WD has disabled the ability to turn on TLER in firmware starting late 2009. Later someone else says that indeed it's still possible but is an undocumented feature. Is all this pure speculation or facts -where does this information come from?
Also, has the firmware been changed so it's no longer possible to disable Intellipark (auto head-parking after 8 seconds of inactivity which is default on these green drives) using the WDIDLE utility (?
Re: No Connected drivers
I Got this too then I thought I needed to switch the Sata controller in my Bios to NativeIDE and not AHCI so it could detect the drives and it did.
Still wasn't able to get TLER on since WD fixed that in the Firmware for the drives. I won't buy anymore of these drives.
This other guide helped me to get a usb stick to boot it might help others too.
http://www.bay-wolf.com/usbmemstick.htm
Noobish Question
When I prep to burn the ubcd411.iso to the CD my burn software asks for a bootable .img file in addition to the iso. Back with XP I could make a bootable floppy to get around that but now with no floppy drive on this vista machine I can't seem to find a solution to make the bootable image.
Will the iso mount if the CD isn't created with a bootable img file?
Some problems
These instructions have a few holes and issues.
First - to extract the ISO you need a tool - 7-Zip works to do this.
Second, the command cd C:\ubcd411\tools in step 5 should be
cd C:\ubcd411\tools\ubcd2iso to get to the tool.
Third, in Windows Vista you can't run step 6 at root C: - you will get a fail when you try to make the ISO disk. To fix this create a directory at the C: level - mine was "fixit" then copy the folder from step 2-4 into the "fixit" folder.
This then changes step 5 to: cd c:\fixit\ubcd411\tools\ubcd2iso
Step 6 is then: ubcd2iso c:\fixit\ubcd411 c:\fixit\ubcd411.iso
ISO image is then created in fixit folder with no issues.
Thanks for the blog on how to do this.
DAJ
Desktop drives have TLER?
So i've been doing research on this, and I was under the impression that the non-enterprise/raid class drives didn't even have the TLER component contained in their firmwares, and that 'desktop' class drives (Black ed. Green, blue, etc) all just used their standard timeouts and it was not the TLER system.
Is this not true? Do all of WD's drives have the TLER capability?
reference article on WD's site describing this:
http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1397&p_created=1131638613&p_sid=QCv2KSyj&p_accessibility=0&p_redirect=&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MTgsMTgmcF9wcm9kcz0mcF9jYXRzPSZwX3B2PSZwX2N2PSZwX3BhZ2U9MSZwX3NlYXJjaF90ZXh0PWVudGVycHJpc2U!&p_li=&p_topview=1
As far as I know, TLER has
As far as I know, TLER has been around on all WD drives for about five years or so. They don't /support/ it on consumer drives, and as such is a hidden feature, however.
Of course any Western Digital documentation is going to lead you to believe that it doesn't exist, but look around... There are plenty of non-WD sites and forum posts indicating otherwise.
http://www.google.com/search?btnG=1&q=tler+western+digital
Doesit really work?
Hello, I've been trying to make the 2 TB drives (WD20EADS) work in raid 5. I have turned on the TLER on all but I'm still experiencing many aborted commands. Are these drives really not suitable for raid or is it another Barracuda story??
It really worked for me ;) ...but...
From what I read, this thing only works on 1TB or less drives. Again, from what I've read (not from experience), if you turn TLER on on anything larger, your system will only end up seeing 1TB of the disk. Turning TLER back off using the same utility fixes that.
When are you seeing these aborted commands? During bootup or during regular usage?
Aborted commands don't necessarily happen because of the TLER setting and might be more indicative of a bad hard drive, bad cable, bad controller (or motherboard), or bad drivers... if they happen regularly.
If you're trying to run RAID 5, then you must have at least 3 drives, right? Does it happen with all your drives or just one? You'll have to kick one drive at a time and run slim for a bit, but try running chkdsk (Windows)/fsck (Linux) on each one to see if you can narrow it down. If it happens on all of them, maybe try connecting one on a different controller (like with an external USB enclosure, for example).
Also, make sure you're using the latest service pack (Windows)/kernel-slash-distro-rev (Linux). If you're running Windows, you might need to update the controller drivers from the manufacturer instead of Microsoft.
Drivers are typically not the problem though, but generally the least invasive troubleshooting step.
Late reply
Sorry for the late reply.......Well I've set up a Raid 5 with 4 drives and I've already been through 9 drives!!!
It's only a data array no OS.
I don't have the 1 TB problem when turning the Tler on. The aborted commands usually happens only on one drive at a time in the array (different position), and often the system freezes forcing me to reset. It only happens during writing to the disk. Reading apparently yields no problems.
Obviously WD says to buy the enterprise edition and Adaptec says they haven't tested the drives yet!!!!
The card is a 5405 which has been happily working with 1 TB drive till recently.
All the disk utilities give me the drives as healthy....
I think it's controller firmware, but then I need to find one that supports these drives.....and guess what?
> I think it's controller
> I think it's controller firmware, but then I need to find one that supports these drives.....and guess what?
That's what it sounds like to me. Try going with an el-cheapo non-RAID SATA card and see what happens. You should be able to do some benchmarking test to push a bunch of data to and from the drives (dd, for example) to get an idea if it's going to fail.
That would rule out/in the RAID card and give you a starting point (hopefully).
NAH, duzn't work on barnd NEWS WD20EARS
Just tried it on brand new WD20EARS / 64MB cache, these mofos @WD just wont let you do it...
The TLER utility doesn't detect the drives...
I am having an issue running
I am having an issue running the TLER utility too on the WD20EARS drives. I am getting a "CauseWay error 05 : Not enough memory for CauseWay"
Is that what you mean by it won't detect your drives, or is this a seperate issue I am having?
Didn't work for me too
Maybe there's a newer version of the TLER utility ?
The directory strucutre of
The directory strucutre of UBCD 5.02 is completely different?
Also when I boot off of it, and select FreeDOS it just sends me into a bunch of bs.
I used to have aworking iso of this too...