WD HDD Purple People Eater

F

Flasherly

Gave it up.

GParted (live boot) and GPT for "full" Win7 recognition/compatibility,
that's about as far as I got. Not as exhaustively as thorough enough
for my purposes. I've older MBs, not with native 3Tbyte hardware
support, which, in the GPT (alternative) scheme of things supposedly
is just fine for Win7.

Well, Win7 certainly picked up, both via the OS with MB controllers
and an external USB/SATA box, (sic) operated with those GPT partitions
I did make, although there were issues. Namely, invariable time-outs
and data thruput degradation slowdowns on copy operands.

I didn't as extensively work with a SI PCI controller that picked up
the drive's 3T geometry on my other machine (where I intended to place
the WD's purplepeople eater HDD);- they, both machines, ought better
be thought of as interchangeable, at least and a minimum for W7's
purposes, in the GPT scheme of things. I figure.

It's a video surveillance HDD, rugged enough for WD's 3yr. warr.
tacked on, although not with my desktop environ apparently;- suspect
it might be perfect for a newer BIOS/MB and larger than 2T drives,
alas.

Anyway, I followed practically what was indicated (with GPartEd) for a
GPT disc, by all accounts, sufficient even by my standards for W7 and
that drive. I'm not going to sucker up to a read/write recovery
timeouts, not while there's equally as many 2T capped drives out there
for those of us who haven't jumped on the (fully) Win7 platform --
ver. 8/9/10 and whatever flavor comes along from MS every few months
these days for an imperative "update."

Oh, well. $10 and change to ship it back, gee, how reasonable a price
to learn how to be effectively trumped. I'll at least call to ask for
a reasonable NEW 2T substitute at a minimum of 3yrs. manufacturer
support, to include return shipping costs absorbed by the seller. And,
do a quicker take, presumably for more than the six reviews on the
purplepeople eater, if the seller bites. We can call even, then,
costwise;- If not, well there's also Amazon, Tiger Direct, the pits
and plain ol' potluck. (Yep...fatchance in fatcity they'll cut me
slack, just never know until opening up one's yap to expound.)
 
P

Paul

Flasherly said:
Gave it up.

GParted (live boot) and GPT for "full" Win7 recognition/compatibility,
that's about as far as I got. Not as exhaustively as thorough enough
for my purposes. I've older MBs, not with native 3Tbyte hardware
support, which, in the GPT (alternative) scheme of things supposedly
is just fine for Win7.

Well, Win7 certainly picked up, both via the OS with MB controllers
and an external USB/SATA box, (sic) operated with those GPT partitions
I did make, although there were issues. Namely, invariable time-outs
and data thruput degradation slowdowns on copy operands.

I didn't as extensively work with a SI PCI controller that picked up
the drive's 3T geometry on my other machine (where I intended to place
the WD's purplepeople eater HDD);- they, both machines, ought better
be thought of as interchangeable, at least and a minimum for W7's
purposes, in the GPT scheme of things. I figure.

It's a video surveillance HDD, rugged enough for WD's 3yr. warr.
tacked on, although not with my desktop environ apparently;- suspect
it might be perfect for a newer BIOS/MB and larger than 2T drives,
alas.

Anyway, I followed practically what was indicated (with GPartEd) for a
GPT disc, by all accounts, sufficient even by my standards for W7 and
that drive. I'm not going to sucker up to a read/write recovery
timeouts, not while there's equally as many 2T capped drives out there
for those of us who haven't jumped on the (fully) Win7 platform --
ver. 8/9/10 and whatever flavor comes along from MS every few months
these days for an imperative "update."

Oh, well. $10 and change to ship it back, gee, how reasonable a price
to learn how to be effectively trumped. I'll at least call to ask for
a reasonable NEW 2T substitute at a minimum of 3yrs. manufacturer
support, to include return shipping costs absorbed by the seller. And,
do a quicker take, presumably for more than the six reviews on the
purplepeople eater, if the seller bites. We can call even, then,
costwise;- If not, well there's also Amazon, Tiger Direct, the pits
and plain ol' potluck. (Yep...fatchance in fatcity they'll cut me
slack, just never know until opening up one's yap to expound.)
Click to expand...

You can use the Acronis Volume Manager driver, to
convert a 3TB drive, into a 2TB physical drive and
a 1TB virtual drive. Suitable for WinXP. That's how
I use two 3TB drives here, with WinXP being the oldest
OS in circulation. Since the 3TB drives are used for
backups, they have to work on all platforms.

Alternately, if you wanted this magic hard drive of yours
to work on all machines, you could use Linux and
do an HPA, and clip the drive at the 2.2TB mark.
I haven't tried this.

I tested GPT here, on more modern OSes and it worked.

I find results using the drive on a USB enclosure
to be a different set of failures. The Acronis Capacity
Manager driver doesn't work in that case. In that case,
I might be limited to GPT only (ruling out WinXP).
In fact, the results were bad enough for my personal
situation, I put the USB enclosures back in the box.
They're useless to me at the moment.

The installation of Capacity Manager is torture.
It'll take you forever to get it working.
I suffered hair loss :) The thing is, if you *ever*
used Acronis before, Acronis leaves an older
driver on your OS. And you might not even be
aware it is present. Acronis makes a removal
tool, to remove that driver. (When the driver
was originally installed, Acronis assumed it
could not be removed! A poster on the Acronis
forum, showed them how to write an uninstaller.
The crappy driver was the one sitting on my
WinXP install, and prevented Capacity Manager
from working. As I said, "torture and hair loss".
I had to restore a two year old backup, prep
the disk with Capacity Manager, restore my
present day OS, and install the newer driver again.

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=613&lang=en

"Acronis True Image WD Edition Software Download"
(should include Capacity Manager)

I have this "cleanup utility" link bookmarked, but
I don't know if this was what I eventually used or not.

https://kb.acronis.com/content/34876

If the drive is giving timeout errors and you
have to return it, consider all the time it
saved you, on testing Acronis (free) software
from WDC.

Paul
 
F

Flasherly

You can use the Acronis Volume Manager driver, to
convert a 3TB drive, into a 2TB physical drive and
a 1TB virtual drive. Suitable for WinXP. That's how
I use two 3TB drives here, with WinXP being the oldest
OS in circulation. Since the 3TB drives are used for
backups, they have to work on all platforms.
Click to expand...

Think I may have missed that one - took a brief look at Paragon
(semi-convoluted .msi/NetFreameWork install), EaseUs TechEd Pro. -- a
NoGo;- Seagate's also got a kernel driver for XP, but that may be
asking for trouble on a dissimilar brand (perhaps that's a rebadged
Acronis, for XP), in an apparently elusive but aspirant industrial
hopes for capturing a valid market share of older machines of course
interested in a stopgap over MS's XP hump on 2.2T limits.
Alternately, if you wanted this magic hard drive of yours
to work on all machines, you could use Linux and
do an HPA, and clip the drive at the 2.2TB mark.
I haven't tried this.
Click to expand...

Messed with that a little, not as much HPA, though. Initialized the
drive (geometry reference) in GPartEd for both Fat32 and GPT - no go
there, along with subsequent and sundry partition format sizes.
I tested GPT here, on more modern OSes and it worked.
Click to expand...

I may be seeing what's particular about a Purple surveillance-oriented
drive and expected environmental usage;- latency [non-]recovery issues
being the issue apart from GPT compliance (to Win7, anyway).
I find results using the drive on a USB enclosure
to be a different set of failures. The Acronis Capacity
Manager driver doesn't work in that case. In that case,
I might be limited to GPT only (ruling out WinXP).
In fact, the results were bad enough for my personal
situation, I put the USB enclosures back in the box.
They're useless to me at the moment.
Click to expand...

Could be there's a trail to that in updated or specialty USB drivers.

My Rosewill bare drive USB caddies, $10 if not giveaways - I've three
of them variously dated for firmware - appeared in good shape by
regards for Win7 distinguishing functional driver devices. Of course
there's only so much one can take of it, at times, escalated dealings
with 3T and things becomes lucid enough to yank a DVD's SATA cable to
slap that baby in by dangling cords.
The installation of Capacity Manager is torture.
It'll take you forever to get it working.
I suffered hair loss :) The thing is, if you *ever*
used Acronis before, Acronis leaves an older
driver on your OS. And you might not even be
aware it is present. Acronis makes a removal
tool, to remove that driver. (When the driver
was originally installed, Acronis assumed it
could not be removed! A poster on the Acronis
forum, showed them how to write an uninstaller.
The crappy driver was the one sitting on my
WinXP install, and prevented Capacity Manager
from working. As I said, "torture and hair loss".
I had to restore a two year old backup, prep
the disk with Capacity Manager, restore my
present day OS, and install the newer driver again.

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=613&lang=en

"Acronis True Image WD Edition Software Download"
(should include Capacity Manager)
Click to expand...

Scarry stuff. Hey, I'm "the breeze," just want things simple;-
although there's some give, I'm leaning to other direction, how others
view this -- that, 'if you want to play ball in the real show, get
yourself a real MB with real tools for working with real 2.2T+
drives.' Double-edged, too, for "nocounts," those remaining anyway,
whom happen to feel comfortable around XP.
I have this "cleanup utility" link bookmarked, but
I don't know if this was what I eventually used or not.

https://kb.acronis.com/content/34876

If the drive is giving timeout errors and you
have to return it, consider all the time it
saved you, on testing Acronis (free) software
from WDC.
Click to expand...

AMEN, Paul. (I was hopping like hell you wouldn't pull something from
your magic rabbit's technical hat to convince me to pull that
PurplePeople Eater out again for another round. It's going bye-bye on
Monday.) I'll stick to my lowly league for the time being;- as I
said, there's more than a fair share of actual representative drives,
new, valid, and no less competitively positioned/priced, within
yesterday's MB's compliance, for factoring where opinions, or press,
might have one believe Win7+ and larger storage capacities purely
dominate validity for future computing (and its economic market sell).
 
Top