[superstar]

I just purchased a Vantec Nexstar MX NST-400MX-S2 DUal 3.5" Sata to USB HDD enclosure, and one of these 2TB Western Digital Caviar WD20EARS hard drive. I obviously want to use it inside the USB hdd enclosure, and will buy a second one of these drives in the future. In any case I would like to know the answers to the following questions. It would be great if you could answer them all, if you don't know the answer please answer what you can:


1. What jumper settings should I use on the hard drive for it to be in the USB enclosure used to store data for backup purposes only? [I want to have one partition on it, oh and I'll be using Win XP]


2. Will I need to use the "WD Align" software on this drive even though it'll only be used a backup in a usb enclosure? [ie: will be used with XP, but obviously no OS on the hdd. I ask because the hdd sticker says something about it having to be used if the drive will be running under XP]


3. What in the world is this "WDIDLE3" software/firmware I keep hearing that people are applying to this drive? Is it for this drive model or for other WD hdd's? If you have the link for it please list it and an explanation as to what it does, also the pros/cons.


4. When I create the partition on this drive in XP it has to be set as "Primary" correct? With default allocation size, etc?



Thank you so much!



Resource Pages:

Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB WD20EARS Official Page:
http://www.wdc.com/e...asp?driveid=773

Vantec NexStar MX NST-400MX-S2 Dual 3.5" SATA to USB2.0 HDD Enclosure Official Page:
http://www.vantecusa...view_detail/213

Edited by superstar, 24 August 2010 - 08:06 PM.

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1) There are no jumper settings on SATA drives.

2) WD Align is only necessary for users who have:

* Installed Windows XP to a WD AFD
* Cloned a source bootable hard drive with any Windows OS to a target AFD using a cloning tool other than True Image WD Edition
* Created single or multiple partitions on an AFD using Windows XP

3) This is not intended for your drive.

4) For storage, realistically makes no difference. Default options will make it primary.

5) Answer to question 5 cannot be found. This may be because question does not exist. Please check and try again.

[Neil Jones]

1) There are no jumper settings on SATA drives.

2) WD Align is only necessary for users who have:

* Installed Windows XP to a WD AFD
* Cloned a source bootable hard drive with any Windows OS to a target AFD using a cloning tool other than True Image WD Edition
* Created single or multiple partitions on an AFD using Windows XP

3) This is not intended for your drive.

4) For storage, realistically makes no difference. Default options will make it primary.

5) Answer to question 5 cannot be found. This may be because question does not exist. Please check and try again.

[superstar]

2) WD Align is only necessary for users who have:

* Installed Windows XP to a WD AFD
* Cloned a source bootable hard drive with any Windows OS to a target AFD using a cloning tool other than True Image WD Edition
* Created single or multiple partitions on an AFD using Windows XP

So as per your reply I WILL have to use WD ALIGN because this wd caviar green 2tb hdd will be used as a one partition data drive in a USB enclosure partitioned by Win Xp correct?

4) For storage, realistically makes no difference. Default options will make it primary

And WD Align will fix the partition from 512 to 4 by itself right?


Thanks again Neil your always helpful and lol at your 5th answer. That made my day!!! Your the best. And hey I hate these new wd green drives I don't think I should be doing all of this to get a drive to work as backup in a USB enclosure on Xp. To much hassle for a drive to work right away. I heard Seagate drives don't require all of this Tom foolery for large "Advanced Format" drives.

[Neil Jones]

Re; WDAlign, the easiest solution would be, before you plonk the HDD into the caddy, is to jumper pins 7 and 8, and that should solve the entire issue. However it'll probably screw things up at a later date if you decide you want to go to a newer operating system, such as Vista or 7 or the so-called "Windows 8" as and when because said jumper is effectively a "botch" job to have it work with XP.

A better way of doing it if you have access to a Vista or 7 machine, is to set it up from there. Providing you don't format it with XP, it should be okay when you connect it to an XP machine. It's this sort of issue that's now becoming apparent with the size drives we have now and a 10 year old operating system still in wide mainstream use.

WDAlign, from what I can see, doesn't actually partition or format or do anything of any great interest that you can't do manually. The only caveat to the operation is don't use XP initially when setting the drive up.

[superstar]

So if I jumper pins 7 & 8, and partition/format the drive in my USB enclosure using XP the drive will be ok is what I understand from what your saying. But here's a question... So if I do it that way and than physically unplug JUST the USB cord from my XP machine and than plug it into say a friends WIN 7 machine, it won't work?

Thanks Neil

[superstar]

I ended up doing some serious research online for a couple of days and came to the conclusion that if a WESTERN DIGITAL CAVIAR GREEN 2TB WD20EARS drive is to be used in a USB enclosure in XP [full data backup use with ONE partition only] you have to do the following steps:

1. Place the drive in a USB enclosure without a jumper.

2. Connect the enclosure to a Win XP pc via usb.

3. Run XP's disk management to partition the drive and format it using up the entire space, as well as leaving the default settings in the partition/format wizard. Such as NTFS, and default allocation size which I believe is 512. Use "quick format" in the wizards options otherwise be prepared to wait as much as 24+ hours on this 2TB drive for a normal format via usb. Some will say it's better to wait out a normal format for it to search for bad sectors and other information. But this can also be done later on with other tools in your spare time.

4. Download Paragon's WD Align software from here. You can try Acronis' WD Align software but it didn't recognize my hdd as being an ADVANCED FORMAT DRIVE. It did however notice that it was improperly aligned. Paragon's WD Align was able to see that it was improperly aligned & fix it. This process should take about two minutes. If you tried both Acronis & Paragon's WD Align like I did you can now open up Acronis WD Align and see that the drive is now properly aligned. Even though Acronis may say it's not an ADVANCED FORMAT DRIVE which is odd. Double checking the alignment in Paragon's WD Align is a good idea just to be safe.

5. Drive is now ready for backup uses...


I found the drive to be very fast via usb and was lucky that it wasn't DOA as I've heard many say when they ordered this drive. Sure it may be new technology, and these drives aren't perfect yet. But for people like me with no more room to spare... I needed it! Don't trust your data to this drive for about a month or so of extensive use, and checking the hdd with health tools. I've heard some people have had this drive fail fairly quickly in less than a month. Those who haven't experienced that have still been running the drive without issues.


QUESTION 1:

Now does anyone know how to use WDIDLE3 on a WD20EARS drive? I know Neil said it's not for this drive before but I've seen countless posts online about people using it on this drive so...


QUESTION 2:

Ok well I have attached pictures of my setup with my VANTEC NEXSTAR NST-400MX-S2 SATA to USB HDD enclosure. I have one 2TB WD Caviar Green HDD connected to the "CON1" slot, and as you can see the "JBOD" sticker is pointing the opposite way from the "JBOD" print on the circuit board which is what is confusing me. I have it set to "BIG"... I don't know if this is the correct way to setup the enclosure for INDIVIDUAL drive use NOT JBOD, RAID, OR ANYTHING ELSE. Please look at the pictures and confirm with me if this is the correct way to setup INDIVIDUAL drives in this enclosure, or if I have the switch set wrong. I want to put another 2TB HDD in "CON2" slot one day in the future and have it as an INDIVIDUAL HDD too. Please help because I don't know what "BIG" stands for... I have done some small research and believe BIG is the same as JBOD. So if that's true why in the world would the switch be used for the same thing?






Thanks

Edited by superstar, 26 August 2010 - 06:43 PM.