From: https://www.servethehome.com/raid-calculator/raid-reliability-calculator-simple-mttdl-model/

It took a lot of back and forth but the basic idea is this, the calculator is “directionally” correct 
but is not the most accurate way to model all of that stuff. We did evaluate a much faster model but on 
an AWS m1.small instance it was taking over 15 minutes to complete with only one user. Simply put, this 
RAID reliability calculator will give you a fairly good idea regarding which RAID level is the most 
reliable given a number of drives.

From: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/markrussinovich/2011/11/06/fixing-disk-signature-collisions/

Method 1: If you right-click on the disk, the utility offers an “Online” command that will cause 
Windows to analyze the disk’s partition table and mount its volumes:

Method 2: With the disk signature in hand, open an administrative command prompt window and run 
Diskpart, the command-line disk management utility. Enter “select disk 2”, replacing “2” with 
the disk ID that the Disk Management utility shows for the disk. Now you’re ready for the final 
step, setting the disk signature to its original value with the command “uniqueid disk id=e9eb3aa5”, 
substituting the ID with the one you saw in the BCD:

From: https://rog.asus.com/articles/maximus-motherboards/buying-an-m-2-ssd-how-to-tell-which-is-which/

From: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/02/understanding-m-2-the-interface-that-will-speed-up-your-next-ssd/

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.2

Legacy SATA - Used for SATA SSDs, and interfaced through the AHCI driver and legacy SATA 3.0 

PCI Express using AHCI - Used for PCI Express SSDs and interfaced through the AHCI driver
AHCI has some inherent inefficiencies when applied to SSD devices, which behave much more 
like DRAM than like spinning media.

PCI Express using NVMe
At a high level, primary advantages of NVMe over AHCI relate to NVMe's ability to exploit 
parallelism in host hardware and software

M.2 SSD Buyers Checklist:
Whether your motherboard/notebook supports 
   M.2 SATA or M.2 PCI-Express (hint: check the specs page!)
The type of keying 
   (B/M/B+M) supported by the motherboard/notebook socket
If it is PCI Express, whether it supports 
   2x or 4x PCI-Express
The maximum length of SSD drive supported 
   (2232 2242 2260 2280 22110) (hint: it should say on the PCB)

From: http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/ssd-upgrade-tutorial

Clone to USB
Install disk cloning software. For this tutorial, we're using EaseUS Todo Backup Free, which 
is free for personal use, has a user-friendly interface, and also optimizes the migration to 
an SSD.

From: http://support.wdc.com/product/install.asp?groupid=612&lang=en

also see wikipedia.

WD3000GLFS - GL = Sata cable connect
WD3000HLFS - HL = Backplane Ready
WD3000BLFS - BL = 2.5" (no mounting frame)

For backplane mount 3Ware 9550

WD3000HLFS - FS = 16 mb cash
WD4500HLHX - HX = 32 mb cash
WD6000HLHX - HX = 32 mb cash

AEON MICRO, INC.
10096 6TH STREET STE L
RANCHO CUCAMONGA, CA 91730 US
T:(909)565-4121
F:(866)941-5633

From: http://www.neweggbusiness.com/product/product.aspx?item=9b-22-236-352

If you are looking at this hard drive, you may be wondering what it offers beyond identical capacity 7200 rpm drives that cost less. Specifically, the Western Digital Black and SE drives are candidates. The Black drives are very similar to enterprise class drives right down to the 5 year warranty. The big difference is drives like the WD2000FYYZ have TLER (Time Limited Error Recovery). In layman’s terms, if an error occurs with the hard drive in a RAID array, a drive will most likely not be able to recover and the RAID may need to be rebuilt. Without TLER, another error during RAID rebuilding results in all data being lost. So, TLER is why you may not want a Black edition drive. For the SE model Western Digital drives which also feature TLER, the big difference is that the SE has a much lower MTBF (800,000 hours vs. 1,400,000 hours) and the non-recoverable read errors per bits read is also not as good (<10 in 10^15 vs. <10 in 10^16). Performance-wise, I ran some benchmarks and according to ATTO I’m getting a little over 160 MB/s for both read and write. That’s pretty good for a mechanical drive, although it is less than the advertised 171 MB/s listed on the spec sheet. I’ve read other reviews saying this drive is loud during read and write seeks. Subjectively, I find it equal in acoustics to my Western Digital Black drive (FALS). Yes it’s audible, but if silence is your priority then you should be looking at a different model to begin with.” — Robert P. 10/9/2013

From: http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?88925-Does-TLER-do-any-good-for-software-RAID-1

While I would still prefer to use something like WD's Red drives for software-based RAID, you could use 
standard consumer-grade SATA drives and be just fine. Any errors your drives encounter will cause the array 
to take a bit longer to respond, but RAID 1 is computationally simple and such delays would not be too bad
considering the alternative.

If this RAID 1 array is for an OS install, I would recommend using standard SATA drives (you want that 
self-healing!). If this RAID 1 array is for storing data, I would recommend TLER (do not forget to turn 
it on!). If this RAID 1 array is for a dedicated file server, I would recommend Red drives (you want error 
reporting here).

From: http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/996

WD desktop hard drives (WD Blue, Green, or Black) have been tested and are recommended for consumer 
RAID applications when using the drives in a RAID 0 (Stripe) or RAID 1 (Mirror) configuration.
However, there are several things to keep in mind when setting up a RAID with these drives:
WD only recommends using a Desktop drive in a RAID array with no more than two (2) drives 
(Raid 0 or Raid 1 only).

Further reading

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_recovery_control

In a stand-alone configuration TLER should be disabled. As the drive is not redundant, reporting 
segments as failed will only increase manual intervention. Without a hardware RAID controller or 
a software RAID implementation to drop the disk, normal (no TLER) recovery ability is most stable

Western Digital Time Limit Error Recovery Utility - WDTLER.EXE

http://www.smartmontools.org/

From: http://thepiratebay.sx/torrent/4423392/Hirens_BootCD_9.6_with_keyboardpatch

  Diagnostic tools

from: http://superuser.com/questions/47359/how-do-i-remove-an-efi-system-partition-from-a-drive-in-windows-7

  Disk Manager will not help in windows 7
  use dos command diskpart

1. On the command prompt type diskpart and answer to any possible UAC prompt.
2. On the new diskpart prompt, type list disk. Note the Disk ### column.
3. Type, select disk ### (with ### being the disk you wish to delete.
4. Usually the disk with partition 0 with a size of 200 MB) NOTE: The disk may not show the 200MB partition in the disk list in Diskpart even if it exists.
5. Finish by typing, clean.
6. Type exit to exit diskpart

http://superuser.com/questions/235753/filesystem-to-use-for-external-hard-drive-to-be-used-with-mac-linux-and-windows

In Mac OS X, use the following commands to format your large (no 4Gb limit) hard drive in FAT32.

It will be readable and writable on Linux, Mac OS X et Windows.

First, identify the disk you want to format with this command:

   $ diskutil list

   /dev/disk0
 #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
 0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *232.9 Gi   disk0
 1:                        EFI                         200.0 Mi   disk0s1
 2:                  Apple_HFS Mac_HD                  39.9 Gi    disk0s2
 3:                  Apple_HFS Data                    192.6 Gi   disk0s3
  /dev/disk1
 #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
 0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *1.9 Gi     disk1
 1:                 DOS_FAT_32 CORSAIR                 1.9 Gi     disk1s1
 
 
 $ diskutil partitionDisk /dev/disk1 MBRFormat "MS-DOS FAT32" "Millenium Falcon" 1.9G
 
 $ man diskutil
 
 diskutil partitionDisk /dev/disk2 MBRFormat "MS-DOS FAT32" "ScaHD" 1.0TB

Most legacy systems built before 2011

From: http://seagatewtb.test3.cs3.force.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/218619en/?language=en_US&c=Products%3ASerial_ATA_Drives_Seagate_Barracuda&fs=Search&pn=1

Quick facts about Windows and 3TB drives:

  Windows 7 and Vista support GPT 3TB single partitions
  Windows 7 and Vista can only boot GPT on systems with UEFI BIOS
  Windows 7 and Vista can mount a GPT non-booting data drive
  Intel RST device drivers before v10.1 do not support 3TB disk drives
  Windows systems with Legacy BIOS and MBR boot drives are limited to 2.2TB partitions
  Windows XP does not support GPT
  Windows XP sees a 3TB drive as 800GB on boot or data drives
  DiscWizard software can install a device driver which opens the full capacity of a 3TB. You can use it to create a second partition for the capacity above 2.2TB
  

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-701276.pdf

Western Digital WD RE4 WD1003FBYX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5“ Internal Enterprise Hard Drive -Bare Drive

WD RE 4 TB SATA Hard Drives ( WD4000FYYZ)

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/AAG/ENG/2178-771177.pdf