My ReadyNAS Story . . .

pcourtney1 wrote:
thanks to your posts, I am embarking on a very similar path, I've just bought a new ReadyNAS Pro 2 ( the 5 year warranty swung it for me) and I inserted 2 x 3TB drives which will be configured with X-Raid2, I am going to place it out of the way, as I have Cat6 all over the house, so I don't have to worry about the fans.

Awesome! I'm glad I helped convince you. I'm less than two weeks in now, but so far the ReadyNas Pro is stellar. Looks like you had an old ReadyNAS so you're in the family well before I ever was :)

pcourtney1 wrote:
the first thing for me is getting Squeezebox up and running on the Pro, I have six Squeezebox Duets around the house

You know, I've been seeing Squeezebox pop up more and more lately and I haven't looked into what it is at all, I may have to do some research.

pcourtney1 wrote:
It would be nice to eventually upgrade all the TV's in the house to Samsung, so I can move from room to room and still watch the video without too much interruption.

Only 1 of my 3 Samsung TVs support DLNA but it seems to work pretty well. I upgraded to a Wireless-N router at the same time but I'm not sure if that helps at all or not or if my old G would have been fine.

pcourtney1 wrote:
I'm going to try the Acronis 10 ( 90 day trial ) and see how that goes before I make my mind up on that one

Post back and let us know how Acronis goes - I backup my stuff elsewhere, too, but I like having it on S3 so that it's slightly more professionally managed and I don't have to worry as much about a disaster during those times when all of my data is in one place.

Chris, you may want to check out Super-Poussin's Subsonic add-on for music streaming. Some people have been having issues with it staying up with the latest version, but mine has been solid as a rock. For reference i have about 10,000 tracks indexed with it. There are several apps for iPhone / iPad for use with a Subsonic server, and it can be made to accept https:// connections. The App i use is a paid-for app called iSub, there are others, but this one has the most favourable reviews.

Enjoyed reading your ReadyNAS Diaries though, thanks for sharing.

I'm also using Acronis Backup to backup my main PC to the NAS. I've found that Acronis sometimes has issues deleting split volumes when a single-version chain is selected, meaning it will create new backups and fail to delete the old ones after a period of time. Saving each backup as a single file (without splitting) so far has not exhibited this issue. Not tried restoring from a backup yet, but the backups all validate fine, so am placing my faith in them.

All NAS files (but excluding the Acronis backup) are backed up from the NAS to an auxillary drive on the host PC. The Acronis backup doesn't contain any userdata, as I store all personal files directly to the NAS. Acronis is mainly being used to save an image of the main PC from which I can quickly restore if things go screwy. Loss of this backup isn't a major issue as I would simply reinstall from the CD and use the drivers / software on the NAS (or auxillary HDD) to re-install from. Having it just saves me a lot of time.

gibxxi - you might try using your Acronis to clone your system drive of your PC. I do that, and you have an immediate check as to whether it works or not, simply use the cloned drive to boot your PC. If it works you know you have a good backup. Many times, I will leave the cloned drive in the system and remove the source to place in a cabinet. (BTW, if you run Acronis from the CD rather than install it, it will clone anything, even Linux. It will only install on Windows though.) Since the system drive doesn't change that much, only when you add a program to the PC, you don't need to back it up all that often. I never store data on my system drives, not even on my laptop (it is a 17" with two drives).

All my data is on a ReadyNAS so it can be accessed by any PC in the house. It backs up nightly to a second ReadyNAS. Took me a while to be in a position to have two, but I am glad I did.

I do something more like gibxxi - I use Acronis to create backup images of my system drive(s) on my Pro-6. This is automated, and done weekly for each PC, so they are always reasonably current. From there they migrate to the backup ReadyNAS and to the Crashplan cloud server (like everything else on the Pro).

I haven't run into his delete problem, but I don't split the volumes either - the full backup image is to one file, then I do 7 incremental backups in the cycle. After that, I repeat with a new full backup.

The problem with Acronis not deleting old versions was in the 2011 version of the software I was using, and since Upgrading to the 2012 version, i switched to using a single file. So I can't really say if it's been fixed in the software or not. It would run ok for a few weeks, then after about the 3rd iteration it would stop deleting the old versions. I used a single version chain because of the factors Papabear already mentioned. i.e: It being mainly OS / program data I was backing up. I am making full images of the main system drive partition, but also of my games / multimedia encoding drive too. Both are saved to the same image file. I could, and probably should split these up into seperate backup jobs, having an image for each drive, but being the lazy sod I am, i just did it the quickest way I could to get the task done.

The reason i'm not recopying the backup from Acronis (that saves to a dedicated share on the NAS) back to the auxillary drive is down to space. I want to keep the maximum amount of space available for data from the remaining shares on the NAS, since the auxillary is 3TB, and the NAS has 5.4TB of space. Like I said, if I lose the Acronis data (in the event the main PC goes down, and the NAS), it's not a major deal. Only the loss of data from the other shares on the NAS would be a major deal.

I'd much like another NAS, but space, networking, layout of the flat where I live, price, and availability of a power source (as i've mentioned before) prevent it at the moment. In hindsight, giving away my trusty old Duo was a bit kneejerk. I wish i'd kept it now for just such a purpose. But the guy I gave it to, has just had one of his pc's drives fail on him, and having the NAS has stopped him losing 750GB of data, so i'm glad it helped someone. :)

Sadly, my excitement originally expressed is long gone. The unit didn't last longer than about 30 days before it started hanging. For about 6 weeks I'd have to bounce it daily, let it resync the disks, and it'd be fine. The issue occurring would be that the device wouldn't respond to any network request, and when I went to it and hit POWER, nothing would happen - the display would remain blank (instead of the normal warning that if I hit it again, the unit would power down).

Now I just keep it powered it off and only turn it on if there's some file I need on it. I've moved back most of the non-media data to the laptops hanging around the house, and I'm sure I've lost some wife acceptance factor for future gizmos I want to spend my money on.

Make an online submission to NetGear support. Download your logs (status > Logs > download all logs) and attach them to your online case. Also post your case number (maybe in a new thread)? Do try to mention to support a time when the NAS hung as many of the logs are timestamped so that would help them to identify the problem.

I will certainly agree that you should open a ticket. I wish you had posted this several months back, for at that time you could certainly use the phone support (free for first 90 days after purchase), however you still get free on line support. When I saw your first post about the freezing, my first thought was that you had possibly enabled disk spin down, for there is a delay while the drives spin up, but no resync takes place in that situation.

If you don't have any data at risk, it would be interesting, if you had some spare drives, to see if the Pro 6 reacts the same way with drives other than those Seagate drives. From the drama, as you described it, it seems to be similar to the reaction they were seeing.