My ReadyNAS Story . . .

Day 3 ...

Got to spend the weekend just toying around. I did another factory reset because I liked the benefits I read of X-Raid over me just manually configuring Raid 1. I installed the Transmission plugin and downloaded Project Gutenberg and Ubuntu just to see how it worked. I played more with Plex and signed up for MyPlex. I've streamed Rise of the Silver Surfer over 3G (AT&T) and after about a minute or so of it playing catch up, it worked beautifully. Still pretty happy with the decision, I'll hold off putting my production (home) data on there until I get a good backup solution working, however - I'm leaning towards S3 w/ JungleDisk because I don't think I can beat $0.125/GB and I'm already familiar with S3 and happy with the security.

What's the suffix on the drive model and what firmware version is on the drives. You can check under Status > Health in Frontview and clicking on the SMART+ button. Depending on which one you have there may be a drive firmware update available shortly which you should install.

There is a new UI in development. No ETA on it coming to x86 though. You can however see it in the Duo/NV+ v2 manuals: http://www.readynas.com/docs

mdgm wrote:
What's the suffix on the drive model and what firmware version is on the drives. You can check under Status > Health in Frontview and clicking on the SMART+ button. Depending on which one you have there may be a drive firmware update available shortly which you should install.

Yeah, I followed that drama over in the other thread - I'm hoping for the best, I have a friend running these drives for a few months without issue. Both drives are: ST2000DL003-9VT166 with FW: CC45.

mdgm wrote:
There is a new UI in development. No ETA on it coming to x86 though. You can however see it in the Duo/NV+ v2 manuals: http://www.readynas.com/docs

Wow, much better! Looking forward to that update.

One Week In . . .

I promise this isn't going to be a regular thing, just an excited NAS-Newbie :wiggle:

The unit froze on me, which I wasn't too excited about one week in, but I have been throwing at a lot at it. Long Story: Three or so days ago I walked over to it and hit the power button so that the little display would pop up and tell me how much of my 1.8 GB was in use and nothing happened. So I pushed it again (expecting the "Press Pwr again ..." msg), but nothing. Fan was running normal speed, not oddly hot, no weird noises, just nothing coming up on the display. I hit the backup button - I have no idea why - and obviously nothing happened their either. Went over to my laptop and pinged it (by IP), no response - also no connection over https or ssh. I gave it 4-5 hours or so and still nothing so I hit the power switch. Thankfully it came right back online and did a resync. I checked the health screen and everything was on the up and up. Looked in the logs and it didn't note anything bad happening... however it did throw the message about how to setup the backup job from about the time I hit the button. So, it seems the OS continue to run it just wasn't on the network? I wonder if I pulled the cable and put it back if it would have reconnected - who knows.

For future reference, since it does appear that it continued to run, is there a "soft reset" - something that just makes the OS reboot?

Other than that, Plex has been great. I got all my movies finally copied over and I've watched a couple on my mobile just because I could. I put my MP3s up there, too, and since I buy almost all of mine from Amazon, they're all DRM free and play without any issue, even over 3G from work. That said, I don't really like Plex as a music interface, so I'll probably just stick with keeping them local and in the Amazon Cloud. I've started to move my pictures over into Plex, too, and like the music, not a perfect interface, but not terrible either. I keep recent photos on my phone itself so I can share, so I'll probably continue keeping recent stuff local and the rest up on the NAS for somewhat easy access.

Finally, I implemented tarsnap as a backup solution. I even documented it here as a thank you to everyone who has helped along the way with my decision to purchase the ReadyNAS and help getting it setup. I'm a developer and ex-linux-wannabe-geek by hobby, so I'm thinking of trying my hand at making an addon for this if someone doesn't beat me to it and it's OK with the service provider. For things that aren't private, I let tarsnap just encrypt the data and upload to S3 since they seem to have a strong handle on encryption (at least of what I know about it). For financial documents, tax returns, etc., I store them in a TrueCrypt volume that I then upload, for that little bit of extra protection.

What version of RAIDiator is on your unit? The network connection has been known to hang on some old firmware.

Latest and greatest, first thing I did last week was update the firmware.

mdgm wrote:
There is a new UI in development. No ETA on it coming to x86 though. You can however see it in the Duo/NV+ v2 manuals: http://www.readynas.com/docs

the Dashboard "Home Screen" on page 13 looks good, any ETA on this do you know ??

Chris-Boston wrote:
Latest and greatest, first thing I did last week was update the firmware.

Hi Chris,
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.

the first thing for me is getting Squeezebox up and running on the Pro, I have six Squeezebox Duets around the house, the Pro 2 is my replacement for a very old ReadNAS 1000 ( Sparc rackmount with 4 drives) , once I have the music library singing I need to turn my attention to Plex for video playback to a Samsung LCD ( which I have not bought yet, but I have heard they play nicely with DLNA and Plex ) . 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.

the backup software, 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, I don't need tarsnap, just something local, as all my important stuff is also copied to my laptop, to a 1TB USB drive at work, and another in the car, to lose all 3 copies would be really unlucky, plus now I will have a 4th copy on the Pro 2 :-)

cheers
Peter

Chris have you opened a support case about your issue? If not you may wish to do so.

Peter when I said no ETA that's what I meant.

mdgm wrote:
Chris have you opened a support case about your issue? If not you may wish to do so.

I haven't - in as much as I should, as a previous life Tech Support guy I hate both sides of this conversation: "So, uh - about a week ago it froze. I had to reboot it. Now everything is fine" . . . I know, I know - it's good for me to document it just in case something were to happen, and it's good for them to know there was a freeze for tracking issues over versions, but there's a mix of me not thinking it's a big enough deal and me being lazy =)