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Forum Discussion
NAS Frozen, Strange Display Messages
I have encountered two occurences of my RN214 totally freezing or locking up, where the ONLY option I had was to unplug the unit for a power-cycle. Both occurences seem to have involved an eSATA con...
Those particular errors on the LCD are where the NAS crashed.
You might be able to find more information by downloading the log zip file from the NAS and looking in system.log and kernel.log. I also suggest testing the drive in a Windows PC with vendor tools (Seatools for Seagate, Lifeguard for Western Digital).
Unfortunately, although the suggestion to run drive tests was a good one, it did not help. The external eSATA drive passed all tests, including the long generic test from Seatools and a complete chkdsk.
I have used this exact same eSATA drive with this RN214 before without problems (it has full backups of the NAS from late last year before I expanded the RAID). Today I reconnected the drive to the RN214 today and it was recognized fine. I then deleted one of the share backups from the drive without any problems, so I started a NEW backup to the drive, and about 10 minutes in the whole NAS locked up with the same "add_timer+c" error I reported in the first post above. grrrrrrrr
I generally hate all things eSATA anyway (I find them very unreliable), but since I have this drive, I wanted to use it for backups to gain the extra speed available with eSATA over USB 2.0. And since this has worked just fine in the past with this NAS & eSATA combo (same cable too), I am at a loss why I am having trouble with the backups now. I have not experienced any other problems with this RN214 other than these recent lockups when trying to do the backups. And the same backups from this NAS ran fine over my network to a different NAS yesterday, so the problem does not seem to be the backup job; it is specific to the attached eSATA drive.
Any other ideas, or should I just give up all hope of using this eSATA drive?
Mauser69 wrote:
I wanted to use it for backups to gain the extra speed available with eSATA over USB 2.0.
Both rear USB ports in the RN214 are USB 3.0. Though perhaps your drive is a combo USB 2/firewire/eSATA model?
Mauser69 wrote:
Unfortunately, although the suggestion to run drive tests was a good one, it did not help. The external eSATA drive passed all tests, including the long generic test from Seatools and a complete chkdsk.
It confirmed that the drive was ok.
Mauser69 wrote:
I generally hate all things eSATA anyway (I find them very unreliable)
Any other ideas, or should I just give up all hope of using this eSATA drive?
I've found eSATA unreliable as well. Maybe give it another go, and if you get the same result, just abandon it.
I have pretty much decided that all my problems here were due to the usual flakey garbage eSATA connections. I moved that external drive to another computer where I have used it for backups in the past, and I had problems there too (eventually solved by lots of wiggling and re-seating the cable).
I just wish this NAS had a more gracefull way to deal with external drive problems than simply locking up and waiting for someone to pull the plug!
Thanx for all your help and suggestions.
Unfortunately, the ReadyNAS uses the older, more shallow eSATA II connector because it is only eSATA II. The deeper eSATA III one is slightly better. But if your eSATA device came with an eSATA III cable, so does not fully insert in the ReadyNAS, that's the worst case. Before I gave up on them completely, I was actually using silicone glue to hold the connectors in place on my RN516. It does the job, but can be peeled off if needed. Note that you should not use the stuff you get in a hardware store that smells like vinegar. It'll eat through electronics, as it really does have acetic acid. The stuff for electronics is more expensive and comes in different thicknesses -- you want the thickest to keep it from running before it sets (which is longer than for the acidic stuff).
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