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Forum Discussion
ReadyNAS: NEVER AGAIN!
Hi, Just providing some feedback on my experience with NETGEAR and the ReadyNAS product. In a nutshell, the best use I can find for my [brand new] readynas 104 is as a boat anchor, and I will never b...
Hi
Thanks for your reply.
You are indeed missing a few things regarding my case history, which is as described in my previous post. In summary to answer your question on raid configuration:
- initial setup using raid 0 and upgrade to 6.1.9.
- first "device is offline/do not reboot your device" crash, escalated to Support and quickly closed after instructing me to unplug/replug. The NAS comes back up.
- second "device is offline" crash, NAS doesn't reboot, escalated to support, this time one of the two volumes is corrupted. Advised to copy data somewhere else (which takes ages due to slow data recovery process and constraints swapping drives around because I don't have a second NAS to copy the data to). Health of both HDD is checked and confirmed by netgear support. Proceed with factory reset as instructed, in Raid-X as recommended (single volume) and copy all data back to NAS. Ticket closed.
- third "device is offline" crash, in the middle of the copy process for a new back-up. Ticket reopen. The file system is corrupt, the NAS doesn't reboot with either of the disks in (I.e. the redundancy doesn't work. Isn't it the point of RAID redundancy in a two-HD configuration that when there's a HD failure, the other drive still allows to rebuild the volume? Oh but it's not a HD failure). "Low level"/"last resort" data recovery recovers about 70% of data.
- netgear support tells me I have to pay for postage to swap the chassis. Big joke, still laughing.
Granted that, considering the problems I had already faced and as wandermerwe also rightfully pointed out, I could have been more cautious and kept a second copy of my backup until I confirmed that the first backup completed successfully. I was a fool to think I could trust the NAS for a couple of hours, as the later events showed. But at the same time, I would have needed two other 3 TB drives, and maybe another NAS from another supplier?
What I find most annoying is that, instead of trying to be accommodating both the NETGEAR support consultant I talked to and yourself mdgm keep saying that hardware can fail. Of course it can fail. Does it mean that you can sell an unreliable product and pretend it is the responsibility of the customer to not rely on it at all?
I would expect that a NAS doesn't fail several times in the first 3 months of its life, and if it does you as a manufacturer face your responsibilities and do the right thing by your customer. By the way, as far as I can see, nothing is pointing to the hardware anymore than the software in this particular case (but you probably know something I don't, do you?).
Side comment: I do agree, based on the third crash, that the instability for pre-6.1.5 installations is not at play in my case since I did do a factory reset and moved to x-RAID based on advice from your support (arguably I would probably have lost less data, had I stayed with a RAID 0 configuration, but it was hard to guess that the product could actually corrupt both disks in an X-RAID configuration).
Even though it was not at play in my case, I still find amazing that you do not warn users about the necessity of doing a factory reset *before* they do a firmware update, while it is just a click away on front view.
Anyway all things considered, I was ready to accept all this as a result of bad luck/fate, but what really gets me is that my story is considered a standard support case that does not necessitate any particular commercial attention: it's a normal failure and NETGEAR won't even consider waiving its standard RMA fees. I hear a pretty clear message: "we sell an unreliable product, do not rely on it, if you do we're not responsible, please join the queue to complain and pay to have your product replaced by another one which by the way you should not rely on either".
Thanks for your reply.
You are indeed missing a few things regarding my case history, which is as described in my previous post. In summary to answer your question on raid configuration:
- initial setup using raid 0 and upgrade to 6.1.9.
- first "device is offline/do not reboot your device" crash, escalated to Support and quickly closed after instructing me to unplug/replug. The NAS comes back up.
- second "device is offline" crash, NAS doesn't reboot, escalated to support, this time one of the two volumes is corrupted. Advised to copy data somewhere else (which takes ages due to slow data recovery process and constraints swapping drives around because I don't have a second NAS to copy the data to). Health of both HDD is checked and confirmed by netgear support. Proceed with factory reset as instructed, in Raid-X as recommended (single volume) and copy all data back to NAS. Ticket closed.
- third "device is offline" crash, in the middle of the copy process for a new back-up. Ticket reopen. The file system is corrupt, the NAS doesn't reboot with either of the disks in (I.e. the redundancy doesn't work. Isn't it the point of RAID redundancy in a two-HD configuration that when there's a HD failure, the other drive still allows to rebuild the volume? Oh but it's not a HD failure). "Low level"/"last resort" data recovery recovers about 70% of data.
- netgear support tells me I have to pay for postage to swap the chassis. Big joke, still laughing.
Granted that, considering the problems I had already faced and as wandermerwe also rightfully pointed out, I could have been more cautious and kept a second copy of my backup until I confirmed that the first backup completed successfully. I was a fool to think I could trust the NAS for a couple of hours, as the later events showed. But at the same time, I would have needed two other 3 TB drives, and maybe another NAS from another supplier?
What I find most annoying is that, instead of trying to be accommodating both the NETGEAR support consultant I talked to and yourself mdgm keep saying that hardware can fail. Of course it can fail. Does it mean that you can sell an unreliable product and pretend it is the responsibility of the customer to not rely on it at all?
I would expect that a NAS doesn't fail several times in the first 3 months of its life, and if it does you as a manufacturer face your responsibilities and do the right thing by your customer. By the way, as far as I can see, nothing is pointing to the hardware anymore than the software in this particular case (but you probably know something I don't, do you?).
Side comment: I do agree, based on the third crash, that the instability for pre-6.1.5 installations is not at play in my case since I did do a factory reset and moved to x-RAID based on advice from your support (arguably I would probably have lost less data, had I stayed with a RAID 0 configuration, but it was hard to guess that the product could actually corrupt both disks in an X-RAID configuration).
Even though it was not at play in my case, I still find amazing that you do not warn users about the necessity of doing a factory reset *before* they do a firmware update, while it is just a click away on front view.
Anyway all things considered, I was ready to accept all this as a result of bad luck/fate, but what really gets me is that my story is considered a standard support case that does not necessitate any particular commercial attention: it's a normal failure and NETGEAR won't even consider waiving its standard RMA fees. I hear a pretty clear message: "we sell an unreliable product, do not rely on it, if you do we're not responsible, please join the queue to complain and pay to have your product replaced by another one which by the way you should not rely on either".
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