recommendation for home + home office, confused by options

Ok thats what i wanted to know i thought they may be ST3000DM001 The latest firmware for that drive is CC4H http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/e ... Q/223651en
The new firmware download, version CC4H, is recommended to enhance the performance and/or reliability of the drive. Previous versions of firmware with these models and part numbers are CC46, CC47, CC49, CC4C, or CC4G. The upgrade is a free download available here and we are told that this helps with the chirping noises that some users are complaining about.

The best and safest way to update the firmware on the drives is to download the bootable ISO image from the link above, burn it to a CD shutdown pc disconnect all drives in your PC and connect the 2 ST3000DM001 drives to your PC sata ports so only those drives are connected this way you cant mess anything up on your PC drives, make sure you have the the bootable CD you burned in your CD drive start PC and boot from the CD and it should find the ST3000DM001 drives and you can update the firmware, when its finished shutdown PC disconnect the drives and reconnect the other drives and all should be fine you can now put the drives in your NAS, note: if you allready have the drives setup in the NAS make sure you shut it down before you remove them and label them so you put them back into the same drive bays.

That's great info Herbieo, many thanks.

Only problem: I am PC-less (Mac user). Going to be a challenge, as I'm in a home office, and there are no PC users (that I know of) nearby.

Cheers!

Chas

(edited to fix typo)

HERBIEO wrote:

Ok thats what i wanted to know i thought they may be ST3000DM001 The latest firmware for that drive is CC4H http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/e ... Q/223651en The new firmware download, version CC4H, is recommended to enhance the performance and/or reliability of the drive. Previous versions of firmware with these models and part numbers are CC46, CC47, CC49, CC4C, or CC4G. The upgrade is a free download available here and we are told that this helps with the chirping noises that some users are complaining about. The best and safest way to update the firmware on the drives is to download the bootable ISO image from the link above, burn it to a CD shutdown pc disconnect all drives in your PC and connect the 2 ST3000DM001 drives to your PC sata ports so only those drives are connected this way you cant mess anything up on your PC drives, make sure you have the the bootable CD you burned in your CD drive start PC and boot from the CD and it should find the ST3000DM001 drives and you can update the firmware, when its finished shutdown PC disconnect the drives and reconnect the other drives and all should be fine you can now put the drives in your NAS, note: if you allready have the drives setup in the NAS make sure you shut it down before you remove them and label them so you put them back into the same drive bays.

You could download the freely available VirtualBox - https://www.virtualbox.org - and acquire an OEM copy of the Windows OS to run on top of that.

You might also consider buying a SATA dock to test your new drive in, such as this - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Icybox-IB-111St ... 575&sr=8-3

Having said that, hindsight is a wonderful thing, as the other option is to return the Seagate drives for WD Red (that don't have the same firmware issue).

If you are in the U.S., you may be out of luck. Most of the better retailers are out of stock and there is some price gouging going on.

I didn't know about VirtualBox. I have an old copy of Windows around here somewhere (bought for an early copy of VirtualPC), I might try to see if I can get windows running that way (or via bootcamp).

I already have a SATA dock (very similar to the icybox you pointed me to). Very useful peripheral, looks like it's going to come in handy once again :-)

The WD Red drives would be an easy way out, but there would be a financial penalty (they're more expensive, and I'd have to deal with shipping the Seagates back). If "all" it takes is for me to somehow deal with a firmware upgrade, then I'll consider that time well spent.

Thanks again!

Chas

spinaltap wrote:

You could download the freely available VirtualBox - https://www.virtualbox.org - and acquire an OEM copy of the Windows OS to run on top of that. You might also consider buying a SATA dock to test your new drive in, such as this - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Icybox-IB-111St ... 575&sr=8-3 Having said that, hindsight is a wonderful thing, as the other option is to return the Seagate drives for WD Red (that don't have the same firmware issue).

Good thing I'm in the UK (where price-gouging is so standard, we hardly notice it any more! :-))

PapaBear wrote:
If you are in the U.S., you may be out of luck. Most of the better retailers are out of stock and there is some price gouging going on.

My ReadyNAS is up and running! Thanks everyone (especially spinaltap) for all of the good advice. It's presently setting itself up; I chose to use X-RAID2 because I put in only two drives, and I plan to add more later, which is why I got a 4-bay device, vs. a 2-bay device.

The real challenge was updating the firmware of the two Seagate 3TB drives I've installed. Turns out that Seagate's firmware update image boots on intel Macs! (first time I've booted my machine into a non-OSX environment). For any ReadyNAS newbies (like myself) who bought Seagate 3TB drives that need their firmware updated and who might find these posts in a search, I'll re-post a links that spinaltap gave me that guided me through the process.

1) link to Netgear's appoved drives list http://kb.netgear.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/20641
My Seagates were on here, but needed a firmware update. The ones I bought were: Seagate 3TB Barracuda SATA 6GB/s 64MB 7200RPM 3.5" Hard Drive Mfr#: ST3000DM001. I bought them from DABS.co.uk (where my ReadyNAS NV+ v2 was on sale, best price I could find anywhere in the UK).
2) To update the firmware, I needed Seagate's firmware ISO. I went to this page http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/223651en, and downloaded the bootable CD image for non-Windows Intel-based systems http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/downloads/firmware/Barracuda-ALL-GRCC4H.iso
3) In order to update the firmware on my Mac, I followed these instructions http://support.seagate.com/firmware/firmware_update_procedure_mac.html which booted my machine in to a DOS environment.
4) I followed the instructions on this page http://support.seagate.com/firmware/firmware_update_procedure.html

I am using an old-ish Mac Pro, which is Intel-based. I initially connected one of the Seagate drives using a SATA dock (via USB), but I'm guessing that the very basic DOS that Seagate provided doesn't have a usb driver. So, I opened up my machine, pulled out all 4 drive sleds (and turned off all of my external hard drives), and installed the seagate drives (one at at a time) in a drive sled. Then I booted into the DOS environment (hold down "option" at startup, choose the CD on which I installed the Seagate ISO image with DOS and the firmware updater) and updated the drives. Between updates, the software told me to shut off the power to my machine, which I did.

So, I have two drives with updated firmware in my ReadyNAS, and it's just finished doing whatever it does to get them ready. Time to figure out how to actually use this thing!

Thanks again, I'm sure I'll be back for insights in to how to use my ReadyNAS to its best advantage.

Cheers!

Chas