Spinpoint F4 HD204UI 2TB 5400 RPM working good so far

Mutley - please carry on posting your experiences.

I have a new duo with a single WD20EARS (raidiator 4.1.7) - I was looking to get another 2TB for redundancy - the cheapest WD20EARS I could find was £71.53 at ebuyer (using discount code SPOOKY); but the samsung F4 is currently 65.99 delivered at Novatech.

I'm quite tempted because from what I've read the F4 is faster than the WD20EARS so I don't think it'll be any worse than getting another WD; but of course the F4 isn't on the compatibility list...

I'm thinking that if there are problems with the F4 I can always bung it in a caddy as a backup drive, otherwise I'll get another F4 and use the WD as backup; of course I could just wait a while - as mdgm said now 4.1.7 has been released Netgear could well be testing other 4K sector drives...

I think for now I'll watch and cheer on you pioneers :?

Hello wombat

Sure I'll put some posts up. Soulseeker kindly has been doing the same for me.

I got my drives this afternoon and started to go to work. Hours and hours later, I'm actually doing something in the right direction. Don't ask me, God only knows where the time goes in IT world. After finally finished trawling the forum and comprehending how I should go about this upheaval, I've finally got a backup going of my "C" file on the Duo. Using one of the new Samsung F4's in an external caddy off of the Duo. It looks like it's backing up about 5GB an hour. Can that be right? Seems slow. How long is 1400GB going to take? On 5GB an hour about 12 days?

Anyone out there, can this be right? 1.5TB in 12 Days? 5GB an Hour?

Someone get back to me on this one. I don't know if it's the caddy, the hard drive or the Duo or What? Someone give me some pointers here please. Even if you think it's about right. Please let me know.

Formatted the external to ext3 aswell. And 1Gb of Ram.

Soulseeker. How's your backup restore going? How long for how much of a backup do you think?

5GB an hour just seems slow.

mutley

5gb/hour is far to slow ... with jumbo frames enabled I get around 25-30 mb/sec (for large files).

My backup restore went fine without problems. Now everythings working perfectly :).

Don't you have to have a gigabit network/switch for jumbo frames? Or the fact that it's going direct from the Duo to the caddy, then the gigabit switch doesn't apply?

Something is not right. I've just checked and there's approx 15 GB been copied over 12/13 hours. Going to cancel backup and...........

Just gone into frontview and got message alert. Backup job was canceled after 3 hours. "error" but no description in logs. Going to run through the share permissions and reset anything that doesn't look right to "admin and nogroup". And select jumbo frames to see if it helps with or without a gigabit switch.

peeved mutley

Just gone back into the manual and found "enable fast CIFS writes" in the performance tab. Wasn't selected so done so. Change owner ship of shares to admin and nogroup and selected "jumbo frames", although it does mention a "switch" in the description.

Lets see what happens.

I did my "final" backup on my desktop-pc (on a gigabit-switch), not directly from nas to usb. I guess that's faster ...

Adjusted all settings described in earlier post. Don't know if the "jumbo frames" or the "enable fast CIFS writes" is doing it, but it seems to be moving like a rocket now. Just checked and got about 3GB in about 10 mins.

I'll get this backup done and then do a test, to see which setting actually made the difference.

mutley moving

Couldn't help myself. I canceled the backup. Disabled "Jumbo frames" and kept "Enable Fast CIFS writes". Testing again. The jumbo frames didn't make any sense to me as I'm not using a gig switch. Lets see.

update

Ok. Done some quick tests. Enabled "Enable Fast CIFS writes" and that seemed to be the kiddy that made the difference.

Jumbo frames enabled or disabled I'm not sure made a difference. I'm sure first test with it enabled was really fast. Then second and third test which was disabled and then re-enabled didn't show much difference if any at all. Did re-boot every time.

At the moment It's "Enable Fast CIFS writes" with "Jumbo Frames" enabled. Just checked and got about 35 GB an hour backed up. 35GB an hour works out to approx a day and half. Better than 11 and half days, that was showing last night.
So faster than last night with "Enable Fast CIFS writes". Located in the Performance tab in frontview for anyone looking.

Think I had some read/write issues going of with some shares last night going by the logs. Went and reset owner ship today on all shares to admin and nogroup. Hopefully that'll solve the problem.

Could someone please clarify for me please about the "Jumbo Frames".

I'm not using a gigabit switch. External Caddy attached to back of Duo. Formatted to EXT3.
Would enabling "Jumbo Frames" help in any way? Technically?
The fact that the data is not going through the LAN, but straight from the Duo to the external caddy, would Jumbo Frames work?

Got to walk away from mac mutley

I am giving a try to a single HD204UI (RAID0) in an NV+ (Raidiator 4.1.7 - factory reset).

I get the following partition log file:

Disk /dev/md0 doesn't contain a valid partition table
Disk /dev/md1 doesn't contain a valid partition table
Disk /dev/md2 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/hdc: 2000.3 GB, 2000398934016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243201 cylinders, total 3907029168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdc1              32     4096031     2048000   fd  Linux raid autodetect
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/hdc2         4096032     5144607      524288   fd  Linux raid autodetect
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/hdc3         5144608  3907012815  1950934104   fd  Linux raid autodetect
Note: sector size is 1024 (not 512)

Disk /dev/md0: 2097 MB, 2097086464 bytes
2 heads, 4 sectors/track, 255992 cylinders, total 2047936 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 1024 = 1024 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Note: sector size is 1024 (not 512)

Disk /dev/md1: 536 MB, 536805376 bytes
2 heads, 4 sectors/track, 65528 cylinders, total 524224 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 1024 = 1024 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Note: sector size is 1024 (not 512)

Disk /dev/md2: 1997.7 GB, 1997756432384 bytes
2 heads, 4 sectors/track, 243866752 cylinders, total 1950934016 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 1024 = 1024 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

The partitions are aligned but are the three notes "sector size is 1024 (not 512)" normal ?

Thanks for your help.

@Mutley

Thanks your experiences will be helpful as I'm a total noob with the Duo.

Sorry I can't advise on the Jumbo frames; but I also wouldn't think they'd have any effect on a directly attached caddy drive as it's a network and not USB parameter.

I'm also restricted by having 100mb network. In my initial test with a WD20EARS 2TB drive I was only getting 10-11 MB/s ( over the network writing to and from my hard drive and also to and from a portable (USB powered) drive - 11MB/s is close to the maximum 100mb network can support (11MB x 8 = 88mb), I should say I was testing with about 5Gb of large (300mb) files which would be far faster than 5Gb of 2Kb files. When I tested with the same portable drive USB attached to the NAS I only got 6MB/s between it and the NAS - (weird).


Once I finish work I'll maybe do some more experiments with "Enable fast CIFS writes" etc.

I look forward to seeing how the F4 drives perform once you finally get them in the Duo ;-)

Hi wombat6025

Definitely the "enable fast cifs writes" needs to be enabled. I've trawled for days for info on this backup of the C file and verification, and instruction on the correct procedure for the upgrade to 4K hdds. Basically, many people have already posted many times on such info. The same people who've posted probably don't want to answer everyone, every time someone new wants to upgrade and need the info/instruction. It's a shame the info/instruction isn't central for easy access.

I've had my Duo running for a couple of years now, and only now I've just gone back through the config and found things and practices I should've enabled or been doing. i.e. backing up to another drive other than the hdds in the Duo.

"Enable fast cif writes" was mentioned in a previous post. Instructions to do it this way or that way are in previous posts. I've just gone through many and constructed a list of correct procedures for my situation. Everyone's situation will be different. Here's the list below, it might help someone.

Duo Upgrade
1. Back up all data to external caddy/hdd
2. Switch on Rsync and verify with a new backup
3. Update to 4.1.7
4. Make a system config backup
5. Power down and replace with 2 new discs
6. Should already be factory defaulted after reboot (2 new disks in will force factory default apparently), but do again
7. After resync, reinstall stystem config
8. Check start count divisible by 8 on discs for 4k alignment
9. Restore backed up data

Now I'm bunging in 2 new hdds at the same time, so someone with only 1 disk might have a different procedure. I'll whip my 1.5TB disk out to replace with the 2 new with the update to 4.1.7. But without the factory default. That'll act as a backup aswell as the backup I'm making at present.

Anyone who's got any pointers there to my procedure list, please comment. I still don't think I'll be ready for a couple of days yet. Still got another day to finish 1st backup. (2 days approx).

I've got a question for people.

It was my understanding that the Duo supported "Hot Swappable" disks. In fact I've just read it in the manual. But does it only mean if a disk dies?
Or like I've been doing to test a disk with Seatools that's showing problems, I've just been pulling it out without powering down the Duo. Is that wrong to do, or fine because the Duo is "Hot Swappable". And the pulling out without powering down is OK practise?

Let me know please people.

mutley