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Forum Discussion
Which drives to get for new ReadyNas?
So I need a new NAS. This is going to be expensive...
TL:DR at bottom of post
A bit of background info first. I have an NVX Business edition that I've had for a little over 2 years. I got it with 2 1tb drives because that was the only bundle available at the time, and immediately replaced them with 4 1,5tb Seagate drives off the HCL. This unit has been behaving a little strange from day 1, with the unit periodically deciding to hang during startup, before even showing any lights beyond the blue power button. Hard shutdown would then be required to fix that, and the next power-on works fine. This happens maybe once every month or so, and has done so since I got the unit.
I called Netgear support once to get some help with it but was basically ignored, with the only advice being to pull all the drives, put the original drives back in, doing a factory reset and seeing if that would help, which would take me weeks to test. Being unable to use the unit or access my data for weeks on end is not acceptable, so that idea went out the window. I'm guessing the unit is outside warranty now, so that means new unit to fix the problem, but it's rare enough that I've decided to just live with it.
However, recently I learned that the unit is having more problems. For a few weeks now, when I copy files to the unit it will sometimes hang for several minutes, with nothing being accessible. Not even the web admin pages respond. Usually I need to reboot the unit to fix it, or wait upwards of 5 minutes. I originally thought the problem was with my pc, but I just noticed that the drive activity light goes berserk whenever the unit hangs. SMART status says the drives are fine, firmware upgrade did nothing either, so I'm guessing it's the motherboard that's having problems.
At this point I cannot trust the unit anymore. I've been burned by data loss often enough that I won't trust anything that works less than flawlessly. I am working on backing up all my data off the NVX to an NV+ that I've had for many years without problems. So now I need a new NAS to replace the unstable NVX.
Despite my bad experience with Netgear support, I still like them enough that I will stick with them for at least one more purchase. Stability issues aside, the NVX was great. I've decided to get another NV+ though, simply because it's cheaper and, in my experience at least, more reliable. performance doesn't matter too much since these units will eventually become offsite backup for a custom built NAS with a ton of drives. I might be persuaded to get an ultra 4 just to check it out, but I don't really see the point.
So here is my problem. I need to upgrade to 2tb drives for both the new unit and the old NV+, and I am stuggling with choosing which drives to go for. The HCL shows 6 drives to choose from. The cheapest three are not viable, with the following reasoning:
Seagate Barracuda LP - ST32000542AS: not available anymore.
WD Caviar Green - WD20EARS: can't guarantee that I will get the right revision.
Seagate Barracuda LP - ST2000DL003: massive problems with firmware, avoiding like the plague.
That leaves me with 3 choices, the Hitachi Deskstar, the Seagate Barracuda XT or the Hitachi Ultrastar. I'm leaning towards the Ultrastar, because it's the only actual enterprise raid disk of the three and should be much more reliable, but it's really expensive. The other ones are rated for "desktop RAID", but that's just RAID 0 or 1, if I've understood correctly.
So what should I go for? I can afford to get any of them, but because I need to upgrade my old NV+ and the new NAS i'm getting at the same time, that makes 8 drives. With the prices on the Ultrastar being so high, it's hard to justify. Do I really need enterprise RAID disks, or will the desktop RAID disks be enough?
TL:DR
Which of these 3 drives should I go for with an NV+?
Hitachi Ultrastar A7K2000 2 TB
Hitachi Deskstar 7K2000 2 TB
Seagate Barracuda XT 2 TB
TL:DR at bottom of post
A bit of background info first. I have an NVX Business edition that I've had for a little over 2 years. I got it with 2 1tb drives because that was the only bundle available at the time, and immediately replaced them with 4 1,5tb Seagate drives off the HCL. This unit has been behaving a little strange from day 1, with the unit periodically deciding to hang during startup, before even showing any lights beyond the blue power button. Hard shutdown would then be required to fix that, and the next power-on works fine. This happens maybe once every month or so, and has done so since I got the unit.
I called Netgear support once to get some help with it but was basically ignored, with the only advice being to pull all the drives, put the original drives back in, doing a factory reset and seeing if that would help, which would take me weeks to test. Being unable to use the unit or access my data for weeks on end is not acceptable, so that idea went out the window. I'm guessing the unit is outside warranty now, so that means new unit to fix the problem, but it's rare enough that I've decided to just live with it.
However, recently I learned that the unit is having more problems. For a few weeks now, when I copy files to the unit it will sometimes hang for several minutes, with nothing being accessible. Not even the web admin pages respond. Usually I need to reboot the unit to fix it, or wait upwards of 5 minutes. I originally thought the problem was with my pc, but I just noticed that the drive activity light goes berserk whenever the unit hangs. SMART status says the drives are fine, firmware upgrade did nothing either, so I'm guessing it's the motherboard that's having problems.
At this point I cannot trust the unit anymore. I've been burned by data loss often enough that I won't trust anything that works less than flawlessly. I am working on backing up all my data off the NVX to an NV+ that I've had for many years without problems. So now I need a new NAS to replace the unstable NVX.
Despite my bad experience with Netgear support, I still like them enough that I will stick with them for at least one more purchase. Stability issues aside, the NVX was great. I've decided to get another NV+ though, simply because it's cheaper and, in my experience at least, more reliable. performance doesn't matter too much since these units will eventually become offsite backup for a custom built NAS with a ton of drives. I might be persuaded to get an ultra 4 just to check it out, but I don't really see the point.
So here is my problem. I need to upgrade to 2tb drives for both the new unit and the old NV+, and I am stuggling with choosing which drives to go for. The HCL shows 6 drives to choose from. The cheapest three are not viable, with the following reasoning:
Seagate Barracuda LP - ST32000542AS: not available anymore.
WD Caviar Green - WD20EARS: can't guarantee that I will get the right revision.
Seagate Barracuda LP - ST2000DL003: massive problems with firmware, avoiding like the plague.
That leaves me with 3 choices, the Hitachi Deskstar, the Seagate Barracuda XT or the Hitachi Ultrastar. I'm leaning towards the Ultrastar, because it's the only actual enterprise raid disk of the three and should be much more reliable, but it's really expensive. The other ones are rated for "desktop RAID", but that's just RAID 0 or 1, if I've understood correctly.
So what should I go for? I can afford to get any of them, but because I need to upgrade my old NV+ and the new NAS i'm getting at the same time, that makes 8 drives. With the prices on the Ultrastar being so high, it's hard to justify. Do I really need enterprise RAID disks, or will the desktop RAID disks be enough?
TL:DR
Which of these 3 drives should I go for with an NV+?
Hitachi Ultrastar A7K2000 2 TB
Hitachi Deskstar 7K2000 2 TB
Seagate Barracuda XT 2 TB
36 Replies
Replies have been turned off for this discussion
- Thanks mdgm, but which make and model drives can I slot into those 4 slots?
- Probably any 3TB disks on the compatibility list for the 3100 but if you have issues NetGear will refuse to help as the disks are not qualified for your model.
- There is a Hitachi Ultrastar and a Seagate Constellation models on the HCL.
- Right. Just got a new NV+. Starting to regret it already...
Ended up getting the Seagate Barracuda XT drives, since the Ultrastar drives shot up in price before I could get them. Seems like they are working fine. Not so much for the NV+.
After setting everything up, testing the memory, syncing the drives and making every setting as close to the other NV+ I have as possible, I ran the update that the thing was nagging so much about. Now it's on 4.1.7, and going poorly. I have some shares on my old NV+ that I wanted to back up first, before getting to the NVX. Call it a test.
It failed. Miserably.
Right before updating to 4.1.7 I tested the built-in backup without any problems. Grabbed a small share with ISO files with ease from my old NV+. After the update, I went in and tried to modify the old backup job to point to a different share. Should be easy, right? Well, no matter what I did, it refused to connect. Cancelling out and reloading the original backup job still wouldn't let me connect to the old NV+. Both of them are accessible from my windows machine, but the new NV+ refuses to see the old one anymore. Tried every permutation possible for how to write out the path string, to no avail.
Testing from the old NV+ to the new one still works. The old one is on 4.1.6 though. So apparently the 4.1.7 update broke the backup service.
At this point I can't even trust a brand new NAS to handle a backup job. This is getting ridiculous. - What protocol are you using? Have you checked the configuration for that protocol for the share on the "remote NAS"?
- Everything is using CIFS. Configurations are fine as far as I can see. I haven't changed anything from how it's been on my other NAS units, and those settings have worked for years.
- When setting up a backup job from NAS to NAS you should enable both NFS and Rsync in the file format on both machines. CIFS is used for file transfer to and from a Windows machine, not between NAS units.
Reviewing my backup jobs set up on my NV+ (NAS3, IP 192.168.1.203) pulling from my NVX2 (NAS2, IP 192.168.1.202). On the NV+ backup job, the backup source is set to Remote:Rsync server. (Note: for the first backup it should be Remote:NFS server for the increased speed). The host name is set to the IP of the source, 192.168.1.202. The path is set to the share name being backed up. I do not have unique userid and passwords on the source, so those fields are blank. For destination NAS (NAS3) the destination is set to the share to which the backup is going. All other fields are blank.
But, you also have to set up other items. In order to do the initial backup with NFS, for each share being backed up, on the source NAS, you should enable NFS as read/write and check the box in front of "Hosts allowed access" and enter the IP of the NAS pulling the files. Without this, the source NAS will not allow access to the files. You will also need to do the same thing for rsync for the incremental backups. Rsync is very fast for the incremental as it only copies over the changes in the files rather than the entire file again. It synchronizes the files on the two systems. It does copy new files added to the source and will delete from the backup NAS files that have been deleted from the source, but only if that box is checked on the job settings.
If you are still getting an error when testing the connection, post back with the settings you have on the two machines. - Turns out I was wrong. It wasn't the backup service that was broken after all. It was the web page.
Basically, the 4.1.7 update breaks compatibility with IE9. Any backup jobs made with IE9 refuse to work properly. Be it CIFS or NFS, it makes no difference. Make the same job in Firefox though, and everything works great. 4.1.6 Works fine with IE9, but update to 4.1.7 and the GUI to add a backup job changes, and stops working. Opening it in Firefox shows the GUI as it was in 4.1.6, and it works.
So now, in addition to Opera not working with ReadyNAS, IE9 is useless too.
I will need to test with IE8 to see if the same happens there.
Oh, and I tested the NFS backups. Couldn't get it to work with passwords, so that's not good enough. Will be sticking with CIFS until I find a better solution. Kimius wrote: Turns out I was wrong. It wasn't the backup service that was broken after all. It was the web page.
Basically, the 4.1.7 update breaks compatibility with IE9. Any backup jobs made with IE9 refuse to work properly. Be it CIFS or NFS, it makes no difference. Make the same job in Firefox though, and everything works great. 4.1.6 Works fine with IE9, but update to 4.1.7 and the GUI to add a backup job changes, and stops working. Opening it in Firefox shows the GUI as it was in 4.1.6, and it works.
So now, in addition to Opera not working with ReadyNAS, IE9 is useless too.
I will need to test with IE8 to see if the same happens there.
Oh, and I tested the NFS backups. Couldn't get it to work with passwords, so that's not good enough. Will be sticking with CIFS until I find a better solution.
NFS doesn't use passwords, you need to configure which hosts have access.
I'm also not entirely sure what the error is you're experiencing, because I literally just before typing this reply created a backup job on 4.1.7 using IE9 and ran it, worked fine. What exactly is it that's somehow not getting saved?- Too bad there is no way to upload images to the forum. Would be easier to show you.
Found this off google images. It shows how the backup window should be. I see this when I use Firefox, and IE9 with 4.1.6. When I see this, I can fill in the information I need, and it all works. The test connection button also functions as it should.
When I use IE9 and 4.1.7 though, I see something different. The host field is gone, the path field is extended and the browse button is gone. In the path field I see this filled in by default for CIFS: "Example: //host/share/path"
For NFS I see "Example: host:/path"
When I see this, I cannot get the backup job to work, no matter what I do. The test connection button always reports a failure, and none of the dozens of permutations I have tried to type out have worked.
Any job that I make in Firefox or with 4.1.6 will be possible to start, stop and delete from IE9 with 4.1.7, but editing it in any way breaks it.
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