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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
- I thank you for the information, but you seem to be missing the point I am trying to make.
As I stated earlier, I have already tested with NFS, in the exact way you just told me to try. And it works just fine.
That is not the problem.
The problem is not "I can't back up my stuff", it is "I can't trust the NV+". Specifically, I can't trust Frontview.
When I buy a new NAS, I expect it to work. When told that I need to update things, I do so, because I expect that doing so will fix flaws and make the NAS work better. This latest firmware update has not improved things. It has taken an existing feature and broken it. Now, I don't really care that much about being able to use IE9, because I don't really like IE at all. I am just saying that for a company that ostensibly is supposed to be trustworthy in regards to data security and backup, Netgear is making it very hard for me to actually trust them. After all, if Netgear has managed to break Frontview, which is one of the key components in their products, then how am I to trust that they have not broken anything else? Must I really go through every single feature in a brand new device and thoroughly test it for faults? That's supposed to be the job of the QA department. - So how does Netgear QA against a browser (IE9) that wasn't even released in beta form at the time of the 4.1.7 firmware release? To claim you don't trust them as a consequence of something beyond their control is just plain ridiculous
Problems with using IE9 and Frontview 4.1.x are documented all over this forum so Netgear will be well aware. Similar issues have already been fixed for the x86 NAS (firmware 4.2.x) and so at worst Netgear can be criticized for not having released an update for the 4.1.x firmware to address this yet. That there is an apparent regression between 4.1.7 and 4.1.6 when using IE9 is irrelevant other than it should highlight to Netgear where the issue lies. sphardy wrote: So how does Netgear QA against a browser (IE9) that wasn't even released in beta form at the time of the 4.1.7 firmware release?
Huh. I did not know that. I thought IE9 was much older than that. Checking wikipedia, it looks like IE9 was released as beta 2 months before 4.1.7 was released, but I see your point. Beta software can still change quite a lot. I guess all I can do is wait for the eventual 4.1.8, or whatever they decide to call it, to get released. Does Netgear follow any specific release cycle?
Well, back to figuring out why the write speeds are down to 7 MB/s then.Kimius wrote: Does Netgear follow any specific release cycle?
Not one that they make public and as you will have seen the 4.1.x releases are getting much less frequent - 18 months between 4.1.6 & 4.1.7, then compare that to 12 firmware releases for the x86 NAS (4.2.6 - 4.2.17) since the release of 4.1.6
The only sign of a possible new update in the near future is the requirement to update AFP support due to the imminent release of OSX Lion.- Discussion of when what was released by who when what else was in beta aside and getting back to the issue at hand...
The missing backup options(vault and time machine) are something that I find to be strange. You also cropped out the actual browser so we can't spot whether or not some strange toolbar/app/whatever is installed that might be doing something.
First, re-install the firmware. I haven't seen any mention of that being done yet.
Second, exactly what version of IE9 are you running? You can find that under "about" on IE9's menu icon to the right side of the screen. With 9.0.8112.16421 running here it works fine for me.
Third, is this a 32 bit version of windows or a 64 bit version? We have seen differences with IE in the past during beta however I haven't heard of any problems recently(compared to IE8). - Running IE9 version 9.0.8112.16421. All I have installed is the latest version of the java runtime and flash player, but I just tested running IE without addons, and the buttons are still missing.
I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate, x64, norwegian. Should I test with english as well?
Reinstalling the firmware will have to wait for a few days, but I can test that too.
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