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Forum Discussion
ReadyNas auto shutdown for no reason with eSATA
I plug in an eSATA JBOD group to do a backup of selected directorys and within 5 minutes of starting the backup, the 316 front panel shows "SHUTDOWN" and then powers off. I crated the eSATA JBOD...
A JBOD/RAID created in an eSATA chassis (Netgear EDA500 or equivalent) as a NAS volume is not intended to be connected and disconnected, especially with power applied. While the NAS will complain about the missing volume, it does appear to be safe to remove and replace one when power is off. But each time you re-connect, the NAS will have to re-synchronize the OS partition copy that is on the eSATA chassis drives. Add to that the fact that the connector for eSATA is not a good choice for multiple mates and demates, and you are flirting with disaster if you do remove and replace often.
I suspect your shut-down is related to the OS partition re-sync, but I don't have hard evidence. I just know that's something unique that's going to happen in that first five minutes.
My experience with multi-drive eSATA chassis on a ReadyNAS is that it was a very bad idea from the start and I fully understand why Netgear discontinued the EDA500.
I leave the eSATA chassis on plugged in and connected the entire time. But as soon as I go to copy directories from the NAS drives, within minutes it does a shutdown.
Should I give up on the idea of using eSATA drives as a backup or should I instead of crating a JBOD volume of all the drives, create a single volume for each drive in the chassis? or convert them to USB connected drives instead?
Thanks for your help.
OK, that's good. I misunderstood that you meant you plugged it in only once, thinking you were doing it every time.
Are there any entries in the system log before the shut down? Is the shut-down itself even logged? You may also be able to find clues in the other logs of the download log .zip file. StephenB is better than I at pointing where to look.
I suppose one possibility is that something is overheating. I used the EDA500 on an RN616, and the CPU activity was high on a scrub, so I would think it would be far worse on an RN316, but I don't think a simple backup job would have a similar issue.
I was using RAID5 on my EDA500, which means it's writing back and forth between all the drives. That was a disaster. In the case of JBOD, I would think it would not have as big a problem. Just be prepared for a scrub or balance to take a while.
I found the problem, I thought it odd that this only started when I finally had the time to connect the eSATA up to my ReadyNAS. I've been trying it out for several days and it always failed to setup an RAID-5 in the eSATA. I purchased this housing off of eBay and said it was in working order when removed. It seemed very odd that every time that I was to make a RAID-5 group it would shutdown and on reboot the last drive in the eSATA housing is what made the RAID group unusable. I would reformat all the 5 drives and try again failing for the same reason.
You mentioning over heating in the ReadyNas seemed like the problem but when I monitored the ReadyNas from System->Performance and including an infrared thermometer, heat was in the normal rage.
What struck me odd is I would have to unplug the eSATA housing not only from the NAS but from the wall plug to shut it completely down and then power it backup a minute later for ReadyNas to recognize the volume.
Well, I started looking at the eSATA housing I bought off eBay and the cooling fan isn't working in it. One of the drives was probably overheating and shutting down and in the 5 minutes of it writing backup files, the heat was probably making the drive stop functioning giving a timeout message at the ReadyNas software and doing a quick shutdown before everything goes KaBlueeee. Turing the eSATA completely off, gave it a chance to cool down. I have the eSATA housing apart and will order a new fan for it, not off eBay though. I think that will fix the problem.
Thanks for your help in tracking down the problem.
That does sound like a possibility. Five drives in one chassis are going to heat pretty quickly under load with no fan.
Does the eSATA chassis show up in the GUI as an EDA500? I had one real EDA500 and one non-Netgear eSATA chassis that did, and the drive temperatures were included on the System/Performance page as well as in smart_history.log and disk_info.log in the logs .zip file. Unfortunately, neither of those files includes the max temperature SMART data, though. But if that was the cause of the shut-down, it should be in the main system log, and you should have gotten an alert email if you have them enabled.
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