Safe tu update to 6.5?

Question

After the 6.4 update debacle, I swore to never update my RN516 again. I lost days trying to get things running again, and after several chats with Netgear's support staff, it's been working perfectly fine under 6.4.2 with AV disabled. Transfer speed over Gigabit max out at around 120-130MB/s, SMB access is snappy, disk Balance and defrags are completed without errors and very quickly.

So, I'm not planning on updating to 6.5 since I don't have the need to at this point, but I was wondering if it'd be safe to. Apparently 6.5 solves a few issues and adds a couple of features, but nothing that compels me to pull the trigger. This is after all a production unit and our business depends on it.

Any thoughts?

StephenB · Answer

It has been working well for me on my RN102 and RN202. &nbsp;I like the custom snapshot feature - in particular the ability to set a max retention for snapshots. &nbsp;The performance of directly attached NTFS USB drives is greatly improved. &nbsp;There are also some security patches.
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The only new issue I've found is that I needed to disable spindown when I scheduled the custom snapshots.
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But I am seeing some risk (beyond ReadyCloud). &nbsp;Some here are reporting issues with SMB access after the upgrade. &nbsp;In some cases, SMB is simply turned off on the NAS and can't be turned back on. &nbsp;In others SMB appears normal on the NAS but some people still are having trouble connecting. &nbsp;A few other users are reporting "inactive volumes".
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Like 6.4.x, Netgear is saying not to downgrade to earlier firmware.
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I don't advise leaving the NAS down rev forever, but there is some merit in being cautious on a new release. &nbsp;If you are happy with your current performance and your NAS is not exposed to the internet, then perhaps monitor the forum for a bit longer before taking the update. &nbsp;

EKroboter · Answer

What a nightmare. I skipped AD integration as we were transitioning domains and didn't want to mess up share permissions. I ended up creating loacal users with the exact user names and password, and used the NetBIOS domain name as the Workgroup. Works great, any domain users has direct access to the NAS shares and everyone sees its own personal folder.&nbsp;&nbsp;Of course, there's no user credentials sync. If I have to add a new user, I have to do it in both AD and ReadyNAS, but that doesn't really concern me. Is not like I'm changing users every week (and they cannot change their passwords either, I set them myself).&nbsp;As everything is working just fine now, I'll skip the upgrade and stick to "never touch a running system".&nbsp;

EKroboter · Answer

Thank you for your input Stephen. I'm going to err on the side&nbsp;of caution this time and wait it out. Loosing SMB access would be a nightmare, we have about 20 users accesing files from the NAS.

cpu8088 · Answer

for commercial use of a 516 with lots of dynamic data it may be wise to get a 2nd nas for backup&nbsp;&nbsp;

StephenB · Answer

cpu8088 wrote:
for commercial use of a 516 with lots of dynamic data it may be wise to get a 2nd nas for backup&nbsp;

I agree. &nbsp;Lost productivity would be far more expensive than a backup NAS. &nbsp;It could be a RN316 if price is a problem.

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Safe tu update to 6.5?

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