Seagate ST31500341AS 1.5TB

FWIW, my configuration matches Bollar's almost exactly.

I also had the sector reallocation on two drives, but everything has worked perfectly since the 4.14 update. Following is the Health screen on my NV (not an NV+). (note, that room stays unusually hot as the door is closed to keep out animals. I need to fix that to get all the temps down a bit)
*********************************************************
Disk 1 Seagate ST31500341AS 1397 GB , 46 C / 114 F , Write-cache ON OK
Disk 2 Seagate ST31500341AS 1397 GB , 53 C / 127 F , Write-cache ON OK
Disk 3 Seagate ST31500341AS 1397 GB , 53 C / 127 F , Write-cache ON OK
Disk 4 Seagate ST31500341AS 1397 GB , 46 C / 114 F , Write-cache ON OK


Fan 1 1875 RPM OK


Temp 1 39.0 C / 102 F [Normal 0-60 C / 32-140 F] OK


UPS 1 Not present OK

zxgates wrote:
(note, that room stays unusually hot as the door is closed to keep out animals. I need to fix that to get all the temps down a bit)

It's not just you. Here is my configuration in a room that has an ambient temperature of 82F. 82 seems like a reasonable temperature to keep a room, so I'm not going to make any special measures to lower the temp.


Device Description Status
Disk 1 Seagate ST31500341AS 1397 GB , 46 C / 114 F , Write-cache ON OK
Disk 2 Seagate ST31500341AS 1397 GB , 52 C / 125 F , Write-cache ON OK
Disk 3 Seagate ST31500341AS 1397 GB , 53 C / 127 F , Write-cache ON OK
Disk 4 Seagate ST31500341AS 1397 GB , 46 C / 114 F , Write-cache ON OK
Fan 1 2142 RPM OK
Temp 1 39.0 C / 102 F [Normal 0-60 C / 32-140 F] OK
UPS 1 APC Back-UPS RS 1500, Battery charge: 100%, 54 minutes OK

I posted above about my problem with trying to move from 2 x 750GB to 3 x 1.5TB. Just to provide an update: it didn't work. The data was all there, but it kept wanting to find a 4th disk.

After a lot of fruitless experimentation, I reset the thing and it now has the 3 1.5TB drives running fine. (Yes, I have just ordered a 4th.)

One thing I wanted to mention was the post that Balders made regarding my breaking the array. I'm sure that's what happened. However, he says that I should have replaced the 750GB drives one at a time.

Yet, that's essentially what I did. In the Netgear documentation it states "The newly added disk(s) must be at least the same size as the smallest existing disk. Note that you can add one or more disks at a time." I added the two 1.5TB drives and let the machine initialize them both overnight. In the morning. I removed one of the 750GB drives, put in the third 1.5TB drive, and left for work.

When I came home it was happily telling me that it had 3 1.5TB drives and 1 750GB drive, allocating roughly 695GB to each of the four.

The problem came when I removed the last of the 750s and rebooted. It never allocated reallocated the space. Again according to Netgear's FAQ "When you replace each of the smaller disks to the larger disk capacity, X-RAID will expand itself to utilizing all the space from this larger disk."

My expectation (incorrect expectation, I should add) was that it would expand the 3 1.5TB drives to ~2.7TB under X-RAID.

Balders correctly stated that you "cannot move from 4 drives to 3." When I reread the FAQ item it states "replace each of the smaller disks..." That was the problem: I wasn't replacing the last small drive, I was just removing it.

Doh!

Perhaps this will prevent someone else (with my limited knowledge) from falling into the same trap.

Thank you for your help.

Cr*p!

I just installed 4 of these drives three days ago and am in the process of migrating my data across. All has been going fine but I've just found this on the HCL:

"Seagate ST31500341AS 1.5TB Barracuda 7200.11 - At this time the Seagate 1.5TB AS drives are being removed from the compatibility list. There appears to be a possible problem with streaming from these drives when write cache is enabled. We are working with Seagate to resolve this issue as soon as we can."

I can't say I've spotted any issues with this so far but wondered if there was any more info from the Jedi dudes on this???

Cheers

Balders

Edit: Found the issue elsewhere. Its apparently a 30 second hang every 5 mins or so when streaming data from the drives. Not an NV+ issue but looks like a Seagate drive problem. I've tested this on my NV+ and 4 x 1.5TB drives and haven't come across this problem - all my drives are firmware SD17. If anyone has this issue, whats your firmware version?

Some info here:

http://www.synology.com/enu/forum/viewt ... 26&t=10746

OK - I am now a bit concerned and looking for some JEDI advice;

I just received 4 Seagate ST31500341AS 1.5TB via UPS today based upon the certification issued on the compatibility list only to see it pulled in the last couple days. I have had a flawless experience over the last year with my 4-500gb Seagate drives and really wanted to expand capacity while maintaining reliability.

Can I get a recommendation at this point on what would be a best next step:

1) go with the Seagate 1.5TB drives with the thought that a fix will be forthcoming
2) settle for the Seagate 1TB drives that seem to be hit or miss for over heating problems
3) look for a different vendor
4) send everything back and save 1000.00 to blow at the casino next weekend

I settled for (1) (as if I had a choice, it already came in the mail). At any rate, most of the time, there really isn't a lag. If I were to get it (which was rare for the most part), it would last for a few seconds and then it would work again.

I understand the hard choice you have here, and I'm in the same boat.

I ordered 4 of these drives last week while they were on the HCL, and now that they have arrived I see they are off the list. Based on my experience with the WD1000FYPS drives I'm running I don't have faith that Netgear can push a hard drive vendor to fix their firmware. So I guess I will need to send these Seagate drives back and continue running my existing drives that were also removed from the HCL. :cry:

snipes wrote:

I understand the hard choice you have here, and I'm in the same boat. I ordered 4 of these drives last week while they were on the HCL, and now that they have arrived I see they are off the list. Based on my experience with the WD1000FYPS drives I'm running I don't have faith that Netgear can push a hard drive vendor to fix their firmware. So I guess I will need to send these Seagate drives back and continue running my existing drives that were also removed from the HCL. :cry:

Sorry about that Snipes. We just had to remove them because of the steaming issue that a user reported and we reproduced it in house. All the other drive qualification tests passed without a problem. There is even a work around for his issue if you disable the write cache then you will not see the video stuttering. This of course is not the greatest workaround because you will loose performance. We have a great relationship with Seagate so I have a good feeling this will get resolved quickly.

Han Solo wrote:

snipes wrote: I understand the hard choice you have here, and I'm in the same boat. I ordered 4 of these drives last week while they were on the HCL, and now that they have arrived I see they are off the list. Based on my experience with the WD1000FYPS drives I'm running I don't have faith that Netgear can push a hard drive vendor to fix their firmware. So I guess I will need to send these Seagate drives back and continue running my existing drives that were also removed from the HCL. :cry: Sorry about that Snipes. We just had to remove them because of the steaming issue that a user reported and we reproduced it in house. All the other drive qualification tests passed without a problem. There is even a work around for his issue if you disable the write cache then you will not see the video stuttering. This of course is not the greatest workaround because you will loose performance. We have a great relationship with Seagate so I have a good feeling this will get resolved quickly.

Thanks for the positive news. I think it's in Seagate's best interest to try and work something out with regards to this problem also because right now there is no other company making 1.5TB drives and I think a lot of these drives are being bought to put into some kind of NAS because 1.5TB is a lot of data to lose if the drive is not used with some kind of RAID system.

On a related note, how might one disable the write cache on the drive for now? Is there some sort of utility you need to download to do this? I'm assuming it can't be done from inside raidator?

spudz72 wrote:

Han Solo wrote: snipes wrote: I understand the hard choice you have here, and I'm in the same boat. I ordered 4 of these drives last week while they were on the HCL, and now that they have arrived I see they are off the list. Based on my experience with the WD1000FYPS drives I'm running I don't have faith that Netgear can push a hard drive vendor to fix their firmware. So I guess I will need to send these Seagate drives back and continue running my existing drives that were also removed from the HCL. :cry: Sorry about that Snipes. We just had to remove them because of the steaming issue that a user reported and we reproduced it in house. All the other drive qualification tests passed without a problem. There is even a work around for his issue if you disable the write cache then you will not see the video stuttering. This of course is not the greatest workaround because you will loose performance. We have a great relationship with Seagate so I have a good feeling this will get resolved quickly. Thanks for the positive news. I think it's in Seagate's best interest to try and work something out with regards to this problem also because right now there is no other company making 1.5TB drives and I think a lot of these drives are being bought to put into some kind of NAS because 1.5TB is a lot of data to lose if the drive is not used with some kind of RAID system. On a related note, how might one disable the write cache on the drive for now? Is there some sort of utility you need to download to do this? I'm assuming it can't be done from inside raidator?

Hi spudz72,

You can easily disable it in Frontview>System>performance tab. Like I mentioned before doing this will cause a big hit in performance. If it were me I would just disable it to watch movies and enable back on when I was done. This definitely not a great option but it will hold you over until a fix is ready.