Seagate ST31500341AS 1.5TB

I think I'm seeing some pausing/slowness when copying stuff back to the four new 1.5TB SD18s I put in. Just copying via CIFS it appears to stall, then resume. Haven't tried streaming back from the NAS yet from my front-end devices but will be doing that soon.

One has one reallocated sector but is holding steady..and no ATA errors. Likely to swap this one for the fifth spare I bought and send the bad one back.

bonez wrote:

I think I'm seeing some pausing/slowness when copying stuff back to the four new 1.5TB SD18s I put in. Just copying via CIFS it appears to stall, then resume. Haven't tried streaming back from the NAS yet from my front-end devices but will be doing that soon. One has one reallocated sector but is holding steady..and no ATA errors. Likely to swap this one for the fifth spare I bought and send the bad one back.

If you have any reallocated sectors, then the pausing could be the usual click death. When the drives run over a bad sector, sometimes they retry the read or write over and over again for long enough to stall the OS.

The other possibility is that the SD18 firmware doesn't actually fix the problem, like the 1A firmware. So, maybe the seagate support person mentioned in the previous post was wrong. Maybe the SD18/19 firmwares are not the same as the SD1A firmware...

In either case, I'm not taking any chances. I had all CC1G and I loaded CC1H on all of them. We'll see how that goes. I just put the second disk in the ReadyNAS. I'll probably stop at 3 and check it for the stalling bug before I put in the 4th. I think once I put in the 4th, it will expand after the rebuild and I won't be able to go back to the 750s if I want.

Actually, I forget. Does the ReadyNAS ask you if you want to expand the array after you put in 4 larger disks? Or does it just automatically do it?

phrozen wrote:
If you have any reallocated sectors, then the pausing could be the usual click death. When the drives run over a bad sector, sometimes they retry the read or write over and over again for long enough to stall the OS.

Yeah, the more I thought about it last night, the more I decided I'd swap it out for the spare I bought...Just waiting for a large batch of copying to finish. Hopefully, that'll help things.

phrozen wrote:
The other possibility is that the SD18 firmware doesn't actually fix the problem, like the 1A firmware. So, maybe the seagate support person mentioned in the previous post was wrong. Maybe the SD18/19 firmwares are not the same as the SD1A firmware...

Thought about this, too. I'm going to call seagate tomorrow first thing and get a second opinion. Will see if I can get the same answer without leading them to it...and will keep the 'well, if SD18 is the latest, why is SD19 now available as well?' - maybe that gets me something I can flash.

Good news is that I still have my original 4x750s set aside plus, the original 2TB copied on to four other 750s on my network...really just playing with it at this point and still not in any great need of rushing through things.

phrozen wrote:
Actually, I forget. Does the ReadyNAS ask you if you want to expand the array after you put in 4 larger disks? Or does it just automatically do it?

Not sure, have never done expansion... sorry :(

bonez wrote:

phrozen wrote: If you have any reallocated sectors, then the pausing could be the usual click death. When the drives run over a bad sector, sometimes they retry the read or write over and over again for long enough to stall the OS. Yeah, the more I thought about it last night, the more I decided I'd swap it out for the spare I bought...Just waiting for a large batch of copying to finish. Hopefully, that'll help things. phrozen wrote: The other possibility is that the SD18 firmware doesn't actually fix the problem, like the 1A firmware. So, maybe the seagate support person mentioned in the previous post was wrong. Maybe the SD18/19 firmwares are not the same as the SD1A firmware... Thought about this, too. I'm going to call seagate tomorrow first thing and get a second opinion. Will see if I can get the same answer without leading them to it...and will keep the 'well, if SD18 is the latest, why is SD19 now available as well?' - maybe that gets me something I can flash. Good news is that I still have my original 4x750s set aside plus, the original 2TB copied on to four other 750s on my network...really just playing with it at this point and still not in any great need of rushing through things. phrozen wrote: Actually, I forget. Does the ReadyNAS ask you if you want to expand the array after you put in 4 larger disks? Or does it just automatically do it? Not sure, have never done expansion... sorry :(

The flashes are linked a few pages back in this thread, if you want to just bypass Seagate and get rolling.

phrozen wrote:
The flashes are linked a few pages back in this thread, if you want to just bypass Seagate and get rolling.

Just grabbed them... thanks. Hadn't seen the non wiki-share link. :)

I just installed one of four drives, all of which have the CC1H firmware. video playback seems smooth.

i was curious if there were any other tests i should run before installing the rest of the drives.

also, could the previous set of disks be used to rebuild the raid set if the new drives failed?

mattkime wrote:
also, could the previous set of disks be used to rebuild the raid set if the new drives failed?

The answer I got when I asked the same question was 'yes'. If you set them aside you can always put them back in later...guessing that means no changes to the NAS software, assumes working hardware later on, etc.

bonez wrote:
mattkime wrote: also, could the previous set of disks be used to rebuild the raid set if the new drives failed? The answer I got when I asked the same question was 'yes'. If you set them aside you can always put them back in later...guessing that means no changes to the NAS software, assumes working hardware later on, etc.

I think the answer is "no", if you are talking about preserving the data on the RAID. I think once the expansion happens, there is no way to go back to a smaller set of disks while still preserving the data. You can go back to the previous disks, but all the data will have to be erased...

Chirpa:

I need to second mattkime's question: If I expand my NV array (currently 4x750G disks) to use the new Seagate 1.5T disks, and then one or more of the 1.5T disks goes flaky, can I simply re-install all four 750Gs without data loss? Or does the act of expanding the array irreversibly alter the data on the 750Gs?

[I ask specifically because it appears that the Seagate 1.5T disks have a high infant mortality rate.]

bonez says it's possible to revert. phrozen says it's not. Both of them appear to know more than I do. So I defer to you...

Best,

sorry - didn't know you guys were talking about expansion. If you look, my post says 'remove them and set them aside'... and I meant specifically, copy your data off, shutdown your NAS, remove all disks and set them aside, install the new disks, initialize, copy the data back.

sorry for the confusion. Almost positive you can't de-expand.