Seagate ST31500341AS 1.5TB

>>Almost positive you can't de-expand.

oh, certainly.

but if you're switching between two complete sets of four drives, then the expansion doesn't occur until after all the drives have been replaced. four old drives, pre expansion and four new drives, post expansion. in this situation you could swap between drive sets, correct?

unless the data on each drive is altered as one drive is removed from the set and another drive is added. oh, that would assume the data stays exactly the same...

hm, yeah, seems less likely than i initially thought it would be.

dunno. Guess we have to wait for Chirpa or someone...

So back to the drive topic, I'm still running 4x1.5TB SD18s. One of my drives had 1 reallocated sector so I swapped it in with my spare and it synced by this morning. I now have no errors on any of the drives... now sitting with the SD1A firmware in-hand and questioning whether I should flash them.

I'm not seeing the pausing anymore (maybe it was the 1 reallocated sector as thought?) Bottom line, I'm questioning whether to flash. It almost looks like some have experienced more problems after the SD1A flash coming from SD18/SD19 firmware. In hex, I know it's 18, 19, 1A... so it should be newer...but I'm still wondering what others thing.

If you flashed to SD1A from SD17/18/19 after using the drives a bit, did you see more errors after flashing to SD1A?

Since I don't have temporary volume large enough to copy to, then bonez's sensible suggeston -- copy to temporary, install new disks, copy from temporary -- isn't an option.

And like mattkime, I'm convinced that the act of expanding a set of disks irreversibly alters the original disks, so simply replacing them post-facto isn't an option.

My conclusion: Given the poor reliability record of the Seagate 1.5TB drives, I'm not ready to risk an irreversible expansion using them. I'll be ordering four of the Samsung HD103UJ 1TB drives instead.

fearless_fool wrote:
My conclusion: Given the poor reliability record of the Seagate 1.5TB drives, I'm not ready to risk an irreversible expansion using them. I'll be ordering four of the Samsung HD103UJ 1TB drives instead.

That was where I was at until I somehow found a way to move data on to other drives on my network...I didn't have space, but was able to make room. This also included just deleting some of the raw DVD backups I had (I actually have the DVDs..so it just means having to rip them again in case of problems). If you don't have the space, then I think you're taking a very reasonable approach...just make sure you really don't have the space :)

Good luck!

Since you are about to put in 4 1.5TB drives... just use one of them for temporary backup. Then when you have 3 of the 1.5 drives in the NV, you should have 3 750's freed up that you can move you files to from the 4th 1.5. Should cover just what back-up.

You won't be able to put them back into the NV in case the new drives fail, but at lease the data will be backed up until you receive the new 1TB drives.

bonez wrote:

dunno. Guess we have to wait for Chirpa or someone... So back to the drive topic, I'm still running 4x1.5TB SD18s. One of my drives had 1 reallocated sector so I swapped it in with my spare and it synced by this morning. I now have no errors on any of the drives... now sitting with the SD1A firmware in-hand and questioning whether I should flash them. I'm not seeing the pausing anymore (maybe it was the 1 reallocated sector as thought?) Bottom line, I'm questioning whether to flash. It almost looks like some have experienced more problems after the SD1A flash coming from SD18/SD19 firmware. In hex, I know it's 18, 19, 1A... so it should be newer...but I'm still wondering what others thing. If you flashed to SD1A from SD17/18/19 after using the drives a bit, did you see more errors after flashing to SD1A?

Well, I bit the bullet and upgraded all 4 drives to SD1A from SD18. So far, pretty good though I just noticed that drive 4 got 1 reallocated sector. Otherwise, things still doing ok.... so far.

bonez wrote:
Well, I bit the bullet and upgraded all 4 drives to SD1A from SD18. So far, pretty good though I just noticed that drive 4 got 1 reallocated sector. Otherwise, things still doing ok.... so far.

I did the same last night. I put in the 4th 1.5 TB drive and let it go. However, I remembered that after the fourth disk is initialized and the volume is resynchronized, you need to do a reboot to trigger the volume expansion. See here:
http://kbserver.netgear.com/kb_web_files/N101697.asp

So, right now I have a 4x 750 GB volume on 4x 1.5TB drives. As long as I don't reboot, I can keep it that way for a bit of testing. I should be able to swap back in a 750 GB drive at this point, if I wanted, and then gradually go back to 4x 750 GB drives... But, I'm probably not going to do that.

It turns out that Seagate is dropping their warranties from 5 years to 3 years on Jan 3, 2009. I've got these drives now. If I return them and upgrade later, I'll only end up getting screwed on the warranty. Might as well give it a shot...

I also keep an off-site mirror of my data, so I'm not as concerned about things blowing up. It has saved my butt a few times after the ReadyNAS let me down and corrupted some data on a volume rebuild.

phrozen wrote:
bonez wrote: It turns out that Seagate is dropping their warranties from 5 years to 3 years on Jan 3, 2009. I've got these drives now. If I return them and upgrade later, I'll only end up getting screwed on the warranty. Might as well give it a shot...

EEK! Do you have a link for this bit of news? I may buy another drive or two in that case, sooner rather than later.

xsnrg wrote:
EEK! Do you have a link for this bit of news? I may buy another drive or two in that case, sooner rather than later.

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/suppor ... ty_matrix/

I think once this happens I'll have no more reason to buy Seagate drives. They are being stupid and trying to save a tiny bit of money, but not realizing that their 5 year warranty was a great selling point. They even mention that 95% of their returns happen in the first 3 years. So, to reduce their warranty costs by 5%, they are probably going to loose a much amount of sales. Dumb.

The only other reason to buy Seagate right now is that they are the only ones with the 1.5TB drive, but it is only a matter of time before everyone else catches up...

Good thing I was subscribed to this thread... just picked up another 5yr 1.5TB for the NV+ :? :roll: :evil: