DGND3700 freezes when running backup to USB

[nemmerle]

I bought the DGND3700 a couple of months ago. I upgraded the firmware to the latest version when purchased. It worked great, except the DLNA server seemed a little hit or miss. I blamed the old USB 1.0 Seagate drive I was using, and finally upgraded a few days ago.

Bought a Western Digital MyBook USB3.0, 2Tb drive. Same price as the USB2.0 drive, so figured I had nothing to lose. I loaded most of my music (several thousand songs) & a handful of videos to test the DLNA server capabilites via the XBox (802.11n). Seemed to work ok for a while, but videos seem to stop playing midway through (as if it lost the DLNA connection). I have to exit and go back in a few times before it refreshes the video list again and I can restart. No problems with signal strength, all the other wireless devices in the house access the unit from everywhere without dropping out.

Works very reliably streaming directly from a computer on my network however, but the DLNA server functionality is unreliable.

I also wanted to start backing up my laptop to the 2Tb drive. I have roughly 150Gb of data on the laptop and backing up using Acronis True Image 2012. Started a new backup. But the DGND3700 freezes up mid way through every backup. It freezes with all lights on but nobody home (I have 6 or 7 devices accessing the DGND3700 using both 2.4 and 5.0GHz networks, including phones, Xbox, computers, etc). I have to turn the unit off and back on again.

It froze three times in succession. I then deleted all the music on the drive and started again. No luck. Unit froze about 10Gb into the backup. Now I have turned off the media server to see if that improves anything, and the backup started again.

Will report back if I can run a successful backup over the wireless network with the Media Server disabled. It will be overnight before the entire laptop completes. But it seems like the USB ports on my DGND3700 are almost useless (I did try both ports). The DLNA server does not work consistently and I'll end up having to find a NAS solution for network backups if using the USB ports just freezes the unit..

[Scubbie]

In it's current state I would not recommend this router to be used as a DLNA server or for backing up material to.

A NAS drive would serve you much better in this respect.

You can help things by changing the 'Media Server' Settings page from the default settings. I've changed mine to reflect the following:

Content Scan: Scheduled Scan in 4320 minutes.

This equates to a scan every 3 days which used to be fine. However since the last firmware update (v1.0.0.17) I need to unplug the drive as it can never manage the rescan and I can no longer access much of the drive's contents.

Also as the drive can take several hours to scan my music collection, the NAS drive can handle this much more reliably.

For the record, I treated myself to a ReadyNAS Ultra 2 (RNDU2000) a few months ago. This works a lot better. However I am unable to transfer my music collection across to it purely as I do not have sufficient room.

However I do plan to get something larger in a few months to resolve this issue.

In the mean time I have set up my Laptop to back up it's data to the drive and can stream some music from the unit, whilst the rest of the contents are TV series and a few other videos.

[nemmerle]

Thanks Scubbie.

Yeah, I had tried to change the DLNA content scan already. I had it set to 1440 mins (24hrs). But that didn't help much. Running the backup made the unit freeze still.

Happy to report that disabling the media server did improve things. Backup successful overnight.

So the DLNA server appears to be the culprit. Netgear needs to go back to the drawing board on that one..

My problem with NAS is mainly the cost of buying something worth using. Probably about 3 years ago I bought a WD World Edition II NAS drive. Cost me something like $400 at the time. It was supposed to have a 1Gb/s network interface, but the CPU of the unit was so underpowered, the transfer rate was dismal. I eventually took the 2x 500Gb drives out and put them into my desktop...

If money was no object, I'd have bought a ReadyNAS drive, or (for a little more fun) bought a Mini-ITX case and built my own NAS from the ground up. As it is, with kid on the way, I have other priorities! I'll live with the DLNA server disabled, and see if Netgear can make some improvements with future firmware updates. Won't hold my breath though.

[Scubbie]

I have no major complaints against the unit. There are a couple of glitches, but I can't afford to play with it as there is now only the one copy of the contents that it holds.

As for capacity, I bought it before the floods in Thailand so I was able to get a pair of fast 3TB drives. (Oi! No swearing :eek:)

I happened to have a memory module that had been replaced for a larger capacity in my Laptop that suited it perfectly, so I also have 2GB of RAM in the NAS drive too.

Streaming over my LAN, whilst copying data to/from the unit is not an issue. :cool: My main desktop (AMD3000+ processor), with a 1Gbit LAN card works at no more than ~250Mb/s. Another desktop manages up to ~500Mb/s. These can work simultaneously.

Streaming video content is much slower, so the unit is more than capable for my current needs in respect of performance. A planned larger unit will be able to host all my video content, pictures, clipart and music. I would also like to be able backup my computers to it too.

[nemmerle]

3Tb drives? Sheesh.. I've got 2x 1TB and 2x 500Gb drives in the desktop. If I'd been quicker I could have bought 4x 2Tb drives for less than what a 3Tb drive costs now.

Prices have started coming down from their peaks, but compared to just a few months ago, I feel ripped off! :mad:

[Scubbie]

That 2 * 3TB drives! 😛

Phew! I have just taken a look. The prices are indeed dropping at last. 🙂 They had almost doubled in price, now they are around 40-50% more than the pre-flood price.

If you intend to go for it, then the NAS units have dropped in price. I guess because no one is buying them. It might be a good idea to get one of them now and get the drives in a couple of months to get the best price on both. 😉

[nemmerle]

Bah humbug. Spoke too soon. Scheduled my backup to run once a week on Wed, so the laptop started running an incremental backup tonight. DGND3700 froze mid-backup yet again, while I was upstair on my normal PC writing an email, so it's not just the DLNA server causing the problem. Bleepin frustrating.