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Re: OS6 on a legacy device in 2018.

OS6 on a legacy device in 2018.

Hello there NAS-owners.

Starting this thread instead of me going off topic in the thread about ’restriping’.

I just switched from OS4 to OS6 and so far i am happy with the change. The new OS is fresh, much more controllable and it is much more developed (of course).

Searching for info on running OS6 on a ReadyNAS RNDU6000 gives me results but nothing recent, i think the last post i found about it was from 2016, so how are your systems working? Anything you guise don’t like about the switch?

I have some questions:

1. SMART errors i had before are gone, why? Take RAW Read Errors for example, not present anymore. I’m not complaining though, just suspicious since i know for a ”fact” that two of my six drives had errors. Now they don’t.

2. Are the readings regarding the degrees correct on my system? I mean the CPU and system in idle is 35c and 57c. When i was resyncing drives perhaps an hour ago it was around 50c for the CPU and for the system it peaked at 62c, that’s not optimal if you ask me. The fan curve is set to cool (directly translated from swedish).

3. Should one expect everything to work as usual now? For example: swapping out drives, replacing them and so on, is it the same? Hot swapping etc?

4. Should one be worried about the system bricking the NAS? Had this happened to you or have you heard about it? Is it even possible to brick the NAS?

5. Is 2gb memory enough or should i upgrade?

That’s all for now.
Model: ReadyNAS RNDU6000|ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Chassis only
Message 1 of 29
Retired_Member
Not applicable

Re: OS6 on a legacy device in 2018.

@PerfectOnline wrote: "When i was resyncing drives perhaps an hour ago it was around 50c for the CPU and for the system it peaked at 62c, that’s not optimal if you ask me."

Do you recall the temparature of the disks at the time you measured the above?

Kind regards

Message 2 of 29
StephenB
Guru

Re: OS6 on a legacy device in 2018.

@PerfectOnline wrote: "When i was resyncing drives perhaps an hour ago it was around 50c for the CPU and for the system it peaked at 62c, that’s not optimal if you ask me."

 


50c for the CPU is quite normal, 62C for the system is not.  In addition to the disk temps:

  • Where you monitoring temps with 4.2.31, and if so what temps were you seeing  under load?
  • What speed was the chassis fan running at during the resync?
  • What cooling profile did you choose (quiet, balanced, or cool)? 

 

Maybe post the temp graph on the performance page.

 

Note you can test again by running a scrub from the volume maintenance settings wheel - that will create a load that is similar to a resync.

 

It is possible that the chassis fan needs to be replaced.  Of course dust could also be interfering with cooling, so if you haven't looked for that lately, you might want to do that.

 

 

 

 

Message 3 of 29

Re: OS6 on a legacy device in 2018.

I sure do, they were around 34-36c.

I really need to open it up and have a look. When replacing the 12cm fan, it is a PWM fan right? I think i’ve read that somewhere.
Message 4 of 29

Re: OS6 on a legacy device in 2018.

The temps under OS4 was around 34-37 for the drives, something like 43 for the system and 50-57c for the CPU. Something like that.

I remember that the CPU was climbing up to perhaps 58c at one time.

During the resync now i changed it to Cool and it was running at around 900-1100rpm.

Mostly above 1000rpm.

Yes, i’m going to open it and have a look. I want to replace the fan for a fan with alot of pressure and rpm, it is PWM right?
Message 5 of 29
StephenB
Guru

Re: OS6 on a legacy device in 2018.


@PerfectOnline wrote:

I really need to open it up and have a look. When replacing the 12cm fan, it is a PWM fan right? I think i’ve read that somewhere.

3-pin PWM.  I replaced the one in the Pro-6 with a Noctua NF-S12A FLX.

 

But keep in mind that the temp reports might be reported incorrectly.  Hopefully another Ultra-6 user running OS 6.9.4 will chime in.

Message 6 of 29
TeknoJnky
Hero

Re: OS6 on a legacy device in 2018.

not sure how close they are in hardware, but my ultra 4 temps are;

 

disks: 34 to 41c

cpu fan 1318

system fan 1016

cpu temp 51c

sytem temp 61c

profile quiet

 

load: idle (its only a backup destination now)

 

Message 7 of 29

Re: OS6 on a legacy device in 2018.

Hm, i don’t think three pin PWM exists, i could be wrong though. I just spent my evening cleaning the NAS and it wasn’t a pretty sight in there, clean almost the entire inside of the box and i checked the 12cm fan and sure enough it was a three pin connection, i replaced the fan with a three pin Lian-Li fan i had as a spare and the system reads it, correctly i hope.

There is a chip on the motherboard with a heatsink on, i guess it is the CPU, that had old thermalpaste on it, it was like hard clay, i removed that and applied some thermalpaste from EKWB that i think is a good paste for such things.

I had liquid metal but i didn’t have the balls to apply that since it is conductive. Would have loves to see the temp readings after that though.

Oh, and i had two sticks of Kingston 2gb DDR-2 laying around so i installed those and yes: the system now runs at 4gb RAM (almost 4 that is according to the system). In other words: 4gb works. Not sure if 2x4gb would work, would be cool though.
Message 8 of 29

Re: OS6 on a legacy device in 2018.

After applying new thermalpaste and replacing the fan the temps are:

Drives: 32c-34c.
CPU: 35c.
System: 56c.
Fan RPM: 786 (on Cool).

Not sure why system temps are that high, i cleaned both the PCB’s with isopropylalcohol.
Message 9 of 29
StephenB
Guru

Re: OS6 on a legacy device in 2018.


@PerfectOnline wrote:

Not sure why system temps are that high, i cleaned both the PCB’s with isopropylalcohol.

They are usually in that range, so I think you might be mis-remembering what they were before.  Note the sensors use DTS, and they aren't that accurate (+ or - 10C)

 

There's a long and somewhat confused thread here: https://community.netgear.com/t5/New-ReadyNAS-Users-General/ReadyNAS-Pro-6-Temperature/td-p/899458 that does include a fair number of temperature readings from users.

 

Though the Pro-6 (and Ultra-6+) use a different processor from the Ultra-6 (which uses an Atom D510 I think).  But there is an Ultra-6 post that reports similar system temps: https://community.netgear.com/t5/New-ReadyNAS-Users-General/OS-6-6-1-on-Ultra-6-Temperature-readings...

Message 10 of 29

Re: OS6 on a legacy device in 2018.

Guise?
I just got a brand new fan that i ordered, three pin and all but it doesn’t work as it is supposed to do.

It is conneted on the MBU with the provided three pin connector.

When i start the NAS the fan spins up, then it slows down and everything looks fine in the stats/performance.

Then the fan stops and all i can see is strange readings, like hundred of thousands of RPM.

One of the times it almost looked stable and that was when i had selected ’balanced’.

What’s wrong? When i used the provided molex>3-pin power & 3-pin RPM-reader>molex the NAS showed me the RPM’s (maximum speed) but nothing happened when i changed fan modes.

So it seems like the fan works alright, just that the NAS has problems controlling it.

The fan is a Scythe Ultra Kaze 120mm 3000RPM.

I don’t think the fan is too powerful since it is sold as a computer fan.

How does the fan detection work? Should the NAS be given some time to ”get to know the new fan”?
Model: ReadyNAS RNDU6000|ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Chassis only
Message 11 of 29

Re: OS6 on a legacy device in 2018.

A quick update:

at the moment i am running the fan directly connected to the MBU of the NAS and it’s working perfect. As long as i use the ’balanced’ mode that is, it seems like if i pick either ’quiet’ or ’cool’ then the NAS looses it’s mind, reports either 0rpm or rpm in the hundred of thousands.

My questions are:

is it safe the run this fan as long as the NAS is able to control it in the ’balanced’ mode?

Is the fan perhaps too powerful? Can the MBU handle this much? It looks like it can as of now but what about further down the road?

The previous fan didn’t freak out when i changed the fan curve but if i remember it correctly it really didn’t matter what setting i used, the RPM’s were the same.

My temp readings are: CPU=35c & System 53c. The fan speed is hoovering just below 1000RPM.

The whole point with getting this sweet fan was to be able to get more CFM than i had before. I thought that the NAS perhaps had a standard mode for setting the RPM’s and getting a fan with more RPM would set the ’bar higher’ so to speak. The best option would be a custom fan curve.

Is there perhaps an app for this? Perhaps it is possible to edit some file or something?
Message 12 of 29
Sandshark
Sensei

Re: OS6 on a legacy device in 2018.

A fan with a higher RPM rating is often also incapable of operating properly at very low RPMs.  That sounds like your problem.  When the fan reads 0 RPM, is it really not moving?  If so, than I'd say may not be safe.  If it is safe, then it's going to go from stationary to a high RPM when it finally gets hot enough to call for something high enough to start the fan.  That could be noisy, but maybe not dangerous.  It depends on just how hot is gets before the fan does kick in.

Message 13 of 29

Re: OS6 on a legacy device in 2018.

Guise,

i don’t know what to do. The fan seemed stable on the setting ’balanced’ running around 900-1000rpm but this evening it stopped.

I was monitoring the NAS from time to time and all of the sudden the fan was at 0rpm and the system and CPU-temps were through the roof. Around 95c on both.

When i saw this i turned off the NAS immediately and connected the fan to a molexadaptor instead. So now it runs on full speed drawing it’s power from the molex and reporting the rpm’s to the system via a fan cable with only the yellow wire attached to the mbu.

Should i be worried? The NAS turned off safely and when i had changed the fan to molex and started the system everything looked okey.

As of now i have sweet degrees: system=46c and CPU=35c.

Is there any way i can know if the system took damage?

Isn’t the system supposed to power down if it reaches certain degrees or is it built to handle even that high values?

I had a look at the performance page and according to the temp readings there the system ran on 95c or there about for approximately 1.5h. On both the CPU and the system.

So i ran my system for around 90min without a 120mm fan, i don’t recommend it guise.

I need a fast reply, a comfortable one so i can relax.
Message 14 of 29
Sandshark
Sensei

Re: OS6 on a legacy device in 2018.

You may have reduced the life of the CPU or drives a bit running that hot, but 90 minutes isn't really that long.  I'm not sure if this method of overriding the minimum fan speed still works or not: OS-6-5-2-still-causes-fan-issue.

Message 15 of 29

Re: OS6 on a legacy device in 2018.

Well, i’ve done some more research and the TJ or whatever it is called is 100c on this CPU and i never reached a 100c (just almost), which in return would mean that the CPU should be fine.

More worried about the system though since it also was in the 90’s. But i guess (and hope) that there is a built in mechanism that shuts down the system if it hits critical values. The system kept running though so i wonder.

I think i saw the danger right in time because when i take a look at the logs it showed increasing temps and it never reached 100c on either the CPU or the system.

I was too fast turning off the NAS so i don’t remember what the temps were on the drives. I vaguely remember them being in the 40’s or 60’s, not sure. One good thing though, the NAS is setup to shut down if the drives gets to hot and it didn’t shut down so i guess i got lucky there too.

Strange thing is that i can’t find anything about automatic shutdown if the temps on either the CPU and/or the system gets too hot.

I need more input guise, should i be worried? Everything seems to be fine, can i consider myself lucky that caught this in time?

I really wonder what would happen if this occured when i wasn’t home, i mean a fan failure shouldn’t be able to kill this kind of NAS if you ask me. There should be some kind of protection against it since this can happen to anyone at any time.
Message 16 of 29

Re: OS6 on a legacy device in 2018.

Guise?

Not much activity anymore in this thread, unfortionately.

Anyways, i have more questions:

* As i mentioned, the system temps were right below 100c, could my NAS have taken some damage or would i know by now if it has? The system runs flawlessy as it is now.

* The new firmware has been released: 6.9.5, is it safe to upgrade? The NAS nags about it all the time.

* Somewhere in the process of me backing up stuff something must have gone wrong, i have found several files being corrupted and that is not good. A file can’t be corrupted just like that right?

* Are there any particular settings i should enable or disable in the NAS to prevent corruption? I want my data to be as safe as possible and i’m running RAID-6 (to be extra sure).

* If i would want to, would it be possible to go from RAID-6 to RAID-5 without having to factory default again?

* Oh, is there any way to fix the corrupted files? It is mostly videofiles that has been affected, haven’t found any musicfiles corrupted yet. I have checked my backups too and there is the same corruption there so as i mentioned, somewhere in the process something went wrong.

* What is disc ROT protection? Should this be enabled?

Would be happy if someone shared their expertise, i really like the professionalism i see on this forum.
Message 17 of 29
TeknoJnky
Hero

Re: OS6 on a legacy device in 2018.

- doubt any damage has occurred, I am sure if there was you would have already had problems

 

- sure seems to be fine I don't see anyone making complaints about it in the forums.

 

- many things can cause corruption, network errors, application errors, software/hardware errors, user errors, virus and malware issues. no raid or device is a replacement for backups. backups = multiple copies of your data on different devices and ideally in different locations (think about floods or fire or theft etc).

 

- raid 6 and enabling the checksums/bitrot protections is a good start. backups are the only complete solution.

 

- no you cannot go from raid 6 to raid 5. You don't necessarily have to factory default, but you would need to delete the data volume and recreate a new raid 5 volume, so the result is the same... you would have to completely backup then restore all data.

 

- depends on the file and the corruption, but if the corruption is in your backups then it sounds like it may have already been there for some time so its difficult to know when or where it occured. If these are just media files, you can simply re-rip bluray/dvd/music. Time consuming yes, but if the validity of your data is in down, its best to start with a clean slate anyway. If they are business or personal files, well probably be unlikely to fully recover unless you have even older backups from before they were corrupted.

 

- bitrot protection utilizes checksums on parts of the file system, so that if for some reason a drive started failing by randomly changing a zero to a one or vice versa, the checksum should detect the file corruption and either repair from parity (when it is able) or notify the user so that an uncorrupted backup can be restored. Note this protection is only at the filesystem level, it would not know or detect if a file is corrupted by an application or network or user error.

 

the use of checksums does have a minor impact on performance (cpu has to calculate the checksums on the fly and they have to be written/read from the disk), but in general it should be enabled for most use cases.

 

 

 

Message 18 of 29

Re: OS6 on a legacy device in 2018.

Thanks for your reply.

The time when i suspect the corruption took place is when one drive was being replaced in the NAS and during that time it gave me some time to backup, the NAS did this several times and i just had to reboot and it did it again. Something like that.

I remember something about when it finished or almost finished (not sure which) it displayed something about that the volume was vulnerable or something like that.

Maybe i was lucky that i could do backups of the system at all.

It took forever to backup and from time to time the copying process would cancel and show some message about the files not being available anymore and i had to restart the computer i was copying to (Win10 x64) and then it worked again.

That’s the problem, basically: the only backups i had was the files on the NAS, yes i know, not a very good backup plan.

Alright, then i will keep this configuration, turn on bitrot protection and upgrade to the latest firmware.

I guess the only last thing i can do to be completely safe is to do a memory test (sometimes during the process i replaced the 2gb RAM to 4gb). But it should be alright i guess since there are no strange errors or anything like that and i can’t recall me needing to restart the NAS even once.

Are there any ways to check a file for corruption? I think for example WinRAR can do that, but maybe that’s a different story.

Are there any ways to verify a directory and save the results in a file so that one can do a quick check if needed? I’m not that educated in this regard but i know of some solution generating .md5 files, i just don’t know enough to put it in practise (best program and stuff like that).
Message 19 of 29
StephenB
Guru

Re: OS6 on a legacy device in 2018.


@TeknoJnky wrote:

 

- no you cannot go from raid 6 to raid 5. You don't necessarily have to factory default, but you would need to delete the data volume and recreate a new raid 5 volume, so the result is the same... you would have to completely backup then restore all data.

 


Actually if you have an empty slot in the NAS, you can switch to raid-6 without data loss.  This would also require that the three largest disks currently in the NAS be the same size.

 

@PerfectOnline wrote:

Are there any ways to verify a directory and save the results in a file so that one can do a quick check if needed? I’m not that educated in this regard but i know of some solution generating .md5 files, i just don’t know enough to put it in practise (best program and stuff like that).

Some years ago I started doing this for selected folders (before I owned a NAS).  I still use QuickSFV (though it is old, it still works), creating an "sfv" file in each folder.  

 

You can also use something like QuickPar (also old) or MultiPar for this.  (I've used QuickPar, but not MultiPar).  These create signature files similar to QuickSFV, but also can create repair files from limited amounts of file corruption.  For instance, if the repair files are 10% of the folder size, they can recover from up to 10% of corrupted data blocks in the files.  This operates similarly to RAID redundancy btw, but is more sophisticated.

 

As you say, you can also zip (or rar) the folders - compressed archives also have built-in integrity checks.  WinRar does include "recovery records" which are similar to the par2 repair files created by QuickPar.  Of course you can't access the data as easily if you do that. 

 

These approaches aren't automated (and if they were, you'd risk updating the signatures when the files became corrupted). So they do take some discipline to use. I don't think it'd be practical to use them on frequently updated folders.  

 

FWIW, btrfs checksums will also detect corrupted files.  But it's not easy to access those corrupted files - making repair (or partial recovery) difficult.  The bitrot protection is an interesting ReadyNAS feature (which uses the checksums and the RAID partity blocks), but I haven't seen posts here from people saying that it recovered their files.  I do have it enabled, but my main strategy for protection from data loss is backups (using snapshots to protect against accidental deletion or modification).

Message 20 of 29

Re: OS6 on a legacy device in 2018.

Thanks alot for the reply guise!

I will take a look into this whole thing about .sfv and the likes, it sounds interesting and i do want a feature which i can use if i ever suspect something to be wrong with a file, let’s say a .flac file that sounds strange, it would be sweet to at least know that the file is OK and rule that out, in this example leaving it to a bad rip.

I have enabled bit-rot-protection.

Oh, and a funny thing: since the NAS was worthless to control a single 120mm fan (almost cooked my system) i installed a little thingy that i bought, a voltage regulator so now it is connected to a MOLEX and a single yellow cable goes to the MBU giving me the possibility to see the actual RPM’s, but nothing more than that, the controller is attached on the outside of the NAS so i can control the flow exactly as i want it. 1700rpm’s seems fine, i do think that a system temp if around 50c is too much but i have bought heatsinks and this should not be an issue if my calculations are correct.

Regarding the thing about RAID6-5, i have no empty slots. Would it be possible to remove one disk, shrink the volume and then later add the last disk again or is this too much trouble?

I did the update for the firmware so i am currently running 6.9.5 and current bad things to report are: 0.

Everything seems fine.
Message 21 of 29
Sandshark
Sensei

Re: OS6 on a legacy device in 2018.

You cannot shrink a volume on a ReadyNAS.  So if all slots are full, you have to backup, wipe the volume, create a new RAID6 volume, and restore data.

Message 22 of 29

Re: OS6 on a legacy device in 2018.

I see, i am running RAID6 now but after thinking some more about it i’ll keep my current configuration.

I still think it’s strange that i have corrupted data but it must have ocurred when the NAS was busy restoring a drive and me copying stuff from the NAS in the meantime.

If it happened some other time than that it leaves me to doubt the safety of the NAS. I want my data to be uncorrupted.

I remember there being a function under OS4 where you could see if there were any errors during the traffic on the connection but there doesn’t seem to be a function like that anymore when running OS6. I think it were called packages or something like that.
Message 23 of 29
StephenB
Guru

Re: OS6 on a legacy device in 2018.


@PerfectOnline wrote:

I remember there being a function under OS4 where you could see if there were any errors during the traffic on the connection but there doesn’t seem to be a function like that anymore when running OS6. I think it were called packages or something like that.

I still have 4.2.31 running on my pro-6, and I don't know of any such package.

 

You can download the log zip file and look in network_settings.log.

Message 24 of 29

Re: OS6 on a legacy device in 2018.

On my little Duo it is in: Home/Network/Interfaces/Show errors

I’m almost certain that the same function was present on the RNDU6000 in OS4 but i could be wrong though.

Does network errors always equal corrupted files?
Message 25 of 29
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