This topic has been marked solved and closed to new posts due to inactivity. We hope you'll join the conversation by posting to an open topic or starting a new one.
New to the communities, but I've had the RN102 (purchased from NETGEAR on Amazon with 2 3TB Seagate (ST3000DM001) drives)
since about mid 2013. Long story short, I hadn't set up the notification alerts correctly on the NAS, and, about mid 2014 both drives had failed. After much back and forth with NETGEAR Tech Support, they sent me two new drives (also ST3000DM001), and I had to send the failed drives to Seagate Recovery Services (they recovered the data for quite a pretty penny!).
Flash forward to mid 2015, and one of the replacement drives has failed. I'm pretty disgusted.
My questions - Are these Seagate drives just garbage? Is this typical behavior for them? Should I get something like a WD Red drive instead? Or, is there something wrong with my NAS that it keeps assassinating hard drives? I bought this because I thought it would be a relatively stable place to store files, but it's been the least stable hdd based storage device that I've ever owned!
I would appreciate any thoughts or reccommendations!
Re: RN102 3 out of 4 hard drives failed in 2 years
The ST3000DM001 is not a good choice for NAS. BackBlaze recently pulled a couple of thousand of them out of service because they were seeing very high failure rates. Their environment is more demanding than a home NAS, but there are also quite a few bad experiences posted here.
FWIW they are not finding that with the ST4000DM001, just the 3 TB model.
I see no reason at all to use desktop drives in a home NAS. Both Seagate and WDC have suitable NAS purposed drives. Prices are similar to desktop drives, warranties are longer, and I am not seeing a lot of horror stories here on any NAS-purposed drive.
Re: RN102 3 out of 4 hard drives failed in 2 years
Hi dbreda,
I agree with Stephen. You may also want to see the entire list (here) of the compatible HDD for your RN102 unit. Consider the best drives available and much better have a look at their reviews and other user feedback.
Re: RN102 3 out of 4 hard drives failed in 2 years
Hi Stephen,
Thanks for the information. That, along with the research that I have been doing, definitely indicates that the drives that NETGEAR shipped with my RN102, and then subsequently provided to replace my failed drives, are completely innappropriate for this application.
I'm pretty annoyed because I bought the NAS with drives assuming that NETGEAR would provide appropriate drives along with it. Instead they took the opportunity to cut costs by providing the worst drives on their approved drives list (the only one with only a 1 year warranty). It makes the RN102 look pretty bad in context, as all of my friends and acquaintences know (via facebook, etc) that it has caused me a lot of problems with failures. NETGEAR could protect their brand a lot better if they, like you, saw "no reason at all to use desktop drives in a home NAS".
Interestingly enough, the most recent communication that I received from NETGEAR Tech Support indicates that they will send my replacement drives of a different model, but they haven't told me what yet. Based on a couple of reviews that I have seen, I have asked for WD30EFRX as replacements.
NETGEAR Support
8/11/2015 9:12 AM
Good day,
Thanks for the logs.
I am now requesting for a different model of drives to be sent to you.
Kindly wait for next e-mail.
Regards,
Framer Villamor
Online Comment
8/11/2015 1:20 PM
Hi Framer, Thanks for your response. What type of drives will you be sending? I would prefer the WD30EFRX drives if I had my choice.
Also, can you expedite shipping? I am worried that my last drive will fail soon and I will lose my data.
Re: RN102 3 out of 4 hard drives failed in 2 years
Hi Brian,
Thanks for your reply. NETGEAR Tech Support also seems to agree with you guys. I received a message saying that they would replace my drives with different models, but they have not yet specified the models. I had looked at the list of compatible drives along with reviews and decided that I wanted the WD30EFRX. I asked for that model in my response to Tech Support. I hope that is what they will agree to send me. If you have the ability to influence that decision at all, I'd certainly appreciate it!
Re: RN102 3 out of 4 hard drives failed in 2 years
Now I know! And knowing is half the battle. GI Joe!
I really just assumed that they would know better than me about what drives should go in the NAS. Assume. Made an a$$ out of... well, pretty much just me.
Re: RN102 3 out of 4 hard drives failed in 2 years
We test drives before adding them to the compatibility list. Unfortunately some problems take some time to emerge and when we chose to use these drives we didn't know what poor record they would come to have as demonstrated by backblaze's experience that StephenB referred to.
For disks purchased in semi or fully populated units we can RMA disks that fail within the warranty.
Disk failures can happen and with any drive model out there users can find they have a lot of failures. It's one reason why backups are important.
There is always the option to purchase diskless if you want and choose the disks you want, or to buy a unit with enterprise disks installed.
Re: RN102 3 out of 4 hard drives failed in 2 years
Hi Guys,
Just a follow up to describe the resolution:
Netgear sent me a Recertified Seagate Constellation ES.2 (ST33000650NS) to replace the failed drive. I also removed the 4th (as yet not failed!) drive and replaced it with a WD Red 3TB drive that I bought on Amazon. Due to the terrible track record of the ST3000DM001 drives, I had asked Netgear to replace the last one as well, but had not heard back from them yet, so I used the drive from Amazon. I don't trust those ST3000DM001 drives at all, but i guess I'll keep it to throw in the NAS if one of the other drives fail, while I order a replacement.
Re: RN102 3 out of 4 hard drives failed in 2 years
From my personal experience (totally subjective) - I would recommend WD drives - I was just lucky with the various Green, Blacks and Reds that I have used.
I have three RN104 in use and found them very reliable and not killing any drives rather the opposite - it keeps drives relatively cool - only time will tell, BUT:
1. I never ever buy drives in batches - I always try to purchase drives few months apart.
2. Just because I have a RAID in a NAS it doesnt mean that data is safe!
3. The NAS/RAID controller/motherboard can and will also fail at some point - most likely when compatible replacements are not readily available
4. Because of no 2and 3 I always have MINIMUM of 2 NAS RAIDs syncying/backing up to each other
5. Drives in each NAS should have at least be a different model if not manufacturer
6. I always use either RAID5 with hot stanby or RAID6.
Why going to all this trouble - call it 20+ years of experience... anything less is just not worth the hassle - it will fail suddenly taking your data with it.
I have learned my first lesson some twenty something years ago (in the days of NetWare SFTIII) a very expensive server stuffed with very very expensive drives died of sudden death taking with it all the data. The underlying problem was overheating drive bearings which raised the temperature and killed another drives just above it. Before we managed to get replacements and resync the data, the mirror server died of this same problem.
It took us long time to restore the backups from tape... ( and I also remember people who said that with all this redundancy there was no point in making tape backups..)
All the drives were purchased in one batch with sequential serial numbers!
Over the years I have seen similar scenarios independet of the technologies used.
I have started using RAID NAS appliances at home only when the cheap RN104 came onto the market - before I couldnt afford to have 3 NAS - which seems to be the minimum - the 3rd one at different location
BTW lightning also has a habbit of striking twice if you have enough data to destroy.....
From my personal experience (totally subjective) ... -
Thx for sharing. I agree with your overall approach. Mine is a bit different in the details, but is aimed at the same goals. I am moving to jbod for backups, under the theory that they are easier to recover (normally not a concern, but perhaps could be in a disaster screnario) - and also because I can get more backups from the same raw storage. I have at least 3 local copies of everything, and augment that with CrashPlan for disaster recovery.
I also recommend WDC drives (particularly the Red line for NAS). I had a run of seagate failures some years ago, and started phasing in WDC drives then. I've had good luck with them.
I don't deliberately mix drive models, but I do see why you might want to. It's a bit like diversifying your investments - it hedges your risk of chosing an unreliable model.
