Who is recommended to offer on-going online support for a readynas. Unsure what the Netgear options are...they seem confusing and past history is Netgear seems slow to respond. Is it the same with paid support contract? Are their other vendors who offer this service?
I think how fast they reply depends on how loaded they are at the time. If it is a fairly routine situation, the forum may be the best avenue. If it is complex, or something the forum can't help on, then tech support is obviously the way to go. You can then decide to wait on e-mail support or pay for telephone support if it is beyond the original 90 day window. (Free technical support for the first 90 days after purchase of the product).
From my observation most of the problems can be easily solved if there is a current and complete backup of the data.
A case in point - I came home last week after dinner at a friends, and sat down to watch a little TV and browse the internet. All was well until I tried to access a file on my primary NVX. I got an error message. I tried another file and got the same error message. Something is not right. I got up and walked into the front bedroom that serves as my computer room, and the NVX had all four drive lights on and the activity light was steady green, not blinking as it normally does with traffic. The front panel said my volume was on life support. I open RAIDar on the computer in that room, and got something I had never seen before. Drives one and two (3TB) had a solid green dot, but drives three and four (1TB) had a green circle with a red cross in the middle. I opened Fronview and drives three and four where shown as off line spares! This can sometimes happen when their is a power outage, but my primary and secondary units are on a UPS, and none of my clocks needed resetting.
If this had happened in the old days, I would have been in panicsville. However, I was still concerned as I had updated several files during the day and they were not backed up as that was set to start in several hours (midnight). But, I could redo those few changes. With a full and almost current backup on my secondary NVX (using rsync), I simply tried the first step and that was a reboot. Thinking worst case, I would have to do a factory default as that cures most ills. But it wipes the drives of all data, but I had one backup of everything, and it was almost current, and I had a second backup of the critical data on my trusty old NV+.
On reboot, it reported drive 3 on line and part of the volume, but drive 4 was dead. Stone cold dead. I manually updated my backups, and then replaced the drive. The next morning after a 5 hour resync, all was well and the volume was intact. (The purpose of the manual update of my backup was that the resync after replacing a drive places a heavy load on the drives and if one is going to fail, that is most likely when it will happen, and I was not sure of drive three at this point.)
Unfortunately too many of our members do not maintain a full and current backup for many reasons. That takes away the factory default or the ability in a situation like mine to simply go ahead and reboot, because their data is at risk. That is why many of us beat the backup drum as I do in my siggy. My NVX suffered a major disk failure that for some reason also took drive 3 off line.
Too many view the Raid aspect of the ReadyNAS as a backup. It is not, it is only a convenience. (I did not have to copy over my data from the backup because the system worked as designed and re-established the redundancy with the addition of a fresh drive.)
Thanks for the detailed reply, I did learn from your response that part of my problem is the learning curve. I used to be pretty tech savvy but have got behind and just dont have the time nor desire to be the Readynas expert, BUT I do want to make certain I am using it to its fullest like you explain, therefore I've been looking for someone to set me up and make sure I am using the system to its fullest so if (When) this happens I will be able to transition as you did.
I was pretty much in your position when I got my NV+ back in the summer of 2007. I was tired of having to hunt the files on different machines down, and resort to sneakernet to transfer files from one machine to another, either by USB drive or flash drive. I looked at various units and based upon a review of the then fairly new NV+ in PC World, I downloaded the manual and read through it. When I got it, and installed the two drives, I found the set up was not all that bad.
I found that in normal service, it sits there quietly doing it's job. For years, I never set up the e-mail alerts (much easier now with recent improvents to Frontview), nor did I connect the signal cable to my UPS, although they were plugged into it. For 99% of the problems one encounters, I believe the forum is a very good tool. When I got my very first NVX, I had trouble because it would not do the initial boot, but tech support talked me through a diagnosis on the phone. (It was a memory module not fully seated). Then when I had a problem with transfer speeds, the advise of the more knowledgeable members such as mdgm, S. P. Hardey and dbott67 among others, helped me find the problem with an incompatible network switch. Then later they guided me through using rsync for my backup.
I have found over the years, that need is the best incentive to learn. There is a lot about NAS units that I do not know. I will answer those questions I can, and if I see someone who has a problem, and one of the more experiences members is not online, I will send them a PM. While there may be private technical support people out there other than Netgear, I am not aware of any. If you really need the support and access to the files on your Pro 6 is time sensitve, then maybe a support package from Netgear is in order. This will give you telephone support past the 90 days. However, if you are looking for someone to come to your location to support it, that's a different matter. I would say than unless you are in a major metropolitan area, there is unlikely to be anyone of that nature in your area, unless you are very fortunate.
For now, your best bet is to simply ask questions that you have. Remember, we all started knowing nothing about them, and the only stupid question is the one you didn't ask. Unlike some forums, I have never seen anyone chastised for asking a question that one learns with experience. After all, that is how the rest of us got that experience - asking questions.
