But the latest issue is NTGR supplying these drives to use in the NAS, via promo or RMA. If there is a know issue, NTGR should only be supplying the valid revisions.
But the latest issue is NTGR supplying these drives to use in the NAS, via promo or RMA. If there is a know issue, NTGR should only be supplying the valid revisions.
Well, today I finally have my ReadyNAS Duo back in use with two drives fitted.
Seagate finally replaced the incompatible ST2000DL001 CC32 promo drive, after lots of discussion, with a re-manufactured ST2000DM001 originally manufactured in Feb 2012. It has taken me 40 days to get to this position. While both companies have finally come through, it is only because I am persistent and educated them about the compatibility of their equipment.
I have just bought another NAS drive: Synology with two Western Digital Red drives. I don't know if they will be any better, but I couldn't go with Netgear and Seagate again after the last 40 days experience.
I am pretty much in the same boat as most of you having purchased not "1" but "5" of these drives for my primary and backup readynas. Seagate have unfortunately not been any help and they provided this blunt response when I tried to return three hard drives back as they kept failing in the ReadyNAS.
Dear Thank you for your reply.
We are sorry as we are not able to fulfill your request to provide a replacement with a specific firmware.
Thank you
--------------- Original Message ---------------
Hi , As discussed can you please ensure that the replacement drives sent back for the below three RMA's have CC3C firmware as a minimum (preferably CC3D as this is the firmware where the bugs have been fixed).
1006868185 1006868190 1006868194
Links below are to the Netgear ReadyNAS website indicating that my problem with the drives (constant drive failure in a RAID) is specific to firmware version CC32. The link also says that it is not possible to upgrade from CC32 to CC3D and I have tried this already and it is not possible. The drives have to be sent back to Seagate for updates (which a number of users in the ReadyNas Community have achieved successfully). I would appreciate if you could do the same and send back the drives with newer firmware that fixes these bugs.
I dont know if any one of you will have any luck but I have decided I will send these back anyway and "hope" for the best that they return the drives with newer firmware. Having been a big Seagate fan for the last 15+ years, this is a massive put off and terribly dissapointed with their lack of acknowledgement of their "bugs". I have since replaced these drives with some Western Digital Red's lets see how those go.
I will keep persisting with their customer support and let you know if they change this minds. Reading apbliv's post has given me some wilpower to keep hassling them with this.
Hi, If you've RMA'd any of these in the UK, can you please let me know your experience and if there are any references to tickets within the Seagate "system" that I can reference as the same issue (hopefully to make the RMA process less of a ball-ache). Thanks 🙂
This is a great idea, would anyone who successfully managed to RMA these drives please let us knwo what your tickets were so we can use these hopefully to get our dodgy drives changed?
I presently have three RMA's open for three drives with this problem, below are my numbers if you want to reference them when you contact seagate. 1006868185 1006868190 1006868194
Hi, I'm happy to say that i've had a very positive experience with Seagate on this issue.
I called the European support number listed on their website and got through to a very nice chap called Hans W (who was actually in the Netherlands). I explained the situation with the drive firmware, and that I would need replacement drives with a specific firmware version.
Luckily, he had heard about this problem previously from a colleague so was aware that they needed to do 'something' about the drives. He asked me to email him the details and the URLs for the Netgear article on the subject, the forum thread (this one) and the Netgear HCL for the NAS.
After a couple of days, I got call back - good news! He'd looked at the links i'd posted and was happy to replace the two dodgy drives with a completely different model, the ST2000DM001 (the same model as someone earlier in the thread mentioned they received as replacement). I was told he'd specifically picked this model as it was listed on the HCL for the NAS and has the same cache, SATA spec and size as the crappy ones.
The replacements are the re-manufactured drives, which I was a bit annoyed about (since my drives were originals and the only fault was Seagate's own crappy firmware), but i'd rather have two working drives than a couple of paperweights. The new drives are a slightly better performance spec, being 7200 not 5900 speed; so I can't really complain... i'm just being picky 🙂
I'd also explained to Hans that I needed to swap out the drives before I could send the faulty ones in to them - obviously because I needed to replace them one at a time and allow the array to re-sync. He was quite happy to send out the replacement drives on good-faith - he didn't even take a credit/debit card number to insure I did actually return them... but from what i've read in this thread, I don't think the European support can do that. All I will say about them offering to do that is, if they offer the same service to you; don't abuse it - they could quite easily refuse to send the new drives out before receiving the broken ones first. So lets keep the ball rolling on the trust, yeah? 🙂
The replacement drives arrived quickly (via UPS), and i've returned the dodgy ones in the packaging the new ones arrived in. From my first call to Seagate to receipt of the replacement drives was about a week.
All in all, i'm very satisfied with how Seagate have handled this - and I have nothing but praise for Hans W, who took the time to research the issue here and select the replacement model by checking the HCL himself.
If anyone would like to reference my RMA process with Seagate (I'm not sure if this number is valid worldwide, or just in the European system), feel free to do so: 2101878723.
I hope people can have my luck with this - it sounds like i've had a very smooth ride! 🙂
Darren.
PS: If you ever check this thread again Hans W from Seagate support in NL, you have my great thanks 🙂 And know that my relay of this support experience to business colleagues has led them to consider Seagate very highly for future purchases.
All. I ended up with an Ultra 6 and 8 of these drives with model # suffix 301 & FW CC32
During a support call for an attempted RMA seagate simply said that the drive is not supported in a raid config. (And its not their problem to fix) It's a desktop drive. Not a NAS drive. There are good articles on the net that covers TLER and RTS - in simplistic terms the drive times out and the raid config SW/HW marks it as dead. It times out as the drives internals try and recover bad blocks and this takes a bit of time.
With 8 drives the rate of bad blocks recovery is surprising. I have had 3 double drive failure in 5 weeks. Swap them out - only to find others dead --- level of instability is scary to say the least with precious family home videos now lost as a result.
I read a few threads on adjusting drive timeout values in Linux - noting that no one claims success & not having much else to do I applied the method and have flogged the unit for 2 weeks now with no dead drives. It seems pretty stable. I cant say if its just luck or if it actually works. Time will tell- if you would like to try it - here it is.
After a reboot (can be automated via /etc/rc.local), I run the following commands:-
Default is 30 - I do this for every drive in the raid group. In the Ultra 6 it ends up being for sda, sdb, ..... sdf Give t a try..... If it continues to works ... it saves me going and getting WD red NAS drives.
All. I ended up with an Ultra 6 and 8 of these drives with model # suffix 301 & FW CC32
During a support call for an attempted RMA seagate simply said that the drive is not supported in a raid config. (And its not their problem to fix) It's a desktop drive. Not a NAS drive. There are good articles on the net that covers TLER and RTS - in simplistic terms the drive times out and the raid config SW/HW marks it as dead. It times out as the drives internals try and recover bad blocks and this takes a bit of time.
With 8 drives the rate of bad blocks recovery is surprising. I have had 3 double drive failure in 5 weeks. Swap them out - only to find others dead --- level of instability is scary to say the least with precious family home videos now lost as a result.
I read a few threads on adjusting drive timeout values in Linux - noting that no one claims success & not having much else to do I applied the method and have flogged the unit for 2 weeks now with no dead drives. It seems pretty stable. I cant say if its just luck or if it actually works. Time will tell- if you would like to try it - here it is.
After a reboot (can be automated via /etc/rc.local), I run the following commands:-
Default is 30 - I do this for every drive in the raid group. In the Ultra 6 it ends up being for sda, sdb, ..... sdf Give t a try..... If it continues to works ... it saves me going and getting WD red NAS drives.
Intesting, I like to hear how stable this is after a few months. Are there any caveats to changing the value above? Unfortunately, I already bought 2 WD 3TB RED drives and yanked the Seagates from slots 1 & 2. However, I still would be interested how this fix works long term since the Seagate drives may end up back in the NAS should a disk failure occur again.
I've got 4 x ST2000DL003-9VT166-302 FW CC3C which have only now started to be marked as "dead". I didn't even know there was an issue with these drives as Pro 4 had been running perfectly for 16months with no issues and had no reason to suspect anything!
A week ago I logged into Frontview to be informed that Slot 1 was dead. Cue mad panic to quickly backup everything to my Nas Duo and external USB drives. Also cue forum searches to identify problem. Found this forum and thought great problem solved. In the interim whilst conducting backups I restarted the Pro4 and was then advised via Frontview that all drives were dead! However the strange thing was I could still create back-up jobs and run them successfully and also navigate NAS via Windows Network. Sunday night I lost comms over network with the Pro4 and restarted it to be told I now had Slot 1 and 4 dead and the RAID was unprotected (Slots 2 & 3 Green ok). Again I could still run backup jobs to external USBs. Then it finally lost network comms with any login attempt to Frontview now greeted with Contact Support message.
So I've powered off Pro4 and removed slot 1 HDD. Have run Seatools for DOS long test which passed and it reports that SMART has not been tripped. I then proceed to conduct firmware upgrade as per http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=64510 (ps how do I enter url code in posts?) which appears to run ok until the very end when I get a failed message and "Model matched but firmware version not compatible." I've tried twice to upgrade the firmware and it has failed. I'm trying to raise email ticket with Seagate but for some reason this isn't working so will phone them tomorrow but in the interim:
Any ideas how to get this fixed (force firmware upgrade? http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Desktop-HDD-Desktop-SSHD/ST31500541AS-force-upgrade/m-p/79104/highlight/true) or is my NAS dead with these drives?
I read a few threads on adjusting drive timeout values in Linux - noting that no one claims success & not having much else to do I applied the method and have flogged the unit for 2 weeks now with no dead drives. It seems pretty stable. I cant say if its just luck or if it actually works. Time will tell- if you would like to try it - here it is.
After a reboot (can be automated via /etc/rc.local), I run the following commands:-
Default is 30 - I do this for every drive in the raid group. In the Ultra 6 it ends up being for sda, sdb, ..... sdf Give t a try..... If it continues to works ... it saves me going and getting WD red NAS drives.
I. too. am very interested in how this holds up. It still doesn't explain why going back to RAIDiator 4.2.21 has fixed the problem for me, though. To me, that clearly indicates that there is a fix that Netgear could implement if they only had a clue what they changed (intentionally or not) in the 4.2.22 update that affected this. The default timeout in 4.2.21 is also 30, so that's not it. I would like to update RAIDiator on my NAS's, but dare not due to this issue. I keep the ones without the ST2000DL003's at 4.2.21 also, in case the NAS with them has a hardware problem and I need to swap the disks to another.
I ran more than a year and a half with these drives with no problems. Upgraded to 4.2.22 and had problems within a week. Downgraded to 4.2.21 and have been going strong for another year. Yeah, it's a Seagate problem. :roll:
I have three ST2000DL003-9VT166 of which one has now reported dead in my ReadyNAS Ultra+ 4. I replaced it, but looking at it afterwards there were no SMART errors, so after googling I found this thread. I have the 302 version with CC3C but unfortunately the firmware upgrade to CC3D is no longer to be found anywhere. The warranty ended earlier this summer, maybe that is why? All the links I have found to the CC3D software (e.g. https://apps1.seagate.com/downloads/certificate.html?key=156192206224) are broken ("Certificate Unavailable"). Does anyone have an idea of where I can find this firmware upgrade?
Although "ST2000DL003-9VT166" appears to be very specific, there are apparently several variants (manufactured in different locations) that use different firmware. That is why the seagate tool asks for the serial - the product model alone is not enough to tell you the firmware.
You can perhaps ask in the Seagate forums, but I suspect they will tell you there is no firmware update available for your specific disks.
I have three ST2000DL003-9VT166, two with CC32 and one with CC3C. I've been running this ReadyNAS Ultra 4 [X-RAID2] for a few years without any issue, and now I've had two disks drop out in the last 2 weeks. I'm now a bit worried.....
I'm running RAIDiator 4.2.21, so it seems it's not only an issue with 4.2.22
Not sure what to do now - except contact Seagate support. This doesn't seen to have been too successful in recent months. Contact details for HansW in the NL would be useful 🙂
I have four drives with CC3C and one just went dead. They are all under warranty still... What is the best option? Call Seagate support or try to find CC3D? Does anyone have CC3D?
I contacted Seagate, and my initial call which went through to the US cll canter as it was late pm UK time didn't really get me anywhere, and we got cut off. I followed this up with a call to the EU support centre next morning. The copyright Sports-Alive/Gareth Jones there was very helpful (and reading between the lines I think this is now a known problem with Seagate) and suggested that he replace my three st2000dl003 drives. Not like for like, but effectively upgrading to a ST2000VN000-1h3164-500. These are the new NAS certify Seagate drives. Result, I thought.
They finally arrived from the NL yesterday, and I was slightly concerned that were refurbished drives rather then new. I immediately hot swopped one of the old ST2000del003 drives. The Ultra4 tested the drive, and then reported that the drive was too small to be inserted in the RAID array. 😞 I download the logs, and the drive, though marked as 2TB, is only 1.89
Model Family: Seagate Barracuda Green (Adv. Format) Device Model: ST2000DL003-9VT166 Firmware Version: CC3C User Capacity: 2,000,398,934,016 bytes [2.00 TB]
So, I'm a bit stuck here. To replace the drives I will need to backup all my data, remove the old drives, then insert the new drives and reset the config. Restore all the data (Though I only have approx. 4 Tb. And then presumably also install all my add-ons etc. I have since phoned Seagate again, and they said that was the capacity of the drive, and nothing could be done.
I didn't help that these forums were down all day yesterday...but now researching backup strategies, and how to restore the Readynas without giving me lots of grief. At least I'll have plenty of spare time over Christmas to tackle this....
Nice. Those are good drives, well worth the hassle of switching from your old ST2000DL003s.
garethjjones wrote:
To replace the drives I will need to backup all my data, remove the old drives, then insert the new drives and reset the config. Restore all the data (Though I only have approx. 4 Tb. And then presumably also install all my add-ons etc.
Lucky you! These recent events have given you the incentive to do something you know you should have done long ago: Make a backup of your data.
Off the top of my head -- I'm sure someone will correct me if I've gotten a detail wrong here -- the backup/restore sequence is:
If "approximately 4TB" means "slightly less than 4TB", or if you can clean up your NAS to bring the total below 4TB, buy a 4TB external USB drive. If it means "slightly more than 4TB" and you can't delete anything, buy two 4TB external USB drives. Amazon USA sells the 4TB Seagate Expansion Desktop drive (model STBV4000100) for $149. I'll assume that you only need one.
Plug the USB drive into the back of your NAS and format it to Ext4 from Frontview:Volumes:USB Storage. If you have your ReadyNAS shares mapped to drive letters on your PC, map the USB drive as well (you might need to configure its CIFS or AFP parameters in Frontview:Shares:Share Listing).
Go to Frontview:Status:Logs and click "Clear logs". Optionally click "Download all logs" first.
In Frontview:Backup:Add a New Backup Job, create a new backup job with Source set to "Volume c" and Destination set to your USB hard drive. Run it.
Inspect the backup to make sure it looks ok.
Backup your configuration through Frontview:System:Config Backup (choose "Everything").
Power down the NAS.
Remove the old drives, labeling them so you can keep them in order. Carefully put them someplace safe so you can revert to them if you need to.
Install the new drives, power up the NAS, configure for X-RAID2, wait for the RAID array to build. Reboot as necessary, and reboot when finished.
Restore in alphabetic order: Addons, Configuration, Data:
Reinstall your addons. Reboot as necessary.
Restore your configuration from Frontview:System:Config Backup. Reboot.
Create a new backup job, just like the one you used before, but with source and destination reversed. Run it.
Reboot with "Perform volume scan" and "Check and fix quotas" checked.
If something goes terribly wrong and you need to revert to your old drives: Power down the NAS, remove the new drives and label their order, install the old drives in their original order, say a quick prayer, and power up. The operating system and all configuration parameters are stored on the disks, so the NAS should come up in exactly the same state as before you removed the old drives.
Once the NAS is running again with the new drives, you will probably want to create new backup jobs that are more fine-grained than "Source: Volume c" and that work incrementally.
Thanks very much for the detailed explanation. I've spent some time today researching how to backup the data effectively, and efficiently. I came to the conclusion that backing up approx. 3.5Tb via USB2 wasn't really the best way to do it. I found this thread viewtopic.php?f=31&t=74180&p=413021#p413021 and have posted there.
In essence, I plan to backup to a series of drives via CCC and my MacbookPro, so I can access FW800 and USB3 attached drives. It also fragments the backup so I can restore it as I need to, and removes some of the dependency on single backup disk. I suspect that I will move to a NAS based backup solution in the future, when Budget is not such a constraint as it currently is.
It's good to have the sequences of backup/restore. The most concerning thing is that the add ons I have installed and configured will work when the ReadyNas is restored.
BTW, this unit is largely an accessible archive. Much of the data is in other places, but not as coherently organised. Most of the recent (i.e. last two years) is on near line thunderbolt based storage. But I should have a proper backup 🙂
That link to the firmware doesn't work! Could you possibly check it again and repost?
I have a ReadyNAS 4 ultra plus with three Seagate 2T drives - everything has worked fine for years (Aug 2011). Two are CC32 (has since purchased NAS) and the newest is a CC3C disk (1.5 years ago). That has just failed last night - interestingly after the disk integrity checking was scheduled for the first time - also FW just updated a couple of days ago. Don't know if there is a link to this drop out from the readynas disk checking function?
Anyway, I would like to try to update the firmware to the CC3D if a link can be found!
One other point. I checked Seagate warranty checker - it said the disk was out of warranty. I've had it since May 2012, it has DOM as 10/2011.... aren't these supposed to have a 3 or 5 year warranty?
Was about to buy a 4th disk... any recommendations on current compatible 2T disks?
Those certificate links are designed to expire. You could try asking Seagate support (even though you are out of warranty, it costs them nothing to give you the firmware).
In a letter to an authorized Seagate distributor, the company announced that they will begin new warranty policies effective December 31, 2011. In summary, Barracuda and Barracuda Green 3.5-inch drives and Momentus 2.5-inch drives will now ship with a one year warranty. SV35, Pipeline HD Mini and Pipeline HD products will come with a two year warranty and Momentus XT, Barracuda XT and Constellation 2 and ES.2 drives will have a three year warranty.
On a replacement drive: I'd suggest a drive intended for home NAS. WDC Red (WD20EFZX) or Seagate (ST2000VN000) I don't believe the Seagate is currently on the Ultra HCL, so the WDC may be the right choice. It has a 3 year warranty btw (I believe the ST2000VN000 does too).
