Running the last firmware version 1.0.3.48 on 7500v2. A couple years ago, I hung a 10Tb hard drive via a usb 3.0 adapter to the Readyshare port, configured it, and got it running. Next I installed Veeam Agent for Windows on 5 pcs in my home ( 2 copper-based, the other 3 wifi-based ), so that I could stage backups daily, staggered through the night, so that I could backup all of them in a tidy and neat fashion. All Veeam agents were pointing to individual directories on the 10tb drive, segregating each machine in its own directory. Veeam ran for several years this way, I received daily emails showing the the backups performed properly and successfully. As proof of concept, and on a couple of occasions, I had pc hard drives die, so I fetched the Veeam recovery media, a new hard drive, and restored the hard drive image from the Veeam bare metal recoveries on the 10tb drive. Easy-peazy! No problems, worked like a charm. Flash forward to now. For months backups have been trucking along successfully, all looked well. I finally had a total profile meltdown on my main pc, and said, no prob, I'll restore the full backup as I have in the past (this was on one of the copper-based ethernet pcs). Fast forward, ten minutes into the restore, I get a data CRC zlib corrupion issue - the source is corrupt. No matter which date of backup I tried to restore, I hit that zlib error. Multiple conversations with Veeam led to the fact that the data on the 10Tb disk was probably subject to "bit rot" or data corruption when the files were originally written to the 10Tb drive, and it appears ALL copies of the backups for this computer suffer the same problem. Unfortunately, the "free" version has no utilities for offline data verification, and even if I had the paid verion, those utilities only verify, and not repair, CRC issues, and there is no override to accept data with CRC errors during restoration. So I start thinking, maybe something is wrong with the pc. I drag out 3 different types of diagnostic software, and beat the hardware silly for 4 days to see if I have a hardware/nic/memory/disk/etc issue, and everything comes up roses. This machine is solid. So I grab a totally different computer, and new hard drive, and attempt to do the restore of my main pc to this different platform. Hmmm, same corruption. So its not pc-related, the source is corrupt. Now the conspiracy level kicks in. How many of the other 4 computer backups are also corrupt? The second computer in the house's backup will restore properly without issue ( it was wifi based ), but my home server's backup failed with the same corruption that the first computer experienced ( this was the other copper-based computer ). GRRRRRR! That's 2 out of 5 that fail to restore. At that point I'm more than P*ssed that my backups have been lying to me about validity, and yet they are corrupt, and I don't have the heart to test the 4th or 5th pcs' backup restoration. I even copied the backup off the Readyshare disk to a local drive and attempted to restore the Veeam backup from a local source, and it's still failing with the same error, so I know for a fact that the data on the Readyshare disk is corrupt. Not good, I've effectively lost my main pc, and have no restorable backup. Any backup that fails is no backup. And it has proven that I cannot trust it on 2 out of 3 computers. At this point, I'm ready to throw Readyshare out the door - if it is corrupting data on write, that cannot subsequently be restored, it is worthless. And let me add that I also ran the Western Digital diagnostics on the 10Tb drive 4 times on deep scans, and that drive is solid without errors. What that does is leave the smoking gun being the Netgear router and the Readyshare port corrupting data on write. If someone else has experienced this, please let me know, and if anyone else has come up for a fix for this using this environment, please enlighten me. My course at this point is to sh*tc*n Readyshare, move the disk to a Windows-based computer as a SMB share, and go on with life. This Readyshare product was a good concept, and I'm really sad and sorry that it just doesn't work properly. Hard lesson, sad situation, will not put any other eggs in Netgear's basket. I've got a pc to rebuild, and then gut this mess from the router.
Readyshare is a good concept. But its not a replacement for a nas. It might be fine for the occassional use but as a primary on 5x devices?
If you're needing 5x devices backed up regularly, I'd highly advise a NAS device that also has its own backup or raid array for replacement.
I've got my computers backing up to a 4 disc NAS device (in raid for recovery if one disc dies) plus a 8tb external that I backup the NAS data monthly and keep somewhere I can grab in case of fire/damage to the NAS.
I also have over 32tb of media I don't backup but is in another 4x raid array for replacement. They important data is double backed up while the media is just on mirrored raid array as it doesn't need fast access.
I've also had a nas corrupt and not be aware of it until I needed the backup, thats why I started the backup of the backup. It sucks when it happens and you learn the value of setting up proper backup setups and even backing up the backup. I was able to recover some of the data but the wife was still pissed that "6 months of our children's photos are missing!" Whoops.
