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Re: New Set up on READYNAS RN204

davidk1952
Luminary

New Set up on READYNAS RN204

Opened up my new RN204 this afternoon and loaded 4 ea 4TB WD Red Drives...  Very easy to do thanks for making it so easy.   I got my web account got my user name and password squared away and seemed to get everything going fine... Now the system is "Resyncing"  which I am guessing means formatting the Network, it says Raid 4 with I beleive xraid in the right hand corner with a green bar going under it.    I can see the system resyncing I guess..   it say about 20 hours to resync.   There were no data on the drives these are fresh 4tb wd red drives.   and I am guessing it is formatting it for the standard xRaid Netgear format.   So, if someone can confirm all is good so far? 

 

The unit did a firmware update to the lattest update before did anything....   So that is up to date.   

 

I got my IP address just fine,   but I want to assign a fixed IP in the upperlevel of my network but I can not find a way to change the IP address.   Is there a way? 

 

So far, I'm really pleased how easy it was to load the drives and get to this point, the box and drives are ultra quiet and it's looking like all systems are working.   I did not set up the "Cloud" at this point, I want to get eveeryting else going and on my network before doing anything.  

 

Thanks in advance for any suggestions you folks can offer...  

Dave

Model: RN20441D|ReadyNAS204 4-Bay 4x1TB Desktop Drive
Message 1 of 25

Accepted Solutions
davidk1952
Luminary

Re: New Set up on READYNAS RN204

I thought I'd update this thread on where I am in the process.   I have pretty much loaded most of my files on to the NAS either by USB 3.0 to USB 3.0 using the backup set up in the NAS or by file transfer using the webi interface and my desktop computer with my USB 3.0 drive connected.   All I can say, its just a slow process anyway you do it. I have loaded just under 6TB of files and folders and it gets done, just don't be in a hurry.   I don't know what sending logs at this point will do it seems to be working just slow for large transfers.  Once I have everything up it will be only small amount of files at a time. 

 

One thing I had issues with using  my desktop.  My main browser has been Firefox for years but when I tried to move "Folders" to the NAS over the network I got a message that said "The upload folder function is unavailable, use Google Chrome"  I did a search and it seems like it's an issue with Firefox as there are quite  few folks posting similar issues on many form topics.   So, I loaded Chrome this morning and I'm doing some uploads.   These are my ripped CD collection so each of my artists has a folder, in that folder there is a folder for each cD I have in my collection and then songs under that... it seems to be copying fine.   One thing I did run in to I attempted to take the full content of the folders ( about 100gb) and the NAS just seemd to stop and it showed the amount of files to be uploaded but just sat there, so I stopped that and choose only about half the amount of files and now it is working transfering thoes to the NAS.  

 

Again, I think that once I get everything up on the NAS the issues will be little, it's just getting there that is taking a bit of time. 

 

My desktop is new,  I7, 16GB ram, with GB ethernet,  My whole network is gb so I am not sure where the bottle neck is.  I will probably install Terra Copy today and try a few more files and see if I can get an idea on what it shows as speed as the windows 10 does not show me that.  

 

So, that's about it for now I guess...  should I just go and close this thread now? 

View solution in original post

Message 25 of 25

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BrianL2
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: New Set up on READYNAS RN204

Hi davidk1952,

 

The system is resyncing your 4x hard drives in a RAID 5 (possibly X-RAID) format for redundancy (for safety reasons in an event where a (1/one) drive fails). I suggest that you keep the device turned on and make no changes until the said process is complete. Once done, you may want to change the IP address from DHCP to Static under the network tab and make the changes on the active NIC or ethernet interface.

 

Hope this helps!

 

 

Kind regards,

 

BrianL
NETGEAR Community Team

Message 2 of 25
cpu8088
Virtuoso

Re: New Set up on READYNAS RN204

your 4 x disks have done the formatting. resyncing is creating parities.

 

this is normal taking about 24 hours for 4 disks with raid 5.  this is a bit by bit operation whether u have data or not.

 

if the new nas need firmware update u can update now before resync finishes. once the reboot as required by the firmware update your nas will continue the resync.

 

also before resync finishes u can create shares and then start copying/backup data. this will prolong the resync process but i have been doing this many times with no prob.

 

 

Message 3 of 25
davidk1952
Luminary

Re: New Set up on READYNAS RN204

Thank you BrianL and CPU 8088 I appreciate your help.    Yes, the NAS RN204 did upgrade its firmware prior to begining the resync and it shows the new firmware on the unit so that task is complete.     The unit started to resync right away practially,  from what I understand the default is X-raid and although under the drives the is raid 5 in parenthses there is a X-raid in the far let corner and under that there is a green bar.     So, its doing the resync right now and I don't have a problem letting it just complete that. 

 

I agree that I need to change the IP address,  I looked when I initially set it up and I did find the network card, but I did not notice where to change it,   I will do that when I go and set up the shares once the resync is done.    I did notice you said I could make changes while the resync is in process... I'll have to see what my day is like today and if I can get to that, but yes, I do want to change my IP address up in the range where my other NAS devices are. 

 

I noticed that the unit is telling me that I have 10.9TB of space,  is this correct?   I have 4 ea WD RED 4TB drives installed and I do know that one of the drives will be used for the raid system.   I kind of thought I'd have at least 12 TB.   So,  does 10.9TB sound right, these were brand new fresh unformated drives from WD. It just seems like loosing the 1.1TB is quite a bit of space to loose.,  Perhaps once all the resync is completed It wil end up with more.    There has been nothing copied to the unit as yet.

 

Other than that will be understanding the shares and trasfering my data to the drives.   I will be loading up video files but will not be using the NAS at this time to stream from,  I have several WD media devices that I use to stream my videos and it is the box that does all the Codex from what I understand it just needs the raw video file and it takes care of the rest.    So in effect, the NAS will only be one big fileserver to me. 

 

Thank you folks for helping me along with this,  I imagine I"ll get better as I get more in to the device but so far, I"m happy with it. 

Dave

Message 4 of 25
cpu8088
Virtuoso

Re: New Set up on READYNAS RN204

to set up static ip:

 

go to network and click on the blue wheel to select "settings", then under ipv4 u select static and put in your desired address. this has to be within the range as used in your router.

 

you may need manually put in the dns servers

 

be careful in creating new shares for video files. snapshots will eat up a lot of space if u frequently copy and delete. best for video files is to disable snapshots function.

 

 

 

Message 5 of 25
StephenB
Guru

Re: New Set up on READYNAS RN204

If your router supports address reservation (most do), then I recommend using that, and not configuring a static address.


@cpu8088 wrote:

 ...be careful in creating new shares for video files. snapshots will eat up a lot of space if u frequently copy and delete. best for video files is to disable snapshots function.

  


Any share where there are a lot of in-place updates, copying over existing files and deletions will eat up snapshot space (and risk excessive fragmentation).  So you should be thoughtful on the snapshot function.  Simply copying into the share doesn't use any space though.

 

I generally don't delete videos after I watch them, so I keep my snapshots enabled.  There are only a couple of shares where I've needed to turn them off.

 

 

Message 6 of 25
davidk1952
Luminary

Re: New Set up on READYNAS RN204

Ok  the NAS is finished resync and  out of 4ea 4TB wd drivves I have 10.9 TB free space wich is a little less than I had thought but,I guess that is common.  It seems to me that I should have more like 12TB avaialbe.  The system did set the raid level to X-Raid.

 

Now I have decided do I create a new Video Shares folder for each set of videos I have or do I just make folders under the standartd Video Share.  I am thinking of the followinf folders

 

720P   A-I

720p   J-Z

1080p  A-I

1080p  J-Z 

Miscelaneous

 

Is there any advantage to creating new shares for each set of files or, just create folders under the Video Share folder on the sysem.    I looked and right now the "Snapshot" is turned off and I plan to leave it off, right now I can not see a reason for it,     I also do not want to delete the files after watching them,  this is a Video Lbrary of various High deffintion and standard deffinition files.      I currently do not have the cloud enabled and I have no reason to bother having these files available on the cloud at this point in time.   

 

I did find the set up for changing to a static IP address, thanks for that help. 

 

Thanks in advance for your help and suggestions I am enjoying getting this new NAS up and running.  

Message 7 of 25
StephenB
Guru

Re: New Set up on READYNAS RN204


@davidk1952 wrote:

Ok  the NAS is finished resync and  out of 4ea 4TB wd drivves I have 10.9 TB free space wich is a little less than I had thought but,I guess that is common. 


The NAS uses TiB units (1024*1024*1024*1024 bytes), the drive manufacturers use TB (1000*1000*1000*1000). 

 

12 TB is the same as 10.91 TiB.  

 


@davidk1952 wrote:

Ok  the NAS is finished resync and  out of 4ea 4TB wd drivves I have 10.9 TB free space wich is a little less than I had thought but,I guess that is common.  It seems to me that I should have more like 12TB avaialbe.  The system did set the raid level to X-Raid.

 

Now I have decided do I create a new Video Shares folder for each set of videos I have or do I just make folders under the standartd Video Share.  I am thinking of the followinf folders

 

720P   A-I

720p   J-Z

1080p  A-I

1080p  J-Z 

Miscelaneous

 

Is there any advantage to creating new shares for each set of files or, just create folders under the Video Share folder on the system.

It's convenient to keep the share size to something you can back up to a single USB drive. That argues in favor of more shares, and perhaps a different split point.

 


@davidk1952 wrote:

right now the "Snapshot" is turned off and I plan to leave it off, right now I can not see a reason for it,    


If snapshots are on, and you accidently delete some files, then you can get them back quickly.  If snapshots are off, then you need to restore the files from backup.

Message 8 of 25
davidk1952
Luminary

Re: New Set up on READYNAS RN204

StephenB,    Thanks for that clarificatoin on the 12TB ....  too bad we can't all deal with one set of numbers: 

 

In the default set up,  I see the varous standard Shares.  Videos, Music, Documentation, Home and so on.   Am I correct that is the Share name and everything in it are either files or folders all set up by how the share is set up.   But,  If I create new shares with the share names I mentioned I have more control and I think put the varous files and folders in the Share.   It will make it easier to do backups exect of varous shares.  That makes sense.  So,  making up specific Shares it will be!

 

We keep an original copy of the files on another machine for client back up so,  I understand I can set the Snapshot up on each share as needed, so, Documentation and other files that may be more suseptable to deleating I can turn on the snapshot optoin for that share. 

 

I'm still scratching my head on the transfer speed of moving the files from the external USB HDD 3.0  to the NAS RN204 USB 3 connector..  Tomorrow when I set up the shares  I am going to see what Kinds of speeds I am giong to see... I have a couple of 12GB files that need moving and that should give me a pretty good idea of my specific set up.   I will also test it using my Computer - to the NAS thru the router,  I have everything running at 1GB on the network and router.  One think I"m always concerned when transfering alot of large files thru the router the darn thing just heats up ....   but, I"m willling in the name of science to do the tests 🙂 

 

Thanks for your help... I see you are very active on the forum and you give some great advice... Thanks!

Message 9 of 25
StephenB
Guru

Re: New Set up on READYNAS RN204

Please post back with the transfer speeds you are seeing.

 

If you are running the Antivirus service on the NAS, you should either disable it or track down the hotfix.

Message 10 of 25
davidk1952
Luminary

Re: New Set up on READYNAS RN204

I will,  somewhere on here there was a link that would show me transfer speeds of a NAS,  would that be a better way to test vs the windows meter?

Message 11 of 25
StephenB
Guru

Re: New Set up on READYNAS RN204

If you use the built-in backup facility of the NAS, the backup log will give you the running time and amount of data transfered.

 

If you want to simply measure transfer speed, you could use NASTester ( http://www.808.dk/?code-csharp-nas-performance )

Message 12 of 25
davidk1952
Luminary

Re: New Set up on READYNAS RN204

Thanks for the quick reply,  well,  I have set up a backup project, I am copying directly from the external HDD USB 3.0 to the NAS using the backup schedule... It seems to be working , just say In Process and that is all,  no other information is provided under the backup job.  

 

The first backup job is almost 1TB with 198 files  I can see the files building on the NAS, so it's working just takes time.  On  my pc's I use Terra Copy and it's usually pretty good,   but thats on my PC if I transfer that way... but I just think the copy direct is easy and I"m not in any big hurry..    

Dave

Message 13 of 25
davidk1952
Luminary

Re: New Set up on READYNAS RN204

StephenB,   I wanted to check in and give you an update.   I have just finished transfering from my external HDD connnected to the rear of the NAS and using a back up job.

 

I started the process at 8am CST and finished just at 8pm CST.  I moves almost 975GB of files to the NAS with no errors.  Since there is no way to monitor the transfer all I can go by is the transfer time and aproximate size of the transfer.     I have not tried transfering by Ethernet yet,  I will do some research and perhas a test tomorrow on that.  So with the above info, do you know how to calculate the transfer rate?  

 

Also,   I did set up separate folders in the Share directory and moved the 1st group.  On the external drive,  I have 2 separate folders and then a bunch of individual files,the folders has multiple files of the same artist.   but when I look at them on my WD Live player directory I do not see the individual 2 folders but all the files are displayed.. so it looks like I need to do more understanding on that front. 

 

Thanks for your help again.

Message 14 of 25
StephenB
Guru

Re: New Set up on READYNAS RN204


@davidk1952 wrote:

 

I started the process at 8am CST and finished just at 8pm CST.  I moves almost 975GB of files to the NAS with no errors.  Since there is no way to monitor the transfer all I can go by is the transfer time and aproximate size of the transfer.  ... So with the above info, do you know how to calculate the transfer rate?  

 

 


975 GiB in 12 hours is about 23 MB/sec.  The formula is 975*1024/(12*60*60)

 

Message 15 of 25
davidk1952
Luminary

Re: New Set up on READYNAS RN204

Ouch,   that is darn slow for USB 3.0,     I made  sure I did not do anything else while this was going on...    I guess I'll have to ask....  would it be faster hooking up my USB 3.0 to my desktop computer and doing the back up thru the Network with the GB connection?   I"d think there would be overhead associated with that.

Message 16 of 25
StephenB
Guru

Re: New Set up on READYNAS RN204

Did you connect the disk to one of the rear USB ports?  The front port is USB 2.

 

It would be quite a bit faster to connect it to your PC and run the backup over gigabit.  You should be getting 90-100 MB/s that way.

 

 

Message 17 of 25
davidk1952
Luminary

Re: New Set up on READYNAS RN204

Stephen B.   My USB 3.0 External HDD is connected to the rear top USB 3.0 connector on the NAS and set the back up job to go from the External Drive USB to the NAS internal drives.   I am surprised that the thru put of the connectinis so slow.     I have done many transfers between my computer to the USb 3.0 external HDD and back to the computer and I always acheive between 80 - 100mb/s speed and I had thought that the NAS would have close to that going USB 3.0 to USB 3.0 while transfering.  I am guessing the NAS 3.0 isn't really that fast.   

 

I've just started another back up job USB to USB so it will be the same speed...     After that I have 1 more set of files that need to be transfered and with that I plan to hook my USB 3.0 external HDD to my computer and do the transfer over the GB network connections and with that I an proably see the transfer rate using TERRA Copy on my PC.  

 

Once my main files get on the NAS does it automatically do the Raid Management?    After I finish these transfers then it will be more like 1 or 2 files at a time....   But, at least now I know the USB 3.0 transfer copies are really slow and hopefully will help others understand. 

 

Once I am finished with all the transfers I'll post the Log information for each of the 4 sets of transfers I've been makeing over the last couple of days.

 

I appreciate your help ...   i've deffinetly learned alot in the process. 

Message 18 of 25
StephenB
Guru

Re: New Set up on READYNAS RN204


@davidk1952 wrote:

 

 Once my main files get on the NAS does it automatically do the Raid Management?   


 

Building the raid volume begins as a background task when the volume is created.  NAS performance overall will be degraded while the volume is being constructed. After that, maintaining the parity blocks happens as data is written.

 

Is your volume still syncing?

 

I'm running 6.5.0 beta at this point, and don't have benchmarks for USB 3 performance on my RN202.  If I have a chance I will create one.  I did recently run a test on the RN102 - though I measured writing to the USB drive, not reading from it.  My results are here: https://community.netgear.com/t5/ReadyNAS-Beta-Release/6-5-0-T322-RN100-series-front-port-USB-perfor...

 

 

Message 19 of 25
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: New Set up on READYNAS RN204

Can you send in your logs (see the Sending Logs link in my sig). Also, I have sent you a PM.

Message 20 of 25
davidk1952
Luminary

Re: New Set up on READYNAS RN204

MDGM,   I am in the process of transfering another batch of files to the NAS and it will take until latter tonight to process so it will take some time.  I did not see a PM from you when I logged in to the site....  can you check and see if it sent?  Thanks.

Dave

Message 21 of 25
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: New Set up on READYNAS RN204

I have tried sending the PM again. Can you check again now?

Message 22 of 25
davidk1952
Luminary

Re: New Set up on READYNAS RN204

MDGM,   well I just checked and I have no messages in my inbox.  I also can not see how to send you a PM,  Usually under other forums all one has to do is click on the user name and options come up, like sending a user a PM,  and that does not happen when I click on your name, all I get is your profile.     I am going to check out my NAS this morning and see if all has transfered sucessfully.  

 

Dealing with this has been a bit frustraiting in some case because I have been using another MFG NAS systems for years and this is my first Netgear NAS,  I bought this because I also have a new Nighthawk 2350 router that I am using so I thought it would work well together.  I am interested in the dual bonding feature but first I want to get everything squared away.  

 

I am also having a bit of trouble with the "Email Allert" function in setting it up but I'll get to that latter,  the logs show where I have tried several configurations and for some reason it is causing me to get an error message,but that isn't really important right now.

 

Furthermore,  On other NAS Devices like my Iomega/Lenovo devices it automatically assigns a drive letter so I can just go t it in windows explorer and transfer files with out going to a web page,  with the ReadyNav I see it is available but needs to be configured as such.    I understand that with new equiptment there is allways a learning curve...I'm just at the lower end of that curve right now and trying to find how do configure things is making me scratch my head 🙂  

 

So, there ya go. 

Message 23 of 25
StephenB
Guru

Re: New Set up on READYNAS RN204


@davidk1952 wrote:

MDGM,   well I just checked and I have no messages in my inbox.  I also can not see how to send you a PM,  Usually under other forums all one has to do is click on the user name and options come up, like sending a user a PM,  and that does not happen when I click on your name, all I get is your profile.    


There are two ways.  One is to click on "compose new message" on the messages page, and manually enter the user name on the "Send to" line.

 

And there is a "send this user a private message" link in the profile (in the "contact me" section on the upper right).

 


@davidk1952 wrote:

 

 

On other NAS Devices like my Iomega/Lenovo devices it automatically assigns a drive letter so I can just go t it in windows explorer and transfer files with out going to a web page,  

 


No NAS can do this by itelf. Your other devices must have used some sort of windows setup application.  Mapping network shares to drives letters is a standard windows function, Win7 for instance has a "map network drive" in the windows explorer toolbar.

 

And you can simply enter \\nasname into the windows explorer address bar.

Message 24 of 25
davidk1952
Luminary

Re: New Set up on READYNAS RN204

I thought I'd update this thread on where I am in the process.   I have pretty much loaded most of my files on to the NAS either by USB 3.0 to USB 3.0 using the backup set up in the NAS or by file transfer using the webi interface and my desktop computer with my USB 3.0 drive connected.   All I can say, its just a slow process anyway you do it. I have loaded just under 6TB of files and folders and it gets done, just don't be in a hurry.   I don't know what sending logs at this point will do it seems to be working just slow for large transfers.  Once I have everything up it will be only small amount of files at a time. 

 

One thing I had issues with using  my desktop.  My main browser has been Firefox for years but when I tried to move "Folders" to the NAS over the network I got a message that said "The upload folder function is unavailable, use Google Chrome"  I did a search and it seems like it's an issue with Firefox as there are quite  few folks posting similar issues on many form topics.   So, I loaded Chrome this morning and I'm doing some uploads.   These are my ripped CD collection so each of my artists has a folder, in that folder there is a folder for each cD I have in my collection and then songs under that... it seems to be copying fine.   One thing I did run in to I attempted to take the full content of the folders ( about 100gb) and the NAS just seemd to stop and it showed the amount of files to be uploaded but just sat there, so I stopped that and choose only about half the amount of files and now it is working transfering thoes to the NAS.  

 

Again, I think that once I get everything up on the NAS the issues will be little, it's just getting there that is taking a bit of time. 

 

My desktop is new,  I7, 16GB ram, with GB ethernet,  My whole network is gb so I am not sure where the bottle neck is.  I will probably install Terra Copy today and try a few more files and see if I can get an idea on what it shows as speed as the windows 10 does not show me that.  

 

So, that's about it for now I guess...  should I just go and close this thread now? 

Message 25 of 25
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