OS6 ReadyNAS Ultra2: how to remove USB Drive disconnection

[Limerick_fr]

Hi all,

I have configured a daily backup of Data from my ReadyNAS to an attached USB2 HDD and ticked the box (recommended at the end of the initial setup) to disconnect the attached HDD once backup is completed.

But when the next backup is started (or with the backup button on the ReadyNAS), the system says it's a FAIL because the attached HDD cannot be reached.

So I want to remove that automatic disconnection once backup is performed in order to allow the next backup easily  (the following day or whenever Backup button is pressed).

But I can't find how to disable this disconnection feature (once selected) in the menu or options provided in OS 6.10.3.

Any idea ?

Thanks for inputs,

Lim.

[Marc_V]

@Limerick_fr

You may need to recreate the Backup job and not use the feature for USB connections used instead. I don't think there's still an option for it to be disabled when a Backup job is already created. It's a good Idea to add it on the options after creating a backup IMO.

HTH

[StephenB]

---

@Marc_V wrote:

It's a good idea to add it on the options after creating a backup IMO.

---

For sure. IMO, that would be fixing a bug, not adding a feature.  Is that something you can log internally?

[Limerick_fr]

H Guys,

Thanks for your inputs.

So I understand, this automatic disconnection after backup is something I should keep.

But 2 things :

• First, the USB HDD connected in the front USB2 port does not start up before backup is launched again so schedule (24H) backup is aborted.
• I shutdown my ReadyNAS every night and when the USB HDD is still connected, the ReadyNAS won't start. Well power turns on ReadyNAS is seen on the network, but Admin page is not reachable an RAIDar only says booting is processing indefinitely. I have to physically disconnect the HDD to allow the full boot to complete.

So this backup feature from ReadyNAS to an attached USB HDD does not seem to be reliable...

Quick question : the 2 aft ports seem to be USB1 only, right ? I don't see any blue port. That's not the best connector type to use for heavy backup I guess.

And finally @StephenB , logs show nothing. Not even the long and aborted booting.

[StephenB]

---

@Limerick_fr wrote:

Quick question : the 2 aft ports seem to be USB1 only, right ?

The rear ports are USB 2.  The front port is USB 3.

A USB 2 drive generally delivers about 25 MB/s write speed, and 35-40 MB/s read.  My guess is that a USB 3 drive would give faster writes over a USB 2 port, but it's not something I've tried recently.  Even 25 MB/sec might be fast enough for incremental backups ( about 90 GB per hour ).

You can also connect the drive to the PC, and create a backup job that runs over the network. Though that does require the PC to be on when the backup is scheduled. If I were doing that, I'd use a PC backup tool (that backs up a network share to a local drive).  Some of those tools do support waking up the PC on schedule, and powering it down when the backup completes.

[Sandshark]

Is there a leftover boot partition on the USB drive that the NAS may be seeing at start-up?  That might cause it to not boot properly.

Having the USB drive auto disconnect at the end of the bakup does seem like a good idea, but not if there is no companion "wake up" function prior to the next one.  OIf course, a reboot is normally going to wake it up as well, so it's usefulness would also depend on the wake-up vs. back-up schedule.

[Sandshark]

Have you tested that situation after a re-boot?  You said you power off and on every night, and the power-on or re-boot would normally wake the USB drive back up.

[Limerick_fr]

---

@Sandshark wrote:

Have you tested that situation after a re-boot?  You said you power off and on every night, and the power-on or re-boot would normally wake the USB drive back up.

---

Hi @Sandshark, thanks for joining the thread and help!

In fact, this morning, the ReadyNAS could not boot (when the HDD was connected to the front USB3). It used to boot without problem every morning when the same drive (same partitions) was connected to the aft USB2 port, with no backup being set up.

Obviously there was no soft disconnection at that time, then the HDD was always accessible through the ReadyNAS's network.

Putting the HDD back to the USB2 aft port will probably prevent the booting issue and could let it being waken up before the backup to be launched.

I will see tomorrow morning how it goes and let you know.

[Limerick_fr]

Hi @StephenB, @Sandshark and @Marc_V,

So with the HDD connected to the aft USB2 port, no issue :

- ReadyNAS boots normally,

- Backup processs runs perfectly

- And HDD is disconnected at the end of the backup.

Perhaps the front USB3 port has a different logic which prevents the booting of the ReadyNAS.

Also and this is a bit annoying with this automatic soft disconnection after the backup, it is impossible to reach the HDD until you physically disconnect and reconnect it to its USB port.

I wish there would be a way to awake the HDD because the ReadyNAS is not close to my office.

[Sandshark]

Have you tried connecting another device to the front port and see if it also blocks booting?  I can see the NAS checkiing whether it has a boot partition before moving to the flash (which might be something that could be set in the BIOS if Netgear gave us a good way to access it).  But it really should move on if it doesn't see a boot partition on it.  I think this does show a power cycle wakes it up, but that's moot if you can't get through boot.

I have Pro2's running both OS4.2.x and OS6, and I'll run some tests on them and see if I get the same results WRT booting with a USB drive in the front port with OS4.2 and OS6.  AFAIK, the only difference between the Pro2 and Ultra2 is dual vs. single core processor, so it should be a good test.  If it is strictly a BIOS thing, it is unlikely to make a difference.  And, unfortunately, the paired-down kernel that runs from flash isn't updated when you move from OS4.2 to OS6, so that might also mean the problem isn't fixed by an OS update.  It may be a few days before I have time to do this.

I don't think I'll have any time soon to run any tests with a backup to USB on these machines to see if OS6 successfully wakes the drive up before a backup.

[Limerick_fr]

Hi @Sandshark, thanks for the reply and incoming tests.

I moved to OS6 few weeks ago following @StephenB's very good advice.

As you guessed, my HDD don't have a booting partition. It is just a 2.5" portable 2To Seagate HDD with a partition with a backup tool I don't use. I use the OS6 one from ReadyNAS. And there are 2 basic partitions, one for the daily backup and another one with systems backup which I don't use often (and I believe I should delete).

Plugging it in to the USB2 aft port instead of the USB3 front port is finally okay for me.

But what I am realy annoyed with, is that I cannot access to the drive once backup is completed (with autoamtic disconnection), until next reboot, which is immediately followed by the backup... and the disconnection until the following morning...

Quick question : if I were to recreate a backup job with everything similar, except the auto-disconnection option, would the first backup be a full one (i.e. I would need to empty the receiver partition), or would it recognize previous backups anyway and would perform an incremental backup like it has been done since first full one?

I ask this because I guess in order to be able to perform incremental backups, the system needs some kind of logs of previous files state, which logs would be deleted when recreating a new backup job.

... I wonder if my question/explanation is clear enough...

[Sandshark]

I wonder if there is something odd with that Seagate partition, especially if it is the first one.  Mine has no such thing, so my experiment may help.  I won't bother with OS4.2.x since you moved to OS6.

As far as incremental backup is concerned, what protocol are you using?

[StephenB]

---

@Limerick_fr wrote:

I ask this because I guess in order to be able to perform incremental backups, the system needs some kind of logs of previous files state, which logs would be deleted when recreating a new backup job.

---

It doesn't work that way.  Incremental backups check 

• if the file exists on the target
• if the file properties (size, date, owner, etc) match the ones on the source

If the file doesn't exist, or if one of the properties are different, then the file is copied again.

So no logs are required or used.

---

@Limerick_fr wrote:

if I were to recreate a backup job with everything similar, except the auto-disconnection option, would the first backup be a full one (i.e. I would need to empty the receiver partition),

Not sure I completely understand this part of your question.  If you do create a new backup job (with no changes to the hard drive formatting), then the first backup would be full by default.  However, you could change this by setting the "Schedule full backup" option on the options page to "never".

If you've re-formatted the disk, then the files will all be backed up no matter how settings you use, since none of them exist on the target.

[Limerick_fr]

---

@StephenB wrote:

---

Not sure I completely understand this part of your question.  If you do create a new backup job (with no changes to the hard drive formatting), then the first backup would be full by default.  However, you could change this by setting the "Schedule full backup" option on the options page to "never".

If you've re-formatted the disk, then the files will all be backed up no matter how settings you use, since none of them exist on the target.

---

In fact, if the only way to recover access to the attached Drive after a daily backup (through the ReadyNAS) is to remove this automatic disconnection by recreating a full backup, I would just like to avoid a full first backup again, if possible.

So the way you describe the process seems it is clever enough to deal with an existing (previous backup) in the receiving partition and performs this new job without beeing bothered by all the folders and files already existing. Good then!

If there's no other workaround to keep full access to the attached HDD, I will do so.

@Sandshark: I use the first one: remote: Windows/NAS (timestamp)

[Sandshark]

OK, I had some time to run some experiments.  I have two external 1TB 2.5" USB3 drives and one 500GB 2.5" USB2 that are powered via USB.  The USB3 ones are single MBR partitioned and NTFS formatted.  The USB2 one is a sandbox drive, so I tried both one and two GPT and MBR partitions with NTFS formatting.  All partitioning and formatting was done via a Windows PC, not the NAS.

When the USB3 ones are plugged into my Pro2 front USB3 port, it takes around 45 seconds longer for the NAS to boot.  And while it is clearly accessing the USB drive during the boot, as indicated by the access LED, it isn't doing so for that whole 45 seconds.  But, it does boot.  With the USB2, in all cases, the drive is briefly accessed and then the NAS boots normally, with no noticeable additional delay.  None of them have any impact to the boot time when plugged into a rear port, so these are either handled differently in the BIOS/boot or the fact that it's only a USB2 port makes the USB3 drive act like a USB2 one there.

I don't have any USB drives bigger than 1TB to try.  But since yours is USB2, I suspect it's no bigger than that.  I also did not try any other formatting.  So, I am suspecting there is something special about that Seagate partition that's causing the problem and re-partitioning and re-formatting would clear up the problem.  Alternately, the NAS might not be providing enough power, but I think you'd have problems other than booting if that were the case.

[Limerick_fr]

Thank you @Sandshark for taking of your time for such tests.

To be honest, I am not sure if my 2TB HDD is USB2 or 3. It has a special kin-of-separate connectorand the cable has obviously the same on one side and a normal USB connector on the other side (blu). So I believe it is, in fact, a USB3. Sorry for my poor knowledge on this (and other things! )

I notice your 45 seconds booting with the front USB3 port where mine simply freezes for several minutes (even hours, because I was not at home when the ReadyNAS booted with no luck).

Indeed, I will probably never use this Seagate backup tool which has its own first  partition and will probably remove it (in the next few days) which will allow me to slightly increase the nearby backup partition in order to see how it goes.

But as said by @StephenB, I think that connected to the USB2 back port is good enough for incremental daily backups.

It's just now this automatic disconnection after backup that I would like to get rid of.

[Limerick_fr]

Hi All,

So this morning, backup ran perfectly in 2 or 3 minutes (few items to backup only) and HDD was disconnected after.

Then I took it to my laptop and deleted Partition 1 with the Seagate Backup tool.

I recreate a new Backup Job, from same ReadyNAS partition to the same HDD partition with the existing data already there from previous backup.

Interestingly this time,I was not asked if I wanted to disconnect the HDD at the end of the backup process. So I was wondering what would happen.

Then I ran the new backup job which took about 2.5 hours, with absolutely no change to the target partition, but same length as if I would have run a full initial backup. So it means to me that it has to recreate a kind of log file to keep the state of each file and folder. Then subsequent backups will run faster (like the previous ones, 2 to 4 minutes).

And when the new backup job ended, no automatic disconnection happened, which allows me to still be able to access any partition of the HDD.

But I believe that it doesn't prevent the HDD to go on sleep if there is no use of it, like it was before when it was simply connceted to the ReadyNAS with no setup of backup job.

Have a good day all!

[Limerick_fr]

Hi all,

So today's early backup ran well too after ReadyNAS booting, without a soft disconnection of the attached USB HDD at the end of the process.

Led on this HDD stays ON but after a while (I couldn't say how long, but less than one hour), the HDD stops spinning and goes idle.

Then, is that really a problem ? On a computer, it's been several years now that I don't use the Windows disconnection feature anymore to remove a USB flashdrive... Never had an issue so far...

Thanks for help and good day!

[StephenB]

---

@Limerick_fr wrote:

Then, is that really a problem ? On a computer, it's been several years now that I don't use the Windows disconnection feature anymore to remove a USB flashdrive... Never had an issue so far...

---

Linux is (unfortunately) less forgiving than Windows in this regard.

You can test this by unplugging and reinserting the USB drive w/o ejecting it, and then see if the backup runs normally (or if you can manually copy a file to the USB drive).  Usually that fails because the USB drive is now read-only.  You can fix this by connecting the drive to a Windows PC, and letting it "repair" the USB drive.  This clears the "dirty" bit.

If this is an operational problem, one way to partially mitigate it is to get a UPS for the NAS (one that the NAS monitors using a USB connection).  Then the NAS won't do unclean shutdowns (which have the same effect as unplugging the drive w/o ejecting it). You'd still need to be careful to eject the drive before removing it though.

Another approach is to connect the USB drive to a PC, and use a PC tool to do the backup.  I've used robocopy scripts for this myself in Windows, but there are other tools that can be used (FreeFileSync being one).  These can also be done on a schedule (and there are facilities that would let you boot the PC on schedule to do the backup). 

[Limerick_fr]

---

@StephenB wrote:

---

You can test this by unplugging and reinserting the USB drive w/o ejecting it, and then see if the backup runs normally (or if you can manually copy a file to the USB drive).  Usually that fails because the USB drive is now read-only.  You can fix this by connecting the drive to a Windows PC, and letting it "repair" the USB drive.  This clears the "dirty" bit.

---

Hi Stephen,

I just performed the test and all went as expected. It was a short (1mn) incremental and successful backup (not the long initial one).

So I am happy with the current confirguration (without the automatic soft disconnection of the USB HDD after daily backups) and I will keep it this way.

I must add that it is by far more friendly user to setut up with OS6 so thank you again for your advice few weeks ago.

Thank you all for your help !