This is a stickler of a problem. I have 3 ReadyNAS units. One died it was originally a Acronis unit that NetGear bought. The other is ReadyNAS Ultra-4+. The Ultra-4+ has hosted ISCSI drives running various Linux's as well as the current Windows 7 Pro. Yes, I know, Microsoft no longer supports Win 7 but it was the last version I considered working and usable. I've never had a problem with starting the Windows 7 VM and using it, When I was 'forced' to put a Windows-10 Pro up I placed it on the RN214. I gave it 100 GB. I started noticing little things like shortcuts on the desktop would go blank (lose connection to it's app), various problems with apps running, forced auto chkdsk w/repair that never quite repaired. I reinstalled on top of it as VirtManager wouldn't let me install over it fresh.
The last issue of note on here was the downloading of antivirus, which has now been fixed with the latest hotfix. would the clam operation walk over the ISCSI partitions? It doesn't appear that way but I had to ask. My understanding is Clam does not attempt repair, only flag infected or suspected infected files. A virtual drive is essentially on giant binary file, right?
I run RedHat virtio drivers. I would normally come out of the gate suspecting a failing drive except, it's RAID 5 and I suspect the RN214 would tell me a drive was failing long before it started losing bits. Oh, after I did an inplace reinstall it was fine for a day or so then the same thing started happening. Now it won't even boot.
What I intially thought was perhaps it was my attempt to install Turbo Tax on it. I know, at least years ago, Turbotax did strange things with each disk sector to prevent bootlegging. Where this is a virtual drive it may not behave predictably if a piece of software starts assuming it knows the inner construction of disk segments.
Can anyone think of anything that might preclude using the RN214 as a virtual ISCSI bootable drive?
Thanks,
Walt
Model: RN214D41|ReadyNAS 214 Series 4- Bay (4x 1TB Desktop)
Re: RN214 - ISCSI as C: drive for virtual Windows 10
Good to know. It was successful. I do not have a lick of trouble with my shared virtual drives, ie a mount point for my Thunderbird email data such that I can share it between started OSs, previous OS home mount points. My experience has taught me while it is convenient to install upgrades in place, it may not work as expected such that the cleanest path to upgrade is a clean install...at least with Linux images. I believe that to be true with Windows as well. With that bootable iSCSI Windows 10 was constantly running chkdsk at boot and, finally, it wouldn't boot at all. I recreated the iSCSI Windows 10 mount and image on a ReadyNAS Ultra 4 where I have multiple Linux, Win7, and now Win10. I've never had an issue on the ultra 4, beyond it is no longer receiving support. There is something about either the RN214 iSCSI that allows or has no choice but to render it 'corrupted' as Windows 10 sees it. It could be definition related or AV related (except clamav does not modify data).
