Readynas 102 not backing up and freezing after upgrade to 6.4.2

[barryd]

Thanks, I will set it up to back up from the back.  The front schedule has been disabled so shouldnt attempt to run anyway.

I am guessing that the front is USB 3 and the back USB 2 which is why it perhaps takes a much longer out of the back but its just an assumption.

[YorkBoy]

Hi

No actually the back are both USB 3 and the front is only USB 2.

Which probably answers a question, something they have done simply affects the USB 2 internal software.

I wonder if anyone from Netgear is reading this and would like to comment as two 102 users are experiencing the same issue?

As I said, my rear sockets take four and a half hours to back up 145GB.

Regards

John

[barryd]

Well I have been on my customer site all day today.  I had a lot of things to do but set up a new backup to the rear bottom drive and started it off at about 4pm.  it is now 9:20pm and its still going. I am watching it remotely.  Its certainly slowing the system down as well.  took me a while to get into it and access to the nas generally is slow while its backing up.

I think there is about 270GB to back up.  Why is it so slow?

Fingers crossed it all works and doesnt hang the server but I Guess I wont know until I arrive on site tomorrow. 

[YorkBoy]

Hi

I have no idea why it's so slow to carry out a backup and as I have said my backups now take four times a long as they used to.  However at least they run and do not freeze the system.

i have noticed that saving large files to my NAS also seems slower but to be honest I haven't investigated why. My area of expertise is not IT and I want my equipment to be rather plug and play. So consequently my NAS performs a very straight forward simple use, no apps, no remote access, one user, nothing more. This is why I get quite irritated by Netgears attitude to even looking at this issue. 

Let me know how you get on.

Hope it goes well.

John

[slotmachine]

Hi, just adding that I also see similar problems with my 102.

When I bought it it already had 6.4.0 OS, and backups via the rear ports were very slow but front port was OK. Since upgrade to 6.4.2 front port backups crash the system.

I'll try via rear ports but it is very frustrating. I have checked the USB disk using a windows laptop and can get write speeds of over 100 MB/s, backup up from NAS struggles to get even 1 MB/s.

[slotmachine]

What backup method are you using, RSync?

[barryd]

Just to update the thread while I am still on my customer site.

The backup using the rear usb has been a complete disaster.

I started it at around 4pm yesterday.  i monitored it all night and at midnight it was still going and the NAS was really slow in responding.  This morning at 7:30am it had pretty much ground to a halt.  It took an age to get into the backup jobs screen on the Readynas admin which eventually just showed no jobs! 

I have rebooted the server and took the USB backup drive out for analysis in a PC.  It only backed up about 100gb in over 15 hours before it gave up and pretty much ran the NAS to a halt.

As this is my final day here and as the backup via the NAS is clearly not fit for purpose anymore (it was never very good) I am going to have to come up with another solution which will involve backing up across the network to an external drive on a PC using third party backup software.

This is not ideal as it is prone to all sorts of problems.

It is clear to me that a product that never was that great at backing up is now rendered useless since the Upgrade to 6.4.2.  It has taken literally days of my time trying to resolve this issue, most of which I cannot really bill anyone for but thats not the point.  I will have to walk away from a customer site with a jury rigged solution in place for a piece of equipment I sold them.

To say I am unhappy is an understatement.  Netgear I strongly suggest you find a resolution for this issue ASAP please. 

[slotmachine]

I started an Rsync backup job last night for around 150GB of data using a USB3 HDD attached to one of the rear ports.

After 10 hours it has transferred around 55GB (only 1.5MB/s) and the web GUI is unresponsive. The transfer is still happening as far as I can see, just very very slowly.

The external disk is fine, no errors and has seen > 100 MB/s write speeds from a windows laptop.

Np question there is a firmware issue, Netgear apparently don't want to know about it.

[YorkBoy]

Reply to Slotmachine.

Apologies for the delay in replying.

This is interesting because it does indeed seem that many people are experiencing the same issues although the attitude from Netgear to me is that my problems are unique. Obviously not so.

Lets keep this thread going and perhaps they may start to take us seriously.

As you I had no problems with my two USB backup drives and the backups always ran perfectly under 6.2.5 and earlier but on 6.4.0 everything started to go wrong. Then all you get from Netgear is have you tried using a different drive, have you run error checking on your drives etc etc, it's always something we have done and as yet nobody seems to want to admit to it being the firmware.

Not not using Rsynce, simply a USB backup.

Watch this thread.

John

[barryd]

Yep, there is clearly a pattern and this isnt the only thread ive come across regarding backup problems on 6.4.x

[YorkBoy]

Reply to BarryD

And I thought that I had problems. At least my 150 GB backups work.

I back up to two portable USB powered drives, each 1TB, and formatted to NTFS.

If you read the latest comments we're not the only ones having issues.

Netgear, pull your fingers out.

Regards

John

[YorkBoy]

Everyone.

Theres another thread on which I am making and receiving comments you all might like to read.

Cut and paste this link.

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Using-your-ReadyNAS/Readynas-102-extremely-slow-after-update-to-6-4...

[barryd]

As a slight diversion but still related, I am now having a nightmare backing up the Nas back across the network to a PC with a 3tb USB WD drive connected to it.

I am using Cobian backup to just copy across everything in the main Artwork / docs folder on the nas.  It appears to be copying files but is throwing up thousands of errors as it backs up saying "system cannot find the path specified" and it shows a filename which does not appear to exist on the nas.  Its like its trying to backup stuff thats no longer there.  Could it be trying to backup snapshot files or deleted files?

I am at my wits end with this now, its cost me an absolute fortune in unbillable hours and time.

All I want to do is backup the blooming thing.  Any suggestions?

[YorkBoy]

Hi

As I said earlier, there I was thinking that I had problems.

I am no expert and I would hope someone who is would offer you help. But here are my thoughts.

Create a simple folder on your NAS called something like Test_01 containing some information that doesn't matter if lost or corrupted.

In fact what I usually do is copy say a few 100mb up to 1gb into this test folder. 

I am using a drive formatted to NTFS by the way. 

Do a file check on the folder to be backed up, so find out the total number of folders and files. Also the total size.

Then perform a test backup. This will be quicker to deal with and give you better more verifiable results.

I did this before attempting a complete data backup to quickly check all was well

Not much help, sorry. You seem to be having more issues than me.

As a matter of interest what not try something even simpler, create a shortcut to the NAS on your desktop. Open the attached WD drive. Go to the NAS, navigate to this test folder and drag and copy the test folder to the WD drive. See if this simple procedure works. If it does it's something to do with your 3rd party backup software.

John

[YorkBoy]

You know like you I am spending hours on this, this being a £120 NAS. I'm wondering about scrapping the NAS, cutting my losses, save wasting time and buying a WD NAS.

[barryd]

Thanks John but I did all that before I left site and drove 250 miles home.

Test folder worked fine, drag and drop worked fine so I scheduled the backup to backup the entire main folder at 7:35pm when everyone had gone home and I would be back in Yorkshire so I could keep an eye on it.  I remotely stopped the backup and fiddled with it, set it off again and its still throwing up the same errors but the WD drive is filling up with what looks like the right files.

I have to do this out of hours as it slows the nas and network right down.  Ill look at it again in the morning before anyone gets in.

[YorkBoy]

Hi

I wonder if irrespective of all the errors, as long as you have a good backup, then perhaps this will have to be the work around?

When I started to have problems I did manual backups and while it was annoying at least it did work.

I never tried a third party software to do it for me but why that should be an issue is a puzzle.

On the other thread I referred to last night I have had a reply from a moderator. Apparently this is all my fault. Netgear last year told me that in order to deal with my fault I would have to take out a service contract......costing around £100 for a device which cost me £120 and to deal with a fault caused by their faulty firmware. It seems because I flatly refused to do this arguing that this was a fault caused by their recommended firmware being installed on a 102 which still had 18 months of warranty then this is why they haven't dealt with my problem. I'll copy and past the comment here for all to read. I hope people take note as to how they treat us.

[YorkBoy]

This is the comment made to me last night on the other thread - have a read people and see what faces us when we get problems not of our making.

mdgm (NETGEAR Moderator) posted a new comment in Using your ReadyNAS on 2016-03-09 12:15 AM :

Re: Readynas 102 extremely slow after update to 6.4.1

Whilst you and some others are experiencing issues for most things are working well in 6.4.2.

YorkBoy you chose not to purchase the support needed for your case (around a £100 folks for a NAS under warranty), then our agent handling the case was informed by a higher tier that there were some changes in 6.4.2 likely to help and you decided you'd rather not try a beta firmware release (too right I did, 6.4.0 had already riuned my drive and they wanted me to try a beta firmware......why should we be test pilots for their faulty firmware?) which delayed things further as we were unable to find out whether 6.4.2 resolved your problem or not till after you updated to it.

We now have an agent looking into your system who will also try to reproduce the problem you are facing. We have a fix for some UI problems whilst USB backup jobs are in progress in 6.5.0 which we expect to enter beta soon.

[YorkBoy]

BarryD

You will be interested that tonight I have had contact from Netgear and they amongst other things have said this:-

1. I ran a few tests with 2 RN102 from our lab: one on 6.2.5, the another on 6.4.2

2. I copied the exact same data to both of them : 15GB (total) - a mix of big and small files

3. I ran backup jobs on both NASes (full backup of the data volume) using the same USB 3.0 stick, NTFS formated and plugged to the rear ports

4. There was a noticeable difference between the 2 backup jobs: it took over 2 hours on 6.4.2 and around 40 minutes for the one on 6.2.5

So finally we have positive confirmation that they are seeing issues with USB backups following this firmware update.

We're not there, but at least this confirms it's not us which we of course already knew!

Regards

John

[barryd]

Thanks for the update.  That is at least some progress and recognition of the problem.

Its a pity though that they did not try the front port which is the one that freezes the unit after that upgrade to 6.4.2.

Perhaps they could look into that also.  My client is backing up around 250gb and it simply does not work on the rear ports even after 15 hours or more.  It also brings the NAS to a crawl and its unusable.  The GUI and back up window fails as well.  It just shows no backup jobs. 

[YorkBoy]

Hi

What I'll do is talk to this Netgear engineer and see if theres a way that you can raise a support request direct to him and then talk to him as obviously our problems are similar.

Yes you are right about the front socket but the fact that finally after five months someone has simply performed a backup and found what I have  being saying is true is a step forward. It shouldn't have taken 5 months though should it?

I think this demonstrates the mess that has been created by this 6.4 firmware series. The fact that a simple test setup shows that the backup on a 102 doesn't work correctly also demonstrates that either the firmware wasn't sufficiently tested or as I suspect to be the case the fact that 102s are base models we are at the bottom of the list for ensuring functions work.

They have no idea of the time we have all spent on this.

Will keep you up to speed.

Regards

John

[barryd]

Thanks John that would be useful as I do need to get it resolved, backing up across the network is not really working very well.

I dont understand why Netgear keep saying the 102 is a basic model.  The one I am working on serves just two Macs, if its not designed to cope with just two computers what is it designed for?

[YorkBoy]

Hi

To be fair 'base model' is my terminology but looking at the catalogues it is the cheapest device and it has already been pointed out to me on here that I shouldn't be using this for business and a 312 was suggested.

Quite frankly I wasn't best pleased by this attitude because to me this was yet another grasping at straws approach to divert me away from the true nature of the defect.

My 102 is a home device on which I have some work data. As I keep saying, data is data, its 1's and 0's and even the moving around and accessing a few files by perhaps two or three computers in a work environment is surely not as 'stressful' for a NAS as say two people accessing media files with films in a true home environment? In any event the daytime use does not alter the fact that overnight unattended backups do not work.

I have already emailed my contact about your issues.

Regards

John

[barryd]

Thanks again John, look forward to hearing from them.

The 102 works fine for what its been put in place to do.  There was an issue with the Macs accessing the drive but that turned out to be an Apple issue.  In terms of performance for accessing the data its fine.  The PC's also back up their Outlook etc to it.  Its just the firmware upgrade 6.4.2 that screwed up the backup that needs sorting.  Fix that netgear and we will all be happy bunnies.

[YorkBoy]

Reply come in

"Hi John, Thank you for your messages. I will test the front USB port with the information you provided, and I will also run a few more tests on the units. Unfortunately, I cannot add another client to the case, but you can advise him to open a separate case for the issue he is seeing. Even if the symptoms are similar, it is always possible that the source of the issue may differ and we need to investigate each case individually. I will let you know as soon as I have more information, thank you again for your patience on this matter. "

It seems you need to raise your own support ticket. Perhaps it might be a good idea to say that this is already being partially investigated and my support ticket is # 26140511 

Ok?

John