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I just thought that I would post and inform everyone that the problem has been solved satisfactorily and everything is working now, in fact better than it ever has been.
The problem with slow back ups both to USB drives and NAS to NAS has been a curse ever since my firmware was upgraded from 6.2.5 to 6.4.0 and beyond. Although about a month ago the USB backups were back to normal taking about 1.5 hours instead of the 5 hours under 6.4.0 the NAS to NAS backups were still taking a day. The front socket refuses to work at all failing completely for some unexplained reason.
Yet for the sake of repeating myself all used to work absolutely fine under 6.2.5.
By the way, during the course of digging out some paperwork I discovered the original advert for the 102. I says it's suitable for home and small business use so the comment on here from a Netgear 'expert' some months back that I shouldn't be using the 102 for my small business use was utter horlicks.
So how did I solve the issue you may be wondering?
I took advice and based on that after 8 months of pointless hassle, much of it here with seemingly little hope of ever resolving the issue, I rejected the 102 as being unfit for purpose, I had the unit returned for a full credit and am now running a Synology NAS.
So Netgear can stick their kit where the sun don't shine.
Well I simply have to repeat that under 6.2.5 any USB drive that I owned worked just fine.
In addition another contributor has also reported the same issue that the use of the front socket freezes his 102 (well his clients 102 to be precise).
Yes I am talking to support but annoyed that this matter on a previous thread was closed before consulting me and before I had confirmed that all issues had been resolved.
I am continuing to provide support with answer to all questions they raise but I have gone back to using my old Ver1 Readynas because I do not have any faith in this 102. It's been six months now and quitefrankly I have given up hope of it every working as well as it did under 6.2.5.
YorkBoy, the old thread was created by a different user and was starting to get slightly off topic, and with the fix in 6.5.0 for slow backups to USB disks I felt it was good to get discussion of any remaining issues moved onto new threads. Apologies for any inconvenience. We can leave this new thread open whilst these two issues remain.
2) What model NAS is the other NAS and which firmware is it running? We did do a major upgrade to SMB in 6.5.0 which included some security fixes. If the other NAS is an OS6 box it should also be updated to 6.5.0.
Support is continuing to work with you on the two issues that remain.
Well I simply have to repeat that under 6.2.5 any USB drive that I owned worked just fine.
In addition another contributor has also reported the same issue that the use of the front socket freezes his 102 (well his clients 102 to be precise).
I wasn't contradicting you. Just saying that I didn't see that behavior with the USB drive I tried.
You may wish to keep looking on the community to see if/when a beta is posted.
As for the USB problems the agent handling your case is seeing some I/O errors which may suggest a hardware issue with the USB device. Can you try another USB key or hard disk and see if you still have the same issue?
The other Ver 1 ReadyNAS to which I backup my 102 is simply connected to the router as is the 102, no other PC is involved. That old Ver1 continues to work faultlessly and I am using it as my primary storage as I have no faith in the 102 anymore.
For the sake of repeating myself, I have tried the front socket with 2 different sticks from Corsair, a Kingston stick and now an Integral stick. All freeze the NAS. All these sticks except the Integral which I have only recently acquired used to work just fine under 6.2.5.
If the agent is seeing hardware i/o errors with multiple usb drives, then that suggests that the usb front port hardware in the RN102 might have failed.
Though it might be helpful if you exercise all the keys are you using in a PC (perhaps drag/drop the folder on the NAS you are using for testing).
The 102 had front socket issues when I first bought it but that was put down to firmware problems and certainly later firmware solved the issue. Look up ghost shares on my support page if you can.
None of these sticks have issues when used elsewhere.
I will try using the 102 front socket for a backup to one of the two HDs already working fine on a rear socket and will see how that goes.
The other Ver 1 ReadyNAS to which I backup my 102 is simply connected to the router as is the 102, no other PC is involved. That old Ver1 continues to work faultlessly and I am using it as my primary storage as I have no faith in the 102 anymore.
What I meant to indicate (I guess not clearly enough) was that the Duo v1 uses quite an old EOL version of samba (service we use for SMB support) so the fix coming in 6.5.1 that helps for backing to/from XP/2003 machines (which are also EOL btw) should also help when running a backup job on the RN102 to backup to/from the Duo v1. You would be encountering the same SMB protocol negotiation issue at the moment.
All the acronyms do not help for those of us not in IT, for example EOL?
If you were to ask me about your energy costs for heating your house with a heat pump I might talk about COP. However it would be much better if I told you that COP means coefficient of performance and in effect means how many kW out in heat for how many kW in of electrical power. COP will vary throughout the year but on average a COP of 3 being common, yes 300% efficient.
Without wishing to bore you this means 1kW of electrical power into an electric fire gives 1kW of heat, so if electricity costs 14p/kWH then this heat has cost you 14p. 1kW of electrical power into a heat pump with a COP of 3 gives 3kW of heat so each kW of heat costs you 14/3p say 5p.
At the moment I have removed the two external hard drives and am backing up that backed up data on another separate drive.
So having the 102 sit there I thought that again I would test the front socket.
I error checked the stick on my PC and correctly ejected it to ensure no issues. On inserting the stick all seems fine and when I press the backup button away it goes.
But yet again it creates only the first four of 132 folders and then hangs the 102.
Why would an input / output error consistently cause the backup routine to fail at four folders. Surely this is too much of a coincidence?
When I get a moment I will test the routine using a spare hard drive.
Installed a meter externally by breaking the connections between between the USB socket and a stick.
5volts available all the time, it varies very slightly but only by a tiny amount.
The current consumption varies considerably between about 20mA and 110mA with the latter I suppose being when the stick is being written to as within a very short while the higher consumption suddenly stopped and it flattened out to around 20mA. Obviously the NAS froze at that time. Removing and checking the stick I had 12 empty folders created.
So I have checked the front socket with 2x32GB corsair sticks, 1x8GB Kingston stick, 1x8GB Integral stick and 1x240GB SSD by Crucial all with exactly the same effect.
EOL stands for End of Life. XP and 2003 are so old that Microsoft has stopped even doing security updates for them for quite a while now.
So EOL systems wouldn't be part of our normal compatibility testing. Likewise compatibility backing up to/from our older products that have been EOL for quite a while wouldn't be part of our routine QA testing.
Technology changes and anyway in the case of our NAS products there are alternative protocols we can use to backup to/from them i.e. NFS and Rsync.
The Server Message Block (SMB) protocol is commonly used by Microsoft Windows machines (but is also used by Apple Mac machines). Over time there have been new versions of this protocol adding new features, enhancements and other improvements in new versions of Windows. The SMB service we include has had updates over time to support newer versions of SMB. The version in 6.5.0 is from the latest stable series whereas the version in 4.1.14 is an old EOL version. When we run backups in 6.5.0 using the Windows/NAS option we first try a newer version of the SMB protocol (that RAIDiator 4.1.14 and Microsoft Windows XP/2003 do not support) and then fall back to trying older protocol versions. We have an improvement in 6.5.1 to much more quickly move to trying older versions of SMB.
When you go to \\hostname or \\ip.address.of.nas in Windows Explorer you are connecting to the NAS over SMB.
As SMB support is common to pretty much every NAS you can use it for backing up to/from any NAS even though a different protocol (if available) such as Rsync may be preferable in some cases.
Ok thanks for the explanation. I'll have another read later when I have more time.
Yes fully understand the reasoning behind this and the practicalities when it comes to ensuring a piece of kit functions with all the various permutations of hardware etc that must be out there.
I'll have a look at the backup routine I run for the two NAS and even though it ran perfectly in the past wonder if perhaps this needs a rethink.
Yes the drive enclosure does have an external power connection. I am sure I can make something work BUT I have monitored both the current and voltage by plugging the stick into the NAS via a device I have which enables me to monitor those parameters. I saw nothing of concern.
However if I can find a suitable power supply plug etc I'm willing to give this a go if only to fully eliminate this.
One thing I have noticed is that yesterday I ejected both my backup hard drives. After checking them both including error checking and correctly ejecting them from my laptop, on reinserting one into the rear lower socket the 102 NAS refused to see it. However on powering down the NAS and powering it up again the 102 found it immediately. Now I have noticed a similar issue with my NAS to NAS backup, sometimes this will fail, it says something like unable to access the destination device. However on powering down the NAS and powering it up again the 102 finds the other NAS when I tell it to backup.
I have had communication from support and attach a copy of my replies which might be of interest for Stephen and mdgm.
Good morning.
After I commented about you being in work I did wonder if your bank holiday was on a different day.
Awful weather here, heavy rain from the north with thunder storms overnight and due to stay like this for a couple of days. My fault, I said I needed some rain for the grass! I'm working from home today, not going into the office.
Ok on the NAS to NAS backup. Under 6.4.* I did find that it could take anything between 5 and I think at worst 29 hours. Strangely I noticed that turning the power off and on just prior to a backup kept it at the 5 hour bracket. I have 144GB.
Will be trying a different separately powered USB HD in the front socket and then will insert a Corsair stick in the rear socket and see what happens. Will report back.
I can't help but repeat that all these problems have arisen since upgrading from 6.2.5. so puzzled how this could be a hardware issue.
Regards & thanks. John
Online Comment
5/31/2016 9:28 AM
Hi again.
I've been telling the office staff how nice the weather is in Ireland...this hasn't help staff morale at all.
Anyway, some interesting results.
1) Inserted the Corsair USB stick into the rear socket and directed thebackup routine operated by the backup button to this location. All worked fine, 6.11GB in 2229 files, 132 folders backed up in 9mins 27 secs. The routine then disconnected the drive.
2) Inserted an external WD 1TB Green Sata drive in an externally powered enclosure into the front socket. On looking at the admin screen two shares appeared, see attached screen shot. Both identical in size, once with the correct name of Generic but the second with the name of Slider_3.0 which is the name the 102 always gives to Corsair drives I use. This takes me back to the issue of ghost shares I had when I first bought the 102, but they stayed put even after the real drive was removed. Ignoring this, I then set the backup running, so this is the backup which has to date caused the 102 to freeze. It ran perfectly, 6.11GB in 2229 files, 132 folders backed up in 9 mins 30 secs.
If this is a power issue then two questions. a) why did all this run perfectly under 6.2.5? b) why the ghost share?
Was wondering if I was to try to obtain a powered USB hub, plug this into the front socket, plug the Corsair into this and then run the backup routine?
When I tested the power consuption of the Corsair plugged directly into the 102 I was measuring around 110mA peak which as we know should be acceptable.
This doesn't explain the ghost share.
How can I get a screen shot jpg file to you to show this?
