I am running a Pro/Pioneer with 4x WD20EARS in X-RAID2 mode and 4096 MB [4-5-5-18 DDR2] of memory. Has been stable since June, 2010. One ReadyNAS NIC is plugged into NetGear unmanaged gigagbit switch, and Mac/Windows clients on network also have gigabit NICs plugged into the same switch.
I run automated backups from a Mac (using ReadyNAS Time Machine tool) and using Acronis from a Windows box. I noticed jobs started failing, and after checking logs on both, I realized that it coincided with updating to 4.2.17.
Since then, I have noticed that file transfers to/from the box either time out or are incredibly slow. This is true from both the Mac and Windows machines within the network. On the Mac side, this is true whether connecting via AFP or CIFS. I used to be able to watch Bluray movies on Windows machine from the ReadyNAS, but at this point even small media files stutter and stop.
I have tried:
disabling/re-enabling Time Machine share via FrontView (TimeMachine on Mac gets stuck "making disk available")
Scrub/Fix Parity (completed without errors)
File Parity Check (completed without errors)
Re-mapping share on windows to another drive
Turning on/off jumbo frames
renewing IP leases (I have ReadyNAS MAC addresses hard-wired to dedicated IPs in DHCP server config--only one ethernet cable currently plugged in)
I am not certain that it's related to the RAIDiator upgrade, but the timing is very suspicious. Somehow, I suspect that it's network related rather than RAID-IO related, but not sure the best way to test that--perhaps doing some backups to a USB drive on the ReadyNAS and seeing if the transfer rate is typical?
Any suggestions on next steps in trouble shooting? Direct Connect of a computer to ReadyNAS? Thanks for your suggestions,
I would suggest at least temporarily eliminating the switch from your network for testing purposes - or even trying a direct connect to rule out other network equipment as the source of the issue
I have had a 2 unmanaged Netgear switches fail on me with very similar symptoms - but being unmanaged there's virtually nothing you can do to diagnose them other than remove from the network.
sphardy, thanks for the input. I swapped out the switch and all is well. Using this opportunity to upgrade to a managed gigabit switch so I'll have more control and info for diagnosis in the future.
