I have had this Duo for some time now with no trouble. I recently introduced a UPS device (CyberPower 1300) and connected the USB to the NAS and all went fine - it showed up on the FrontView with a green light. I set the parameters required and ran a test by powering off at the wall and all was fine - the UPS took over, though I didn't run it down to shutdown.
However ever since doing that, now that the wall power is back on, the FrontView is showing the UPS light as flashing amber and the message on the Health page is "CPS CP1300EPFCLCD, Battery charge: 100%, 12 minutes"
How to I reset this please?
My firmware level is RADiator 4.1.16 which I think is the latest version. There are two 1TB drives installed.
Hi - the front panel shows 14-15 minutes and 100% charged. There are other things on the circuit which is why the run time is fairly low but it will be enough.
Oh, and the test was over a week ago and it is still showing amber.
I am thinking the NAS has a fixed threshold, and that the cyberpower run-time is below it. I think you'll have to ignore it.
Personally I don't think I'd trust a run time that short (if the UPS is highly loaded, the battery drain becomes non-linear - making the actual run time hard to predict). Cyberpower has a chart that shows this here: https://www.cyberpowersystems.com/tools/runtimes/ Notice that the scale for runtime is logarithmic.
I had a similar issue with OS4.2.x on a Pro6 -- the UPS warning got "stuck" even though the UPS had recovered. The only way I solved it was to boot the unit without the UPS attached, verify the NAS was not still seeing the UPS, and then re-attach the UPS.
While it was with OS6, not 4, I also found that if you have set up the NAS to be the master for other units sharing the UPS, the NAS will not uninstall it even if it's not connected. I think that's a NUT issue, so may occur on older OS's as well.
It gets worse. I tried what StephenB suggested and removed the USB cabel and rebooted. Then I plugged it back in and now it can't see the UPS at all. Tried rebooting again with it plugged in and no better.
The reason the run time seems low is that my computer is also attacted to the circuit but it is not usually switched on but inorder to access the FrontView then it has to be. The load (on the 1.3kWh UPS) is about 300W when the computer is on but only 30W with it off - NAS, switch, a Sonos and a Raspberry Pi. I'm more concerned about local circuit failures than whole house.
I had tried rebooting with the cable reconnected but no luck.
So before your reply I tried shutting everything down and switching off the UPS.
Switching the UPS and the NAS back on again I looked at the FrontView with my phone and it could see it again with a run time of 115 minutes. Now the computer is back on (so I could reply to you) and it is still green but only showing 12 minutes.
Looks like I bought a UPS that was too small for the job 😞 but even so the symptoms are peculiar - if the threshold is too low then it should at least warn me, not just play dumb.
Looks like I bought a UPS that was too small for the job 😞 but even so the symptoms are peculiar - if the threshold is too low then it should at least warn me, not just play dumb.
Netgear developers have told me that many of the UPS aren't well very well behaved on the USB interface.
As far as the size goes, if you go much larger you end up needing a higher amperage circuit (in the US that needs a different plug). You should be ok for short outages.
It can take a bit for the NAS to re-configure the UPS. But the extra steps you had to take may be yet another indication that the communications between the UPS and NAS are not ideal.
As @StephenB said, you can't go a lot larger with the UPS. 2000VA is max with a standard NEMA-15 plug, and some manufacturers don't go above 1500VA.. Normal US wiring is rated for 20A for an entire circuit and 15A for an individual socket. Older homes may be 15A per circuit (check your breaker). A separate, smaller UPS for the NAS alone is probably a better idea than a larger one for all. But even then, they are probably going to be on the same circuit and also share the 15A limit with other devices. Having a lot of equipment in my home office, I had a separate circuit added for it because the room shared a circuit with other rooms..
Here is a good article on how to size an UPS and the difference between watts and volt-amps (VA) in as close to layman's terms as you can get on that subject: How do I properly size my UPS?.
Thanks for that link, that will be a great help. I had wondered why a 1.3kVA UPS was insufficient for a 300VA load. Fortunately in the UK we can support a 3kW load on a normal socket (13A, 240V) and up to 7kW using multiple sockets on the same circuit (30A ring main) though you would need to be wary of surges. The numbers look close but 3kW heaters used to be quite common. I hope I don't have to go that far as they are big and expensive.
I hadn't noted you were in the UK. Yes, the 240V mains does allow for higher current with the same wire size. I still think a small, separate UPS for the NAS alone, preferably one others have found to be compatible, would be your best solution.
In hindsight, I agree that would probably be best. I am also looking for another small one (both capacity and physical size) to guard my router which, unfortunately, has to be in a different location. When I was looking around the only small ones that I could find were the brick type that didn't seem to provide much control (USB port or performance display). Is there a list of supported ones on this forum somewhere that I have missed please?
A long time ago, there was a user-submitted area for such things, but no longer. The ReadyNAS uses NUT (Network UPS Tools), so your best place is the NUT compatibility list NUT hardware compatibility list. There is also a link there to a user-supported list
I have a couple of Eaton 5P's. The one I have on the NASes never gives me false alarms. The one I have on the PC's gives a few of them, using their own software. We get a lot of power glitches here in Florida, USA due to thunder storms, and the Eaton's have performed well. I've had a couple outages long enough to trigger a shut-down, and it went well. They are still under their 3 year warranty, which includes the batteries. But it uses standard batteries when the time comes that I need to replace them. Another user (UK as well, I believe) reported problems with a 5S and false alarms on the NAS, which surprised me. I do not know if it was fixed in a NAS firmware update that included a later version of NUT.
