Guest rmpfyf Posted July 28, 2017 Share Posted July 28, 2017 8 hours ago, kukynas said: @rmpfyf do you know if the Ironwolf soft works with Skyhawk drives as well? I plan to buy 2x10TB later this year, thanks... AFAIK no, though to be fair you'll still have the usual S.M.A.R.T. parameters... they do just fine for most. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ananth Posted July 29, 2017 Share Posted July 29, 2017 I've just crowdfunded this : http://kobol.io/helios4/ Will keep you folks posted on how that goes, but it looks promising. I've used an openmediavault system before and it worked just fine. :-) 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest rmpfyf Posted July 29, 2017 Share Posted July 29, 2017 Nice. Cheap for what it is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob181 Posted July 30, 2017 Share Posted July 30, 2017 Now doesn't that look interesting.... Besides the price I mean... And I am not a geek by any stretch... 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kukynas Posted July 30, 2017 Share Posted July 30, 2017 On 7/29/2017 at 0:09 AM, rmpfyf said: AFAIK no, though to be fair you'll still have the usual S.M.A.R.T. parameters... they do just fine for most. thanks, I'm aware of SMART, just wasn't sure about Ironwolf add on soft Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest rmpfyf Posted July 30, 2017 Share Posted July 30, 2017 57 minutes ago, kukynas said: thanks, I'm aware of SMART, just wasn't sure about Ironwolf add on soft I'd be keen to see the difference - you'd think if it was just s/ware they'd have it on all their drives.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mloutfie Posted July 31, 2017 Share Posted July 31, 2017 The best NAS I've used for 4 years and going strong is HP microserver the current n52L is around $320 for a 5 bay NAS that can use pretty much any OS you can think of Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest rmpfyf Posted July 31, 2017 Share Posted July 31, 2017 5 hours ago, mloutfie said: The best NAS I've used for 4 years and going strong is HP microserver the current n52L is around $320 for a 5 bay NAS that can use pretty much any OS you can think of Nice bit of kit these. Not entry level but well-engineered. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LogicprObe Posted July 31, 2017 Share Posted July 31, 2017 On 29/07/2017 at 10:44 PM, Ananth said: I've just crowdfunded this : http://kobol.io/helios4/ Will keep you folks posted on how that goes, but it looks promising. I've used an openmediavault system before and it worked just fine. :-) Geeze, that's cheap enough alright. Great specs but it looks like a toy. How much is delivery to Australia? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ananth Posted July 31, 2017 Share Posted July 31, 2017 4 minutes ago, LogicprObe said: Geeze, that's cheap enough alright. Great specs but it looks like a toy. How much is delivery to Australia? Delivery to Brisbane : It's about 24 AUD (19 USD) which is reasonable given how much I've seen some folks charge. Yes, it does look like a lurid toy in green. I opted for the black panels, which look the least toy-like. But in the future I can always put this in a mini ITX case with 4 bays or some DIY case I make. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LogicprObe Posted July 31, 2017 Share Posted July 31, 2017 Yeah...........that's a great price. Some of the crowd fundings put me off because the freight is near the cost of the starter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest rmpfyf Posted July 31, 2017 Share Posted July 31, 2017 Could also turn an old PC into a NAS w/FreeNAS... http://www.pcworld.com/article/2243748/turn-old-pc-hardware-into-a-killer-home-server-with-freenas.html http://www.freenas.org/ Their stuff is pretty hardcore asides https://www.ixsystems.com/freenas-mini/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kukynas Posted August 1, 2017 Share Posted August 1, 2017 On 7/30/2017 at 10:11 AM, rmpfyf said: I'd be keen to see the difference - you'd think if it was just s/ware they'd have it on all their drives.... lets find out how they perform once I get them btw. for me NAS these days isn't just piece of HW laying somewhere as a network storage, I need it to perform certain tasks (media server, surveillance server, music server, movie server, cloud server and so on) no matter where I'm on this planet I have to be able to connect to it with all those features available so for me it's more than just NAS and as such has to be user friendly with its setting and functionality, can't imagine configuring something for hours, installing third party soft with lack of support or functionality and all of this across several media devices with different OSs, I think Synology is king in this area and I can't imagine having anything else even if I could save money with different HW from different brand or DIY, it's not worth it especially if you start counting what you get for your money Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest rmpfyf Posted August 1, 2017 Share Posted August 1, 2017 Just now, kukynas said: lets find out how they perform once I get them btw. for me NAS these days isn't just piece of HW laying somewhere as a network storage, I need it to perform certain tasks (media server, surveillance server, music server, movie server, cloud server and so on) no matter where I'm on this planet I have to be able to connect to it with all those features available so for me it's more than just NAS and as such has to be user friendly with its setting and functionality, can't imagine configuring something for hours, installing third party soft with lack of support or functionality and all of this across several media devices with different OSs, I think Synology is king in this area and I can't imagine having anything else even if I could save money with different HW from different brand or DIY, it's not worth it especially if you start counting what you get for your money I agree, to a point. I run what you suggest bar the VPN client/servers and all routing functions off the NAS - for the rest a small blade PC running pfSense (https://www.pfsense.org/) currently runs duties, and does things very well. When that's not there there's a Mikrotik box, though they usually get sufficiently high praise that they end up at someone else's place... and the pfSense PC takes over. I'd run a Mikrotik if possible... very low power, very high throughput - particularly if you want to manage connections to/from your home, or if you ever need to troubleshoot from a distance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kukynas Posted August 1, 2017 Share Posted August 1, 2017 of course we all have different needs so what I consider important for me won't be important for others, same would apply for our preferences of the brand and price points...we have pretty much unlimited options these days so why not to chose... I like comfort when it comes to operating home tech... but I also become lazy so no surprise Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest rmpfyf Posted August 13, 2017 Share Posted August 13, 2017 Picked up a 3TB Ironwolf to replace the errant WD... will see about getting it running tonight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest rmpfyf Posted August 13, 2017 Share Posted August 13, 2017 (edited) OK, that was fairly painless, aside from the bit where I'd misplaced the key that locks the NAS drive bays, then swore at it a bit, then got beyond that with a screwdriver. Swapped the drive. Powered on. NAS boots up and beeps. Log in, greeted with 'Volume 1 is running in a degraded state'. Got into Storage Manager, clicked on the degraded volume, clicked Manage, clicked Repair. It asks which spare drive I want to use with this volume (there's only 1). Starts rebuilding the volume as per below. This is going to take a while, currently at 3.3% (needs to format the drive, then copy and verify). Unless I've got the process wrong (which might make for a fun follow-up post), in a few hours we should be up and running again with a healthy drive in place of the tired WD, and some info on what this IronWolf functionality means. Edited August 13, 2017 by rmpfyf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest rmpfyf Posted August 13, 2017 Share Posted August 13, 2017 As it turns out, the 3TB Seagate Ironwolf doesn't have Ironwolf Health Management included. Booooo. http://www.seagate.com/files/www-content/product-content/ironwolf/_shared/masters/IronWolf_Health_Management_Manual_22717.pdf So whilst I get a nice Ironwolf icon next to the drive, I don't get any Ironwolf-ish behaviours per se. Nevermind, the aim of things was simply to get my volume back up and running. Which is now done. When my (very old) 2TB Seagates let go, we'll go 8TB there. Does it run hot? No, a couple of degrees cooler than the drives around it. It is a new drive though - if it turns out to be faulty (a possibility) I'll report back... right after the NAS does So there you go. One failing hard drive in a mirrored RAID identified, replaced, restored. All throughout my data was still available for use. Relatively painless. Get a NAS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kukynas Posted August 15, 2017 Share Posted August 15, 2017 On 8/13/2017 at 11:15 PM, rmpfyf said: Get a NAS exactly Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aussievintage Posted August 22, 2017 Share Posted August 22, 2017 I am glad this thread surfaced. Interesting read for me. I have a Thecus N2310. A small 2-bay NAS that is very underpowered, but is working well enough for my music. This thread reminded me to set up the email warning system. So thanks... Also, I am using 2 drives (no raid) but with a constant backup to an external USB drive. One of those drives is reporting 27000 hours, so might be a good idea to keep an eye on it. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest rmpfyf Posted August 22, 2017 Share Posted August 22, 2017 14 hours ago, aussievintage said: Also, I am using 2 drives (no raid) but with a constant backup to an external USB drive. One of those drives is reporting 27000 hours, so might be a good idea to keep an eye on it. You may wish to plug the USB drives into a PC enough to run a S.M.A.R.T. utility, something like https://www.passmark.com.au/products/diskcheckup.htm (free for personal use on Windows; there are other utilities for other operating systems). Run the extended tests (they take a while) and see what you've got. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aussievintage Posted August 22, 2017 Share Posted August 22, 2017 17 minutes ago, rmpfyf said: You may wish to plug the USB drives into a PC enough to run a S.M.A.R.T. utility, something like https://www.passmark.com.au/products/diskcheckup.htm (free for personal use on Windows; there are other utilities for other operating systems). Run the extended tests (they take a while) and see what you've got. No need, the NAS can the raid tests on it's drives. No errors on a quick test. I am going to run the extended tests soon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest rmpfyf Posted August 23, 2017 Share Posted August 23, 2017 (edited) 2 hours ago, aussievintage said: No need, the NAS can the raid tests on it's drives. No errors on a quick test. I am going to run the extended tests soon. Nice if it can do it on the USB partitions too. Would be interesting to see how the USB drives age compared to the two inside the NAS. I schedule the extended tests weekly, works well. A day later a FLAC integrity script. Edited August 23, 2017 by rmpfyf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest rmpfyf Posted August 23, 2017 Share Posted August 23, 2017 Here we go again. So around 25 minutes ago there's a bit of beeping from the NAS' hiding spot and an email from the NAS. Volume 1 has entered degraded mode. It's not the new Ironwolf 3TB, it's one of the very, very old Seagate 2TB drives I spoke of a while back. Can't really complain here, these drive are really old and well out of any reasonable warranty or consumer expectation for their survival... this is simply the NAS doing it's job. Logging in and checking activity it seems the disk 'plugged out'. On the NAS physically the light indicating a disk isn't connected. I take the disk out, plug it back in and it lights up. However back in the NAS webh portal the disk shows up as being completely blank/uninitialised, meaning 'rewrite me if you intend to use me'. What does this mean: Either: A physical failure of the drives' controller, which is possible - it's not exactly new - and will show up again as it comes up to temperature if so. But it's silicon mostly, and not likely to quibble too much about life at 40degC or so, and/or Corruption of data in the first sectors of the drive where critical information (master boot record, partition table, etc) are held. Could be something physically repairable, could be a bad sector. The second is more likely. The disk can be used but we have no idea at this stage the nature of the fault, if it's limited to a few sectors that get hit quite often or whether it's a growing physical issue. It can be a bad sector or something able to be picked up with a recovery tool. This is not necessarily something that's picked up in S.M.A.R.T. tests (the drive is extended tested weekly and showed no faults). The simple solution: Assume it will get worse, replace the hard disk. The harder solution: Pull the drive and see if a utility (e.g. http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk) can recover the partitions that were there, then monitor the situation. Probably go and get a spare disk anyway. Will work on this a little later. (Meanwhile, damn, the Ironwolf Pro 8TB went up in price and the non-Pro went down. Drat.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest rmpfyf Posted August 24, 2017 Share Posted August 24, 2017 So just to be safe and partially because I was curious, I purchased two new 4TB IronWolves to replace the 2x 2TB Seagates. Stopped at 2x 4TB on cost reasons. The drive that unplugged I've pulled and discovered it was made in 2011... a good innings so far. Here's the 4TB IronWolf showing up... And here's the IronWolf health status. If this was a Pro, data recovery would be included. So I decided to see what was recoverable on the drive that dropped out - put it in a caddy and connected it to a PC (this is Ubuntu's usual Disks utility). I was all ready to see a blank disk needing initialisation, when lo and behold... up come the partitions it's supposed to have. Sticking it back in the NAS, however, hadn't done made the NAS suggest that it was in a good way. Hmmm. Seems the partitions are there, and the drive is reporting one failed attribute only. Digging into the smart data shows that the drive had run hot beyond threshold conditions once in the last few days, which seems to have caused it to shut down and self-protect. I've no idea why - there's a new drive next to it that runs cooler than that it replaced. As we can see below, it's still in pretty good nick - no uncorrectable errors (some of this data is raw and the 'Value' column looks bad - just keep an eye on the 'Assesment' column). Long story short - the drive is OK, and simply rebuilding the array would have saved it. Looks like I'll have a 2TB RAID spare shortly. No regrets on spending the money - this particular volume has the local mirror of some important data - better safe than sorry. But hey, good news - looked after properly drives can last a long time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts