Disks slowdown+turnoff [annoying!]

[fernandojmartin]

Hi there, I've just bought this miniNAS which seems so powerful.

However, after a bit of use I noted that all the time has huge latency before sending the contents of ANY folder, even reproducing MP3 with Winamp (directly from the NAS) has short pauses in the middle of the track.

After observing (and hearing) I noted that the disks are starting-up all the time (are audible the heads putting in place again), and hearing deeper I realized that 5 secs after each request the disks are slowed down, and get turned off after the next 5 secs, and it takes about 4 secs to run them again to satisfy a request.. so after 10 secs, the annoying latency again.

Then I got the latest firmware in your download area, hoping that to solve this weird behaviour, but nope
I even have DISABLED the power management, but seems to not respect that configuration (also tried with 120 mins).

Firmware: 3.0.11
Disks: WD Blue Scorpio 500GB - RAID1

Anyone could help me on this?

Regards,
Pampa

[misha]

Hi pampa,

Try turning off the various services, to see if you can identify which service (example media server, ftp) could be causing the problem. For example it could be media server or itunes scanning for new media.

Could also try turning SMART setting on or off.

Could also be a hardware fault, see if the shop or Thecus will replace it.
I'd recommend raising a ticket with Thecus, but also call them on the phone because they don't always respond to tickets.

[fernandojmartin]

Hey, thx Misha.

Don't think a service could turn off the disk (it would be the opposite: always working if scanning related activity)

Anyway, I'll give them a call since it seems something not so usual
d**n, I've imported this machine to Argentina and paid about 100DLS in customs!

I hope not to have to ship it back!!

[misha]

Here is another possibility, the default sector size of 512 bytes could be causing problems... see this article, and the related article on IBM.

forum.thecusforum.eu/showthread.php?t=3450
www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-4kb-sector-disks/index.html

Note that renaming fdisk to fdiskk does not work on N0204 because it is really a symbolic link to busybox, which does not recognise the new command name.

A similar effect could be achieved by moving the link to another directory that is not in the PATH, example ($ denotes command prompt):

$ mv /sbin/fdisk /usr/
$ ls -l /usr/fdisk
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           14 Jan 15 20:37 /usr/fdisk -> ../bin/busybox*

Then create a new fdisk file (not directly as 'fdisk' because if it has not been moved yet, this could overwrite busybox!):

$ cat > /sbin/fdisknew
#!/bin/sh
# run original fdisk with new parameters for head and sector
/usr/fdisk -H 224 -S 56 "$*"
ctrl-d  to finish editting
$ chmod a+rx /sbin/fdisknew
$ mv /sbin/fdisknew /sbin/fdisk

Now the fdisk command will automatically include the head and sector parameters.

Note this will only last until the next reboot. The above could be done from one of the startup files if wanted permanently.

[fernandojmartin]

Hey misha,

Really, really thanks for your time, but this exceeded by far my knowledge.

I just created the RAID with the wizard, and let alone setting sector size, sector mounting heads and so on... just wanted to have an easy secure backup of my data.

Unfortunately I'm having other serious issues and still wasn't able to call Thecus but I'll take that way.

Thanks again.
Pampa

[sandworm]

Hi there,

I have the same issue with Seagate ST9500325AS. Have anybody fixed it ?