Post by rethguals on Jan 19, 2007 22:08:17 GMT 7
Hello,
There's a story here, so if you're pressed for time, please consider skipping to the end and helping with the questions in the last paragraph. Conversely, I'd welcome opinions on the prior events that I describe...
I recently bought an N5200, which was delivered with firmware version 1.00.04.10. After reconfiguring the device to take its IP address from DHCP and so forth, my first real action was therefore to try to upgrade to a non-beta version (I'd prefer that devices not ship with unreleased firmware).
Upgrading the firmware failed. It spent a rather long time showing 99% completion on the web interface before the device beeped three times - each beep lasting a second or longer - and the web interface announced its dismal conclusion. I'd read the instructions to try again, so I did: once more with the same browser, once with a different one, then again with 1.00.04 instead of 1.00.05, etc. No joy.
I decided to set up the RAID and retry the firmware update process, just in case it helped (mainly, I wanted something to do while I thought about the situation, but I pretended that perhaps the device needed room to manoeuvre). Eight hours later, I tried flashing again with 1.00.05. It failed again.
In the absence of better ideas, I rebooted the device for the first time. The display, which had been stuck on "Self testing..." for the entirety of its prior uptime, suddenly started displaying the things it's supposed to display, and the N5200 started with the newer firmware. Not completely trusting the results, I flashed it again with 1.00.05 and this time the update took without error.
This wasn't an auspicious start, but I was relieved. I deleted and recreated the RAID because I felt I should (or perhaps I merely recreated it?)
It was at that point that I noticed that the display (and panel interface) is somewhat flakey. It occasionally hangs on the clock screen (failing to respond to button pushes) and sometimes contains incomplete information or even complete junk (as an aside, I wish it would dim until I press the escape key or something, but that's the least of my worries). Right now, it's decided to put an exclamation point at the end of the top line. Before, it decided to replace the top row with a lot of unrecognisable characters.
I had taken to rebooting it whenever I noticed that sort of thing start to happen. Unfortunately, however, I've filled the infernal thing with a pile of (five) WD5000YS drives and the last time it restarted, it decided that the fourth disk was not to be trusted, and excluded it from the RAID. The log showed that it alone had a time-stamp approximately three minutes earlier than the other four partitions. I've since read the thread about these drives and seen the updated compatibility PDF (I had checked the compatibility before I ordered last year, and had read reviews using the same hardware, so I'm a little bit miffed by the incompatibility of this RAID device with my RAID drives).
Very worrisomely, I wasn't clued into the disappearance of a disk by any warning lights on the device. Perhaps there was an extra beep, but the main symptom was that one of the green drive busy indicators wasn't doing as much as it normally does on start-up whilst the others were. It's also pathetic that the e-mail notification doesn't work. This is a very critical feature - it's a shame Thecus's focus seems to be on adding Media-related junk rather than getting the core features working and reliability up. I bought the thing for data security, but I'm beginning to think that was a grave mistake.
As I'm terrified by the prospect of losing more than one disk (and therefore, my data), I'm thinking about trying the 1.00.06.5 beta firmware, although as I've described, my experience has been less than stellar so far. My drives have firmware 0.7, so I'm also considering upgrading that.
So, thanks for reading. My questions are next :)
What I need to know is this: will upgrading to the beta firmware do anything tragic, such as irreversibly forgetting the RAID configuration? Can anyone hazard a guess as to when this firmware will be finalised? Is upgrading from beta firmware typically problematic? Should I try upgrading the Western Digital firmware on my drives beforehand or afterwards? Will updating my drive firmware affect any checksum used to identify the drive, or is the data it contains sufficient?
Please help!
James.
There's a story here, so if you're pressed for time, please consider skipping to the end and helping with the questions in the last paragraph. Conversely, I'd welcome opinions on the prior events that I describe...
I recently bought an N5200, which was delivered with firmware version 1.00.04.10. After reconfiguring the device to take its IP address from DHCP and so forth, my first real action was therefore to try to upgrade to a non-beta version (I'd prefer that devices not ship with unreleased firmware).
Upgrading the firmware failed. It spent a rather long time showing 99% completion on the web interface before the device beeped three times - each beep lasting a second or longer - and the web interface announced its dismal conclusion. I'd read the instructions to try again, so I did: once more with the same browser, once with a different one, then again with 1.00.04 instead of 1.00.05, etc. No joy.
I decided to set up the RAID and retry the firmware update process, just in case it helped (mainly, I wanted something to do while I thought about the situation, but I pretended that perhaps the device needed room to manoeuvre). Eight hours later, I tried flashing again with 1.00.05. It failed again.
In the absence of better ideas, I rebooted the device for the first time. The display, which had been stuck on "Self testing..." for the entirety of its prior uptime, suddenly started displaying the things it's supposed to display, and the N5200 started with the newer firmware. Not completely trusting the results, I flashed it again with 1.00.05 and this time the update took without error.
This wasn't an auspicious start, but I was relieved. I deleted and recreated the RAID because I felt I should (or perhaps I merely recreated it?)
It was at that point that I noticed that the display (and panel interface) is somewhat flakey. It occasionally hangs on the clock screen (failing to respond to button pushes) and sometimes contains incomplete information or even complete junk (as an aside, I wish it would dim until I press the escape key or something, but that's the least of my worries). Right now, it's decided to put an exclamation point at the end of the top line. Before, it decided to replace the top row with a lot of unrecognisable characters.
I had taken to rebooting it whenever I noticed that sort of thing start to happen. Unfortunately, however, I've filled the infernal thing with a pile of (five) WD5000YS drives and the last time it restarted, it decided that the fourth disk was not to be trusted, and excluded it from the RAID. The log showed that it alone had a time-stamp approximately three minutes earlier than the other four partitions. I've since read the thread about these drives and seen the updated compatibility PDF (I had checked the compatibility before I ordered last year, and had read reviews using the same hardware, so I'm a little bit miffed by the incompatibility of this RAID device with my RAID drives).
Very worrisomely, I wasn't clued into the disappearance of a disk by any warning lights on the device. Perhaps there was an extra beep, but the main symptom was that one of the green drive busy indicators wasn't doing as much as it normally does on start-up whilst the others were. It's also pathetic that the e-mail notification doesn't work. This is a very critical feature - it's a shame Thecus's focus seems to be on adding Media-related junk rather than getting the core features working and reliability up. I bought the thing for data security, but I'm beginning to think that was a grave mistake.
As I'm terrified by the prospect of losing more than one disk (and therefore, my data), I'm thinking about trying the 1.00.06.5 beta firmware, although as I've described, my experience has been less than stellar so far. My drives have firmware 0.7, so I'm also considering upgrading that.
So, thanks for reading. My questions are next :)
What I need to know is this: will upgrading to the beta firmware do anything tragic, such as irreversibly forgetting the RAID configuration? Can anyone hazard a guess as to when this firmware will be finalised? Is upgrading from beta firmware typically problematic? Should I try upgrading the Western Digital firmware on my drives beforehand or afterwards? Will updating my drive firmware affect any checksum used to identify the drive, or is the data it contains sufficient?
Please help!
James.