!: Netgear ReadyNAS Duo 2-Bay 500 GB (1 x 500 GB) Network Attached Storage RND2150

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Netgear ReadyNAS Duo 2-Bay 500 GB (1 x 500 GB) Network Attached Storage RND2150

±1±: Now is the time Netgear ReadyNAS Duo 2-Bay 500 GB (1 x 500 GB) Network Attached Storage RND2150 Order Today!

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Great Deal :
$274.99
Date Created :
Sep 02, 2010 23:00:05

Netgear Readynas Duo 1X 500Gb

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±1±: Best Buy I purchased this unit 2 years ago from Amazon. It came with a 500 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 installed and I purchased a duplicate for the second bay. It has stayed powered up continuously for the past two years and completed light duty work as a file server in a small home network (5 machines, both PC and Mac). No complaints at all until a few days ago when it went off-line and unresponsive in the middle of a large file transfer (~250 GB) from the NAS to a machine on the network. Couldn't get it to power down so had to pull the plug. The most credible troubleshooting advice I found online was to check the drives first before other steps like a factory reset. I used a USB to SATA cable to check the drives and sure enough the drive in Bay 2 was toast (failed SMART Test for a read error even though the SMART Status read good). The NAS re-started just fine with the good drive in Bay 1 and Bay 2 empty. All the data was intact and readable. My only complaints are that it came with a Seagate drive that has a reputation for failing (lots of reviewers of the drive saw a lot less service than my 2 years), and the way that it handled the disk failure wasn't graceful. I fully acknowledge that I may not have had the unit configured optimally to handle the disk failure (I'd not upgraded the firmware or set any advanced configurations--I just plugged it in and started copying files and since it always worked I never worried about it). I still have the troubleshooting to do in order to figure out what the unit could have done and should have done when the disk failed. I didn't lose any data, but wonder if it could have been worse if it had happened during a write instead of a read.

Update: Reviewing the logs I see that the NAS started reporting disk errors over 6 weeks prior to the disk failing. If I had configured the unit to send me alerts, I would have gotten an email or a text and would have had an easier time troubleshooting. During all the swapping of disks, I had one disk tray release button freeze and stick hard. It was easy to find a very helpful thread on this in the ReadyNAS Forum. While it appears that it is a design flaw, and there is a re-disign completed, with a little fiddling and some silicone grease I was able to fix mine with no problems. on Sale!