NAS rebooting modem problem?

[Demon Cleaner]

I have the strange feeling that my new NAS (LaCie 2big network 2) is doing something to my internet connection.

Yesterday I noticed whilst copying stuff onto it, that sometimes Windows showed me the message again "new ethernet disk found", and during that time the NAS was stopped.

Tonight when I was sitting at the PC, NAS was running, although in sleep mode, my internet connection went away like 3 times in 10 minutes, the modem was just rebooting. The NAS is connected directly to an ethernet port on the modem itself.

I powered now the NAS off, and now the connection is staying.

EDIT: I think that was a wrong alarm, it worked now for 20 minutes, NAS was off, but it rebooted again. I also unplugged now the cable. Perhaps the modem is too hot, or the ISP has some problems.

[Demon Cleaner]

Network connection was now up for 20 hours again, NAS was off. Switched it back on now, and will see how it behaves.

EDIT: Well I just came to my PC now and it did it again, NAS is on.

[Harrison]

Do you have a separate network switch you could try the device on? Connect the switch to the modem/router and then connect the NAS to the switch. This would rule out if the problem is with the modem/router or with the device itself.

I've had similar strange issues a few times in the past with a device causing the network to go down. In all cases it was a failing switch/router,or is PSU, where the extra data throughput of the device was causing overheating or the PSU to work harder than normal. Replacing the switch or router fixed the issue.

[Demon Cleaner]

Yesterday after rebooting once (when I wrote into the forum), I was still 2 more hours on the PC with the NAS on, also copying stuff to it, and the connetcion stayed.

I noticed since some months that my modem has some problems holding the connection, I'm just not sure if it's the modem itself, or just my ISP. I have another new modem which I got with my DSL package, but changing to it would mean to change all my IP addresses, as my Fritzbox uses 192.168.178.... and the other one uses 192.168.1.... I have like 8 different devices with IPs connected, software linked to it, port forwarding and file sharing, I don't want to fiddle around and change everything manually now.

[Demon Cleaner]

Btw, I consider buying a big NAS, and there's 3 candidates which are in my mind:

- Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus, seems to be good and also a fast NAS, comes for 1.099€ (with 6x2TB)
- QNAP TurboNAS TS-659 Pro+, seems to be very good too, although a lot pricier and less powerful than the others, would be 1.329€ (with 6x2TB)
- Thecus N7700+, which I think at the moment would be my first choice, it's 669€ (discless), but has 7 disk bays

Anyone some experience good/bad with these kind of NAS?

[Harrison]

The Netgear ReadyNAS units have been getting some very good reviews in recent months. I friend has the 4 drive version and has been very happy with that running a RAID 5 setup. No problems to date with it either.

In long testing reviews/features I've read, whilst te QNAP NAS's have received good initial reviews, they can start to cause issues when a drive develops some bad sectors, and can lock up the client PCs access the NAS. In contrast the Netgear ReadyNAS has continued to handle faulty HDDs very well and handled the data by continuing to serve it from the other good drives until the faulty one was replaced. I would therefore recommend the Netgear based on what I've read so far.

There was a recent review of a couple of new business NAS units that were very good. I will dig those out and post what they were for you in the morning in case they were also something worth looking at.

[Demon Cleaner]

What about the Thecus N7700+? Seems to be very good.

And I'm also struggling about which brand and model of HDDs I would use, as I read on some sites that several HDDs are not suited for Raid and fail after a short time. I want to use Raid 5.

[Harrison]

You can get HDDs that are specifically designed for RAID use, but these are obviously more expensive because they are designed for heavy server use. I've heard some negatives about Samsung and Seagate when used for NAS which are my 2 favourite makes, so that doesn't help. Not sure really. Maybe WD are more recommended for this use? Will see if I have any information on this for you.

[Demon Cleaner]

I read that WD disks tend to fail.

Btw, I could get the Netgear NAS at the shop where I always order for 1099€ with the disks already built in, and that would be 6 2TB Seagate Barracuda Green disks.

Still interested about the Thecus though, they have also a lot of pro stuff, I checked their site. Although I never heard about that brand before. Did you?

[Harrison]

I have heard about Thecus. They have been getting more mention in recent business NAS reviews. I will post some more when i find the reviews for you.

The NetGear NAS with 6x 2TB drives for €1099 sounds pretty good. Although remember you can now buy standalone Seagate and Samsung 2TB drives for around £60 (€68), so 6 standalone drives would cost £360 (€408), so you would have to ask if the NAS device itself is worth the additional £609 (€691) on top of the drives real value?

[Demon Cleaner]

The Netgear NAS (diskless) costs 729€, so they ask 370€ for the 6 disks, which is 61.50€/disk, quite the same than if I would order them seperately.

Today I just copied something to my NAS, and shortly after my modem again restarted twice, don't really know what the problem is. I don't also have the time to test this now, leaving the NAS on/off then see if it happens again. Tonight when I come home I will check the event log of my modem, then I will see if it restarted again or not, although you only see the last time it logged in, you don't see if it did it only once or 10 times.

[Harrison]

If it does it again, do you have a separate network switch you could use to test it? I would create a small network with just one PC, a network switch and the NAS, and see how it acts on this small network just copying files between the NAS and PC. That should show if there is any issue directly with the NAS itself.

Also has anyone else online posted anything similar about this NAS causing these issues?

I'm personally still thinking it is an overheating or PSU issue with your current router/modem.

[Demon Cleaner]

I was asking 2 people today who are in our networking division at work, and they both think it's probably the router and not the NAS. They suggested, as I still have another router, to test it with that one. They said I should just plug the router to a laptop, and change it's internal IP address to the same that my Fritzbox is using, so I wouldn't have to change IPs.

Anyway it would be time for a router upgrade, as mine is a bit old, and latest firmware is from 2007. They suggested me to get the Fritzbox 3370, as I don't need telephone support and that stuff.

One of the guys also has a Qnap NAS (the 559 model with 5 bays), and he's really happy with it and explained me a bit about it's qualities and why he wouldn't consider buying any other brand than Qnap. I was quite convinced after that, and I might now get the QNAP TurboNAS TS-659 Pro II, although a bit more expensive. But what are 300-400€ more on a long term when it comes to security/safety and such?

The Qnap also has SATA III and USB 3.

[Demon Cleaner]

And against all my logical thoughts the Hitachi Deskstar 5K3000 HDDs seem to be good for NAS and Raid 5 setup. Didn't have a Deskstar since over 10 years.

[Harrison]

Hitachi drives have retained their bad reputation from the very old days when IBM produced them, but Hitachi drives do always seem to be popular in business systems so that has to say something for them these days.

A bad rep. can really hurt a company in the long term. I never bought another Deskstar HD after all the rumours of failure rates started appearing, but I must say that I've still got 2 Deskstar drives over 9 years old and they both still work fine.

[Demon Cleaner]

Any thoughts about the QNAP I mentioned?

I could get it for 1420€ with 6 of the aforementioned Hitachi HDDs. I also mailed them, and they told me that they also test the drives if they're errorfree before mounting them into the NAS. They also said that the Hitachi drives prove successfully in a 24/7 environment.

[Demon Cleaner]

I ordered the QNAP TurboNAS TS-659 Pro II now diskless, and I ordered 6 of the 2TB Hitachi Deskstar 5K3000 HDDs.

[Harrison]

I look forward to finding out what you think of it. Sorry I didn't post any more info before. I could find some good reviews about the more expensive QNAP rack mounted business NAS and SAN systems, but not for the 6 bay unit.

I may need to get myself a new NAS at some point soon as this is of great interest to me.

[Demon Cleaner]

The disks got already shipped yesterday and the NAS today, this morning. Hopefully I will get everything still this week.

I also want to put my bigger ROM sets on it, plus all the PS3 games, which take a lot of space. But then I have again some internal disks free, but at least I will have a backup of it, as the bigger sets I have, don't hve a mirrored copy.

Will open a new thread once I get the NAS, and let you know how it is.

[Harrison]

Great. Looking forward to finding out.

I am personally interested in a new NAS more for professional use than for rom collections, although I may end up using it for both if I can build one with enough space. Design photography and video work storage the main two, so the speed of data transfer over a Gigabit LAN for larger video files and ISO images is of interest, as well as the speed of transfer of many smaller 1-20MB jpg images.

[Demon Cleaner]

I mainly want to use it for streaming my movies and series to the Mede8er media player, but as there's enough space, I will also put some ROM sets, and PS3 games (meanwhile 1.5TB), and free my internal disks a bit.

I also wanted to put my barebone backup, which although is backed up on my main PC and used through filesharing, it would be easier to only have 1 copy on a NAS where I also can access it from wherever I want.