T42: NV+ Freezing with WD20EARS

[mooisacow]

Recently I purchased 2 x wd20ears 2TB drives after seeing they were on the approved hardware list. I did not however go searching through the forums to see all the problems.

Before I give the symptoms. Is there any ETA for when 4KB drives will be supported or at least fully in Beta like the x86 readynas unit's seem to be?

I have cured the LLC problem by using the wdidle app but still get the ATA errors ever restart. I have tried wdtler however this does not work on these drives.

Anyway my Symptoms seem to be slightly different to what I have found other people have been getting. Copying data off the NAS works fine and as expected. However copying data to the NAS does not. If you transfer a large file or a bunch of files to the NAS it starts off fine going around 30MB per second, however after about 10 seconds it stops, the activity light on the NAS goes crazy, RAIDar loses access to the unit, the web interface does not respond and you cannot shutdown gracefully via the front power button as it is unresponsive. After about 30 seconds it will tranfer another chunk of data at around 30MB per second for about 10 seconds and stop again.

The symptoms have remained consistent across 4.1.6 4.1.7 T29 and T42

I did raise a case with netgear and they RMA'd the unit as it had also been crashing every week or two with the original HDD's. However the replacement unit exhibits the same crazy symptoms as above with the wd20ears drives

So help. Do I try and sell off these wd20ears drives and replace with something else, if something else what drives are best in the 2TB range? Or is it worth waiting for more Beta firmware if support is just around the corner?

[anugraha]

I currently use 4x WD20EARS in my NV+ with no problem. Running T42 with wdidle applied to each HDD. Everything very stable.

Don't know what to suggest, sorry.

[yoh-dah]

Unfortunately, there are 512-byte sector and 4K sector versions of the EARS drives. You really have to pay attention to the sub-model info which will tell you which version you have. Refer to the HCL for more info.

http://www.readynas.com/hcl

[mooisacow]

I understand the 4k (which I have) and 512byte difference. However could the 4K be causing my hanging/freezing issue's? If so when are we likely to see firmware which work with 4K?

[KSUWildcatFan]

I just received four new WD20EARS drives from newegg and they appear to be the same ones as are on the HCL:

Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARS 2 TB 3Gb/s 64 MB Yes 3 Firmware 80.00A80, Model # WD20EARS-00S8B1

Manufacture date shows 6/06/10 and they claim to be the "advanced format drive". Doesn't this mean it uses 4K sectors?

-Jordan

[mdgm]

I've read reports on the forum that the 00S8B1 is a 4k sector disk.

[KSUWildcatFan]

I've read reports on the forum that the 00S8B1 is a 4k sector disk.

based on what I'm seeing, I'm inclined to agree.

-Jordan

[anugraha]

I currently use 4x WD20EARS in my NV+ with no problem. Running T42 with wdidle applied to each HDD. Everything very stable.

My disks are 00S8B1. Everything is fine.

[mooisacow]

Wow... ok now I'm as confused as ever... so perhaps I have a dodgy drive or drives... I'll see if I can try one drive at a time to see if one drive is causing all my grief...

However question still remains... Is there any sort of rough indication on how long it will take to get 4K support for the non i386 readynas's?

[TeknoJnky]

and they claim to be the "advanced format drive". Doesn't this mean it uses 4K sectors?

yes, advanced format drive = 4k sectors

[Saturn]

I currently use 4x WD20EARS in my NV+ with no problem. Running T42 with wdidle applied to each HDD. Everything very stable.

Don't know what to suggest, sorry.

Sorry to but in here with a dumb question but how do you run the wdidle utility on the ReadyNas drives? I too have the WD20EARS in an NV+ and unsurprisingly have the same issue with increasing LCC.

[KSUWildcatFan]

I believe you have to install them into a PC, use a boot disk to boot into DOS, and then run the wdidle3 tool. If you don't have a PC to install the drives into, you'll have to find someone to do it for you. It's kind of a PITA..

[robm42]

I can confirm that I had this (or a similar) hanging problem also.

I have 4x WD20EARS-00S8B1 in my NV+. Running the previous beta, I did a full factory reset to initialize the disks properly, and restored all my data. While restoring data, I had a few "hangs", where I would find the machine with all lights on, activity light blinking very infrequently, and the machine totally unresponsive over the network (Raidar & Frontview) as well as to the power button. Long presses (2+ minutes) on power button would not shut down, so I had to pull the power. The filesystem would check, and I would usually find in the logs a note that there had been a SATA reset and a RAID resync was recommended. This happened twice, and then I upgraded to the T42 release. It happened twice after than, and then mysteriously it has not recurred.

Looking at my SMART info, there are some unpleasant numbers. I have about 800 hours (+/- 50 hrs) on each drive, and my Load Cycle Count (LCC) varies between a low of 29,000 and over 70,000. Each drive has reported one "hard disk reset" (which might correlate to the SATA resets). One drive has a Raw Read Error Rate of 679, while the other three drives have 0.

The hangs stopped around the time that I started running Bit Torrent continuously. I was theorizing the resets were happening when the power settings put the drives to sleep and woke them up (I had drives set to sleep after 5 minutes of inactivity). For whatever reason, they have now run 24x7 since June 18th with no hangs.

Basic user.log is below. Let me know if other log files are desired.

-rob

Jun 9 23:52:38 localhost RAIDiator: Factory default initiated by hardware registers!
Jun 9 23:56:19 localhost usb.agent: ... no modules for USB product 0/0/206
Jun 9 23:56:21 localhost last message repeated 2 times
Jun 10 10:04:31 localhost RAIDiator: RAID sync finished on volume C. The volume is now fully redundant.\n\n[Thu Jun 10 10:04:28 PDT 2010]
Jun 10 11:04:23 localhost atalkd: [main.c:1100]: I:ATalkDaemon: restart (2.0.5)
Jun 10 11:04:24 localhost atalkd: [zip.c:910]: I:ATalkDaemon: zip_getnetinfo for eth0
Jun 10 11:04:25 localhost atalkd: [main.c:852]: I:ATalkDaemon: done
Jun 10 11:07:46 localhost atalkd: [main.c:1100]: I:ATalkDaemon: restart (2.0.5)
Jun 10 11:07:47 localhost atalkd: [zip.c:910]: I:ATalkDaemon: zip_getnetinfo for eth0
Jun 10 11:07:48 localhost atalkd: [main.c:852]: I:ATalkDaemon: done
Jun 10 11:20:54 nas-01-2B-B6 RAIDiator: ATA error count has increased in the last day.\n\nDisk 3:\n Previous count: 2\n Current count: 3\n\nGrowing SMART errors indicate a disk that may fail soon. If the errors continue to increase, you should be prepared to replace the disk.
Jun 10 11:22:07 nas-01-2B-B6 usb.agent: ... no modules for USB product 0/0/206
Jun 10 11:22:13 nas-01-2B-B6 last message repeated 2 times
Jun 12 12:12:46 nas-01-2B-B6 usb.agent: ... no modules for USB product 0/0/206
Jun 13 00:18:49 nas-01-2B-B6 usb.agent: ... no modules for USB product 0/0/206
Jun 13 00:19:00 nas-01-2B-B6 last message repeated 2 times
Jun 13 02:19:43 nas-01-2B-B6 RAIDiator: RAID sync finished on volume C. The volume is now fully redundant.\n\n[Sun Jun 13 02:19:40 PDT 2010]
Jun 13 17:09:52 nas-01-2B-B6 usb.agent: ... no modules for USB product 0/0/206
Jun 13 17:09:57 nas-01-2B-B6 last message repeated 2 times
Jun 13 19:21:20 nas-01-2B-B6 scsi.agent: disk at /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:17.2/usb1/1-3/1-3:1.0/host0/target0:0:0/0:0:0:0
Jun 14 11:33:36 nas-01-2B-B6 usb.agent: ... no modules for USB product 0/0/206
Jun 14 11:33:47 nas-01-2B-B6 last message repeated 2 times
Jun 14 13:45:22 nas-01-2B-B6 RAIDiator: RAID sync finished on volume C. The volume is now fully redundant.\n\n[Mon Jun 14 13:45:19 PDT 2010]
Jun 14 14:22:51 nas-01-2B-B6 RAIDiator: Updating from 4.1.7-T29 to 4.1.7-T42.
Jun 14 14:25:06 nas-01-2B-B6 usb.agent: ... no modules for USB product 0/0/206
Jun 14 14:25:21 nas-01-2B-B6 last message repeated 2 times
Jun 14 16:15:04 nas-01-2B-B6 scsi.agent: disk at /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:17.2/usb1/1-3/1-3:1.0/host0/target0:0:0/0:0:0:0
Jun 17 14:48:57 nas-01-2B-B6 RAIDiator: COMMBAD: UPS Communication error. -- battery.charge: 100 battery.chemistry: PbAc battery.runtime: 2775 battery.voltage: 13.7 driver.name: hidups driver.parameter.lowbatt_pct: 0 driver.version: 2.0.5 ups.mfr: APC ups.model: Back-UPS ES 750 ups.serial: 3B0605X05835 ups.status: OL
Jun 17 14:48:58 nas-01-2B-B6 RAIDiator: UPS Communication error. -- battery.charge: 100 battery.chemistry: PbAc battery.runtime: 2775 battery.voltage: 13.7 driver.name: hidups driver.parameter.lowbatt_pct: 0 driver.version: 2.0.5 ups.mfr: APC ups.model: Back-UPS ES 750 ups.serial: 3B0605X05835 ups.status: OL
Jun 17 14:49:00 nas-01-2B-B6 RAIDiator: COMMOK: Communication with UPS OK. -- battery.charge: 100 battery.chemistry: PbAc battery.runtime: 2775 battery.voltage: 13.7 driver.name: hidups driver.parameter.lowbatt_pct: 0 driver.version: 2.0.5 ups.mfr: APC ups.model: Back-UPS ES 750 ups.serial: 3B0605X05835 ups.status: OL
Jun 17 14:59:28 nas-01-2B-B6 RAIDiator: RAID sync started on volume C.\n\n[Thu Jun 17 14:59:25 PDT 2010]
Jun 18 12:11:27 nas-01-2B-B6 usb.agent: ... no modules for USB product 0/0/206
Jun 18 12:11:45 nas-01-2B-B6 last message repeated 2 times
Jun 18 14:32:48 nas-01-2B-B6 RAIDiator: RAID sync finished on volume C. The volume is now fully redundant.\n\n[Fri Jun 18 14:32:43 PDT 2010]
Jun 25 15:32:24 nas-01-2B-B6 RAIDiator: gmac.agent: "start-stop-daemon -S -q -x /usr/sbin/mt-daapd" failed to start.
Jun 25 15:32:33 nas-01-2B-B6 RAIDiator: gmac.agent: "nice -n 5 /usr/sbin/apache-ssl -f /etc/frontview/apache/httpd.conf" failed to start.
Jun 25 15:32:43 nas-01-2B-B6 RAIDiator: gmac.agent: "start-stop-daemon -S -q -x /usr/sbin/mt-daapd" failed to start.

[KSUWildcatFan]

I'm pretty happy with my WD20EARS drives thus far. The third drive is resyncing and I'm copying data back onto the volume. The LCC for two of the drives shows 6, and the other shows 10. I'm not sure what my last one shows (I had it running via USB, transferring data from the NAS for about two days before I ran the WDIDLE3 utility, so it's probably much higher--a few thousand or so). I ran WDIDLE3 /D (instead of /S300 like a lot of others have used), and it reported back that it successfully disabled the timer.

As of yet, I haven't experienced any hangs or anything like that. 160gb out of 1199 transferred back to the volume thus far..

-Jordan

[Theresias]

Similar problems here, also 4x WD20EARS-00S8B1. The unit is becoming unresponsive irregularly, happens faster when running streaming services. Unresponsive means not network connection anymore but shutdown via front button still works. SMART shows high LCC values as well. We'll see how the 4k Sector fix solves this - or not.