Disk hangs with 100% CPU

[ron_maeder]

I have a GT-AXE16000 and am running firmware 388.2 (388.1 has same problem). I have two 8TB disks attached. I compiled rsync and I sync from one disk to another every night at 2am. It hangs when I rsync from the USB 3.0 disk to the USB 2.0 disk regularly, but I have better luck when rsync'ing from the USB 2.0 disk to the USB 3.0 disk. It runs for a bit before the hang. The UI shows one or two CPUs pegged at 100%, and 'top' shows 25% or 50% IO. Sometime it will recover after a minute. A similar thing often happens when I access a file on one of the disk. It often hangs with the same symptoms, but recovers after a minute or so.

I'm not sure if there is some sort of deadlock on disk IO or what.

Has anyone else seen this? Does anyone have a solution?

Many thanks!

 

[drinkingbird]

I have a GT-AXE16000 and am running firmware 388.2 (388.1 has same problem). I have two 8TB disks attached. I compiled rsync and I sync from one disk to another every night at 2am. It hangs when I rsync from the USB 3.0 disk to the USB 2.0 disk regularly, but I have better luck when rsync'ing from the USB 2.0 disk to the USB 3.0 disk. It runs for a bit before the hang. The UI shows one or two CPUs pegged at 100%, and 'top' shows 25% or 50% IO. Sometime it will recover after a minute. A similar thing often happens when I access a file on one of the disk. It often hangs with the same symptoms, but recovers after a minute or so.

I'm not sure if there is some sort of deadlock on disk IO or what.

Has anyone else seen this? Does anyone have a solution?

Many thanks!

Regardless of what Asus may want you to think, these are not NAS boxes. I haven't tried what you're trying and maybe someone else has some suggestions but the USB ports likely weren't designed to be pushing tons of data to both ports at the same time.

 

[ron_maeder]

Well, I had the same setup working on my RT-AC66U for years without any issue. Also, the same problem happens when I simply open a file using Samba.

 

[Tech9]

Does anyone have a solution?

Get a NAS now or get a NAS after you lose data. Your choice.

 

[ColinTaylor]

I compiled rsync ...

Why did you compile your own version of rsync rather than using the prebuilt one in Entware?

 

[bbunge]

The max supported drive size for your router is 4TB.

Get a NAS!

ASUS Router Plug-n-Share Disks Compatibility List | Official Support | ASUS USA

 

[ron_maeder]

Get a NAS now or get a NAS after you lose data. Your choice.

Why will I lose data? I rotate through a third drive, which I keep offsite. Do you have offsite storage?

 

[ron_maeder]

Why did you compile your own version of rsync rather than using the prebuilt one in Entware?

Oh, nice. I didn't know about Entware.

 

[Tech9]

Why will I lose data?

Because this is when people using routers as NAS stop by and start asking questions.

Do you have offsite storage?

My storage solutions are irrelevant to the question if home router makes a good NAS.

 

[ron_maeder]

The max supported drive size for your router is 4TB.

Get a NAS!

ASUS Router Plug-n-Share Disks Compatibility List | Official Support | ASUS USA

Good point. I wasn't aware of that limit. I must say though that I had this solution working just fine on my RT-AC66U.

Maybe I will get a NAS. Does anyone have a recommendation for a NAS with 10G Ethernet? Also, I would still like to rotate through offsite storage. Does anyone have a solution for that?

 

[ron_maeder]

Because this is when people using routers as NAS stop by and start asking questions.

That is not an answer.

My storage solutions are irrelevant to the question if home router makes a good NAS.

It is not irrelevant. I am considering a NAS. How does one rotate through offsite storage with a NAS. There must be a solution.

 

[Tech9]

That is not an answer.

Asuswrt has bad Samba implementation. Many people have issues. Some ended with corrupted drives.

It is not irrelevant.

For home use I have a NAS + backup drive. For business use I have storage servers in 3 different locations. This is my solution.

 

[ron_maeder]

Asuswrt has bad Samba implementation. Many people have issues. Some ended with corrupted drives.

OK.

For home use I have a NAS + backup drive. For business use I have storage servers in 3 different locations. This is my solution.

Does the backup drive just hang off the NAS with USB? Or how does that work? Just curious.

 

[Tech9]

At home I have a custom solution with 2x 8TB mirrored USB drives on a dedicated Windows mini PC + 1x 8TB external USB drive backup on another Windows PC. All drives are NTFS - compatible with any other Windows PC, easily replaceable and they spin 24/7. All mirroring/backup between storages and backup of other network connected PCs is done by software. I replace the drives when I need larger storage or once every 3-4 years. No data hoarders at home. No large media collections either because almost everything is now available online and ISP lines are fast enough.

 

[bbunge]

I have two Synology NAS. Main one is a DS220+ with two mirrored WD Red Pro drives. It is set up to use both 1 GB LAN connections in a Bonded setup. It backs up critical data to a DS218j. The DS218j powers up a couple times a week to rsync selected folders then powers off after the rsync and the drives have hibernated for 20 minutes. The NAS are located in different places in the house.
I also back up some data to an external USB drive which is kept in a fire proof box.
As for the 10 GB for home use you have to ask youself if you really need that bandwidth?

 

[ron_maeder]

At home I have a custom solution with 2x 8TB mirrored USB drives on a dedicated Windows mini PC + 1x 8TB external USB drive backup on another Windows PC. All drives are NTFS - compatible with any other Windows PC, easily replaceable and they spin 24/7. All mirroring/backup between storages and backup of other network connected PCs is done by software. I replace the drives when I need larger storage or once every 3-4 years. No data hoarders at home. No large media collections either because almost everything is now available online and ISP lines are fast enough.

I like this solution because you end up with NTFS formatted drives that can be read directly by a Windows PC. Does anyone know if Synology supports NTFS as a backup drive? I have read conflicting things on the Internet.

 

[rborth]

Get a NAS now or get a NAS after you lose data. Your choice.

Why will I lose data? I rotate through a third drive, which I keep offsite. Do you have offsite storage?

I found large files were being corrupted. Unless you follow up with a bit compare every time , which is impractical, those corrupted files will just trundle on down your back up regime. This should be able to work, but for now until and if it's fixed, I decided go in another direction.

Some say that this is because they are trying to add too many features to the routers. I am R&Ding NASes and the major players seem to be up to the same thing. For example I don't need to install a WEB browser on my NAS...

And I don't need to have my files exposed to hacking.... https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/13/h... breached data,not publishing the stolen data.

 

[sfx2000]

Asuswrt has bad Samba implementation. Many people have issues. Some ended with corrupted drives.

I wouldn't call it bad - I would call it old and outdated.

As others mentioned - 8TB is a large drive, and one can have issues, esp if there are large numbers of small files involved - there's limits, and as @Tech9 mentions, those limits are hit fairly easily with corruption and loss of data...

 

[Tech9]

large numbers of small files involved

This is what I used to test Asus routers with - total size in gigabytes and number in thousands. I had 6-7 different Asus models available and none passed the test including models with 1GB RAM. The router crashes and what happens to the drive no one knows. My ISP provided modem/router completes the transfer at up to USB 2.0 speeds every single time.

 

[A Purohit]

I had issues just using a single slow drive, 1TB, and large files on my AC68. It just isn't that reliable... and that was a single drive.

That's when I, too, started looking at a NAS instead, because as many said, the router isn't good for such duty. Maybe you just got lucky with your two-drive/single-router setup, but it's not worth the hassle.

I now have a QNAP 2-drive RAID, low end model, and none of those problems (even with the ARM CPU it uses). As for "rotating" your drive offsite, you don't need to do that anymore - with a NAS just push the data upstream wherever you want. You can setup multiple locations and set the backup to go there at whatever schedule you want. I use GDrive because it's free for 15GB and the data from my wife's and my company fits in those just fine. Anything bigger is backed up in other ways to the cloud. Eventually I may get a paid service offsite (Backblaze, for example) because it's easy to do that and pretty low cost particularly when you do cold-storage... again, the QNAP serves all of these simultaneously if you wanted... no rotating needed.