New To The Charts: Promise NS4600

[SirSwift]

Purchased the NS4600 two weeks ago...

I purchased the NS4600 two weeks ago and I am having some issues. First, the SETUP. I created my initial RAID from two 1.5 TB disks. I followed the instructions to the "T" and when it came time to select the RAID type it only offered two (in Advanced Mode); RAID 5 and RAID 0. I wanted RAID 1 for the two 1.5 TB drives, but it would not shows this on the form. Low and behold, after choosing RAID 5 it created my RAID 1 Mirror.

I have been running for two weeks in RAID 1 and I had two issues as of yesterday. First, the share folder would not populate on my windows explorer tree. Second, the through-put was at about 7mbps. Third, I can't view the NAS using my SlingCatcher.

I called tech support and they did not call me back when I left a message after three days. I called back a second time and got a tech on the phone. He had me reboot the NAS and the share folder appeared in the windows explorer tree and the through-put went up to 27mbps. However, he knew nothing about the SlingCatcher issue. He placed me on hold for about 10 minutes and asked me to name the drive on the SlingCatcher as SMB:\\hs1\Video. The SlingCatcher went from reporting the NAS as invalid name to wrong username or password after adding the Video sub-directory after the root name of hs1. He told me he would have someone call me back on this issue and it has been over 7 days since that call.

Lastly, I added two Samsung HD103UJ 1 TB Spinpoint RAID drives to the NAS and the setup was not verbose at all. In fact, it first created a striped array out of the two Samsung HD103UJ drives which I did not want. I gave me no options and just defaulted to the striped array. Therefore, I deleted that array. Then I tried to create the second RAID 1 array and worse than before it started a migration which took 10 hours and merged all four drives into a RAID 5!!!! I did not expand the array and I would like to remove the two Samsung HD103UJ drives from the array and change the two Seagate 1.5 TB drives back to a RAID 1. Is that possible? There is no help in the manual for this or on the website.

Any help would be appreciated.

Clearly there are some bugs in the PSAM and SMARTNavi. Aside from being non-intuitive when selecting the array type, the software made the assumption that I wanted to migrate the two new Samsung HD103UJ drives into the RAID 1 and create a RAID 5 array from all four drives.

SirSwift

 

[ttran55]

did you use the WebPASM or SmartNavi to create the volumes?
The SmartNavi is too smart that it won't let me to select what drive to be part of the raid 1 if i have 3 in there.
I didn't have the 1.5TB but I had no problem creating raid0 or raid1 from 2x1TB and raid 0 from 750GB.
Delete all the volume and try again?

 

[frifri]

Hi,

I baught recently a Promise NS4600. I filled it with 4x 1,5 TB WD Caviar Green disks, set up as one RAID 5 Volume without spare. Iverfied that the FW is the latest available from the web page (02.00.0000.17, was shipped already). I set the Power Option to 30 min until disks go to sleep. T

The clients are one iMac and one Mac mini (both with Snow Leopard) and one PC with Windows XP, and one PC with SuSE Linux 10.3. Generally all clients mount the NS4600 using SMB, except the Linux box, which uses NFS, because of the file attributes. he LAN is 1 GB with a D-link switch. Only the Linux box has a 100Mb network port, all others have 1 Gb.

The main purpose for buying was to have all digital media in one central place, with RAID security, and available to all, + backup (including TM).

Unfortunately, I have several issues.
The most aggrevating one is:

- intermittent communication failures:
scenario: only one person playing Audio (mp3) over iTunes: it would play most of the time fine, but there are short pauses of a few seconds, every 2-3 minutes. The same, even worse happens with Video playback. However, vlc allows to specify large read ahead buffers even for "local" files, so by setting it to 10 -20 secs, I can overcome the pauses. I am not aware of a similar setting in iTunes

- intermittent performance brakdown
Normally the performance is quite good (around 350 Mbits/sec, roughly 1 GB/min). Ever so often, the NS4600 goes into slow motion mode. I cannot find any pattern. For example, I copy a 8 GB file to it, and first it goes happily for 6 GB in 5 mins, and then suddenly throughput drops to 30-40 Mbit/sec, a tenth of what it should be, and after the 7th GB is finished, which took 10 mins, suddenly speed picks up again, and the copy finishes in less than one additional minute. Note: I know who is accessing the device, and there were no simultaneous aesses during this time. Further note: The device is now 25% full, and this performance issue happens now much more frequently than in the beginning when I started to fill it up

- NFS issues
The performance issue (see above) happens very much more often with NFS

- AFP issues
I can't get AFP to work in any consistent way. The Macs see the NS4600 show up twice in the list of available shares, once as SMB and once as AFP share, but mounting over AFP almost never works. Once I managed to, but I don't know why it worked then. When mounted over AFP it seemed to have been more stable, but as this was no long time test, I am not sure. Yesterday I discovered that I can use SmartNAVI to mount AFP, but today it ceased to work

- TM issues
I can't get TM to work. I saw PromiseNASdude's flickr pictures, and my SmartNAVI is missing the check mark for mounting a volume with TM support. Nevertheles, I an select it in the TM, but TM fails creating the sparsebundle. I have to follow the various instructions in the Web to use any net disk for TM (creating the sparsebundle myself locally and copying it to the NS4600) and then TM starts working. However, due to the performance problem it never finished, but stopped sooner or later in the process. Yesterday I discovered the SmartNAVI possibility to mount a volume, and created a new one for TM, in this case I did not create the sparsebundle myself, but TM could not craete it. There are also some interesting warnings in the console:
Oct 18 22:13:59 marcus com.apple.backupd[1791]: Attempting to mount network destination using URL: afp://imac@192.168.101.39/TMBACKUP
Oct 18 22:13:59 marcus com.apple.backupd[1791]: Mounted network destination using URL: afp://imac@192.168.101.39/TMBACKUP
Oct 18 22:13:59 marcus com.apple.backupd[1791]: Warning: Destination /Volumes/TMBACKUP does not support TM Lock Stealing
Oct 18 22:13:59 marcus com.apple.backupd[1791]: Warning: Destination /Volumes/TMBACKUP does not support Server Reply Cache
Oct 18 22:13:59 marcus com.apple.backupd[1791]: Creating disk image /Volumes/TMBACKUP/Marcus iMac.sparsebundle
Oct 18 22:14:00 marcus hdiejectd[1849]: running
Oct 18 22:14:10 marcus hdiejectd[1849]: quitCheck: calling exit(0)
Oct 18 22:14:24 marcus com.apple.backupd[1791]: Error 45 creating backup disk image
Oct 18 22:14:24 marcus com.apple.backupd[1791]: Failed to create disk image
Oct 18 22:14:29 marcus com.apple.backupd[1791]: Backup failed with error: 20
Oct 18 22:14:30 marcus com.apple.backupd[1791]: Ejected Time Machine network volume.
Oct 18 22:14:42 marcus com.apple.backupd[1791]: Starting standard backup
Oct 18 22:14:42 marcus com.apple.backupd[1791]: Attempting to mount network destination using URL: afp://imac@192.168.101.39/TMBACKUP
Oct 18 22:14:42 marcus com.apple.backupd[1791]: Mounted network destination using URL: afp://imac@192.168.101.39/TMBACKUP
Oct 18 22:14:42 marcus com.apple.backupd[1791]: Warning: Destination /Volumes/TMBACKUP does not support TM Lock Stealing
Oct 18 22:14:42 marcus com.apple.backupd[1791]: Warning: Destination /Volumes/TMBACKUP does not support Server Reply Cache
Oct 18 22:14:42 marcus com.apple.backupd[1791]: Creating disk image /Volumes/TMBACKUP/Marcus iMac.sparsebundle
Oct 18 22:14:43 marcus hdiejectd[1874]: running
Oct 18 22:14:53 marcus hdiejectd[1874]: quitCheck: calling exit(0)
Oct 18 22:15:42 marcus com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.netauth.sysagent[1842]): Exited with exit code: 255
Oct 18 22:17:46 marcus com.apple.backupd[1791]: Error 45 creating backup disk image
Oct 18 22:17:46 marcus com.apple.backupd[1791]: Failed to create disk image
Oct 18 22:17:51 marcus com.apple.backupd[1791]: Backup failed with error: 20
Oct 18 22:17:51 marcus com.apple.backupd[1791]: Ejected Time Machine network volume.
Oct 18 22:19:14 marcus /Applications/System Preferences.app/Contents/MacOS/System Preferences[1641]: TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes is set to TRUE which allows selection of unsupported Time Machine network destination volumes. Use of an unsupported network destination can result in silent data corruption and complete loss of backup data under certain circumstances!

Note, the TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes I tried in both states.

So, in summary, I have to say, I am still very unhappy.

Further observation: I tried to detect anything unusual during the slow motion periods with tcpdump, but I could not detect anything, besides the packets arriving at a much slower speed. Further note: in order to exclude the switch or erroneus network traffic as problem, I made one experiment with the NS4600 attached directly to one client, but the behaviour was the same (intermittent pauses on playback)

Is there anyone who can give me some hints?
PromiseNASdude, I am addressing you personally also, as I have seen you active in various forums, if you read that, can you give me some hints?

regards,
Marcus

 

[ttran55]

Hi there, i also the NS4600 is not as solid as the 4300.
did you log in the NAS to see what it was doing during that time?
I have 3 issues with my NS4600
- Occasionally, writing speed drops down to 2MB/s and starts going back to normal 30MB/s later.

- I don't know if it's the NAS or my HDD but when it waked up from sleep mode, (two times) the NAS reported one of the disk had been removed and then it started to rebuild my RAID1 again. I turned off that feature and i haven't seen that again. I sent email to PromiseNASdude but I don't know if he has asked the engineers to look into it.
- BitTorrent client is not working. I am not able to enable it and then I accidentally deleted so I am waiting for the next release.
Turn off the sleep mode to see if it's working better.

 

[frifri]

How to log on?

Hi,

One of your issues is exactly what I am experiencing, that occasionally the speed drops dramatically. I'd love to log on and see what it is doing when it is slow. How do I do it? I found a report somewhere about the NS4300 but it seems to be not so easy to exploit that, and I don't know whether the same weakness is present in the NS4600.

 

[purestate]

Hi,

The main purpose for buying was to have all digital media in one central place, with RAID security, and available to all, + backup (including TM).

Unfortunately, I have several issues.
The most aggrevating one is:

- intermittent communication failures:

- intermittent performance brakdown

- AFP issues
I can't get AFP to work in any consistent way. The Macs see the NS4600 show up twice in the list of available shares, once as SMB and once as AFP share, but mounting over AFP almost never works. Once I managed to, but I don't know why it worked then. When mounted over AFP it seemed to have been more stable, but as this was no long time test, I am not sure. Yesterday I discovered that I can use SmartNAVI to mount AFP, but today it ceased to work

- TM issues


Note, the TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes I tried in both states.

So, in summary, I have to say, I am still very unhappy.

Is there anyone who can give me some hints?
PromiseNASdude, I am addressing you personally also, as I have seen you active in various forums, if you read that, can you give me some hints?

regards,
Marcus

Marcus et al.
I am in almost the exact same position.
Two 1.5 tb WDC green caviar disks in raid 1
same communication/performance problems
same intermittent dropouts
AFP exactly same issue. I haven't even risked TM backup because of dropout problems when copying files.
I use Sonos to access audio media and it regularly drops connection.
My contact with support has had one reply - how to reset admin password - nothing further.

I also would appreciate hints to get to the bottom of this.
Thanks
Jonathan

 

[frifri]

Tech Support

well, while the technical issues remain, I had a bit more luck with Tech support: they told me that in December there will be a new version of the firmware, and that the 1,5 GB Caviar green is not in the compatibility list. Turns out, that really there is the 350 GB, the 500 GB, the 750 GB, the 1 TB and the 2 TB, but the 1,5 GB is missing. Lame excuse, though.

Well, hoping for the firmware then...

 

[Unregistered]

well, while the technical issues remain, I had a bit more luck with Tech support: they told me that in December there will be a new version of the firmware, and that the 1,5 GB Caviar green is not in the compatibility list. Turns out, that really there is the 350 GB, the 500 GB, the 750 GB, the 1 TB and the 2 TB, but the 1,5 GB is missing. Lame excuse, though.

Well, hoping for the firmware then...

I noticed the 1.5 wasn't in the list (tech support didn't mention it) but webpasm reports them all the same and they are almost the same spec as the 2TB so I think that is a red herring. I too was told there was a new firmware coming and that it would fix snow leopard issues. trouble is I have the same drop in speed when copying from XP machine. still no response from tech support explaining that one.
still not happy and if there if firmware doesn'td appear or doesn't change anything I will be asking for money back as 4600 quite obviously doesn't do what it claims.
Jonathan

 

[Unregistered]

NS4600 is an abomination

I bought this device after reading a few early reviews. I even waited a couple of months for it to be released. What a mistake. In my experience it's a pile of crap. I'm sorry I bought it. It's full of bugs, it's extra features (e.g. DLNA don't work with my Xbox 360 or my Blu-ray DVD player). File permissions are atrocious, Timemachine support on Mac OS 10.6 is nonexistent ... the list goes on. The SmartNavi application is terrible. No updates to firmware in almost 6 mths - though periodically Tech Support says something is coming (Aug, Sept, Oct now Dec ... yet right). Does the company plan to improve a product that was rushed to market? Doesn't seem so. Their technical support is a joke also. Harsh words? Yes. Deserved? Yes. Buyer beware. There a lot of other choices out there in the NAS space - take your pick. Btw. I'm also using it with a Sonos setup but that's about all.

 

[giadzich]

Unable to connect

It's been up for only few days and all sudden it cannot get ip address from router nor either access it with static ip which was orinigal configured for.

Reboot couple times and all LEDs are blue and seems no problem but still can't connect.

I tried to reflash the firmware using Safe Mode. This is the only mode that NAS can obtain the ip address from router. Instruction says that firmware needs to be copied over to public folder (ramdisk). However, the ramdisk (when boot into safe mode) doesn't have enough disk space to hold 57.1MB firmware file. Tried to update the firmware from webpage but seems never success. Right after hitting OK button, it thows me a page "Page cannot be displayed". This is much I can get.

I called Tech Support (408 area code) and never get response back. The support is very bad if you already purchased this system. Tech just take down my name and number and told me someone will call me back in 30'. I'm waiting for than 2h and still no one has called me back. I called again and the same guy tone bla bla bla ... take my name and number again and told me someone will call me back in 15' but NOT GUARANTEEE.... What the heck going on ...

To whoever not buying this system yet, pleas stay away!