Promise Comments: Quieting Down the Promise SmartStor NS4300N and NS4300N Review!

[PromiseNasDude]

Welcome back PND!

I checked your profile and you have the instant notification option for threads enabled. Maybe your spam trap is snagging notifications?

Hi thiggins, I thought about our lame spam filter last night after posting. I will check once I am in the office later this morning.

Thanks.

 

[PromiseNasDude]

Hi Zach, in just about two weeks... Waiting for more inventory to arrive (and had to wait for your main RMA person to return for an extended vacation)... The first shipment arrived in December which I planned to use for the exchange but we actually ran out of Rev A sooner than expected.

I am working on the process now. I will post details in the next day or two (I am trying to get settled after being out of the office for several weeks).

Thanks.

BTW: Another part of the delay was to change the power supply fan. Thank "thiggins" for this. Our NS4600 (Next Gen) has NO power supply fan at all.

Thanks..

 

[zacharee]

BTW: Another part of the delay was to change the power supply fan. Thank "thiggins" for this. Our NS4600 (Next Gen) has NO power supply fan at all.

Thanks..

PromiseNasDude,

Thanks for your prompt response. I am pretty excited about a more quiet replacement. Other than the noisy fan, the NS4300 has been a solid performer for my average use (network storage).

Thanks again for keeping us in the loop.

 

[Herballizard]

Am and an ns4300 owner, currently I am trying to get the SmartNAVI working on windows 7 beta 64, while the software is able to install when trying to change default user or connect (open share folder) smartnavi seems to hang specifically on the login screen, I believe that the problem is what smartnavi reliance on Java Se.

Would the use of a direct mapped network path fix this issue or even the use of symbolic links fix it

In addition is there any way of removing the prompt for a password each and every time I try to access the share folders

 

[stormking]

pretty impressed

Hey promisenasdude
Thanks for your active participation and support in this forum. I've been evaluating several ideas for a home nas for a few months and have decided to try your NS2300N. I have a few simple questions that I'd like to ask:
What file system is installed on my drives?
Does Smartsync work by backing up data by comparing folder data to the previous backup? (sort of like a hash system) that's the best way I can describe it.
Also can you tell me where to find a list of distributors in usa. Tim kindly provided a few for us however I'm a penny pincher and like to shop around. It's not that the price listed was too high but I had a hard time convincing the wife that we needed one of these so any savings would be appreciated.

BTW I had looked at this product before but decided to go with the dlink 323 however the active development and generous support on this forum has changed my mind. Thanks

 

[PromiseNasDude]

Hey promisenasdude
Thanks for your active participation and support in this forum. I've been evaluating several ideas for a home nas for a few months and have decided to try your NS2300N. I have a few simple questions that I'd like to ask:
What file system is installed on my drives?
Does Smartsync work by backing up data by comparing folder data to the previous backup? (sort of like a hash system) that's the best way I can describe it.
Also can you tell me where to find a list of distributors in usa. Tim kindly provided a few for us however I'm a penny pincher and like to shop around. It's not that the price listed was too high but I had a hard time convincing the wife that we needed one of these so any savings would be appreciated.

BTW I had looked at this product before but decided to go with the dlink 323 however the active development and generous support on this forum has changed my mind. Thanks

Hey Storm, please see my answers below:

1. We use EXT3 File System under Linux 2.6 Kernel

2. Yes, we support incremental backup. The first backup is full copy and all subsequent backups are incremental ONLY.

3. As for Distrys and Retailers. Rev B started to ship to a few retailers at Christmas. Microcenter is the first to received Rev B as a new customer of ours. I need to check to see if the shipment has reached them and if they are on sale. Please send me an email as a reminder to follow up.

Speaking of Active Development, I will be posting SR6/SR2 (NS4300N and NS2300N) features soon.

 

[vwphaeton]

Latest firmware

I have formatted my drives again.,. Good thing for backups.. I have all 4 of my 1.5 tb drives in a single raid 0 array. I had to do this because the dlna and itunes plugins didnt work. I finally got everything working. It took about 13 hours for dlna to see the new media i was putting on the drive. Is there a way to force this like the itunes plugin that is new lets you check the drive.

Are there more plugins coming? Any beta plugins to test?

Anyone have a good suggestion for backing 6 TBs of data up. Right now im just doing external 1.5 TB spares that hold the music pix etc since most of the data is media and static.

thanks

 

[vido]

Hi PromiseNasDude,

I got my N4300N yesterday and I found out, that the fan really is louder than I expected. So I upgraded the box to the latest firmware release and tried to find the SmartFAN feature. But there is none. After a short search I came to this forum.

So, sadlly, I had to realise that I have got a Rev A NAS (shipped in the red box). Is there also a way to get the NAS exchanged in Austria? As I could find out the exchange program should begin in the next weeks?

Please let me know, if there is any chance for me.

Thanks and Greetings

 

[PromiseNasDude]

I have formatted my drives again.,. Good thing for backups.. I have all 4 of my 1.5 tb drives in a single raid 0 array. I had to do this because the dlna and itunes plugins didnt work. I finally got everything working. It took about 13 hours for dlna to see the new media i was putting on the drive. Is there a way to force this like the itunes plugin that is new lets you check the drive.

Are there more plugins coming? Any beta plugins to test?

Anyone have a good suggestion for backing 6 TBs of data up. Right now im just doing external 1.5 TB spares that hold the music pix etc since most of the data is media and static.

thanks

Please careful using those drives in RAID 0 as they do not support TLER. One or more drives could spend a good period of time in heroic recovery mode resulting in the array going offline.


We are launching a 4 drive DAS with USB, eSATA and Firewire 400 (and 800). You can have equal capacity in equal in DAS and NAS.

Enhancements for DLNA and BT plugin is coming.

Thanks

As for plugins new enhancements are coming DLNA and BT plugins.

For Plugins

 

[ciselkovy]

Dlna - missing media with various players

Hi PND and all,
I am using ns4300,r5,4x1T dsk, latest dlna,itunes,bt plugins.
I copied cca 400 gb media to \MUSIC, \PICTURES, \VIDEO folders.
I am using different clients/players, for ex. WMP on MCE Pc, vaio notebook with dlna, on vista or iphone with mediaplayer app. I am wondering, that the two latter do not show pictures and I can see only 13 foldedrs of video. Music is working fine on all types of players. Is the dlna standard working, or it is only by theory? Should i do something with dlna or wait for the new plugin? When it will be availaible?
The question 2, does Itunes/firefly support only music? Because as written above, itunes client does not show neither pictures neither video (no files, no folders, just empty list...)
Thx for yor replay.

Regards,
Ciselkovy

 

[sharkytm]

Hello PND, thanks for replying to this forum.
I have an old Rev.A NS4300N that I finally got going (4x1TB WD Green drives), and I can't access the web panel on the machine. I've tried the software, and tried accessing it through the web. I've got the IP address from the NAS Wizard software, but when I enter the IP, I never get to a login screen. The web browser just churns, and nothing ever happens. I've got no firewalls, tried this on 3 different machines, including a laptop that has no antivirus, firewall, or anything else installed. None of them can access the web access panel. Suggestions?

Well, now I've gotten the Wizard to map the y: drive, but its impossibly slow (45 minutes thusfar to copy a 177MB file), and I still can't get access to the web panel, or get SmartNavi to connect to it.

:edit: Finally, after leaving it on over the weekend, it seems to be up and running. No idea what happened, but its working now.

 

[alf]

raid5 problem

original post:

hello all,

i've got myself in a big trouble...

i had 1 raid5 with 3hdd and 1 spare

what happened:
the system wasn't working, i couldn't login in the web PASM, i couldn't login with telnet..
i used reset, to reset the admin password and still nothing. then i used the hard reset... after that i could use web pasm but the shares didn't work, and was saying filesystem errors... i tried telnet but root didn't work so i used engmode...

in that shell i saw pdtest and i thought it was a test...so i ran it... after running it i saw on the web that this command would erase the raid information... and now i see that i have 4 raid0...


would it be possible to recover somehow that raid5 or somehow the data from hdd ?


the solution:

i used r-studio which can create a virtual raid5 (without modifying the original hard drives) but you need to know the raid block size and what parity it uses.

so i found out that ns4300 makes raid5 with 32kb block size and left parity asynchronous (block 1-2-parity,3-parity-4,parity-5-6, etc.)

and now i have the raid5 working in r-studio and it needs to scan it for the filesystem.
and it found it correctly because the data wasn't deleted from the hard drives.

 

[vwphaeton]

Nas

Any ideas when we can expect some updates?

DLNA plugin is woefully behind. I cannot for the life of me reindex.

Is there a way to force this?

I dont want to install the mediatomb plugin, but this is getting silly.

BTW any ideas if it supports the new 2 TB drives?

 

[diggityDawg]

Could you please tell us when the NS4300N REV B will be released and when the promised Exchange Program will be fulfilled.

Hi Zach, in just about two weeks... I will post details in the next day or two (I am trying to get settled after being out of the office for several weeks).

Any update on this? I can't find the details you mentioned you would post...? Would really love to get some definitive info and dates so I can plan the down time and get the unit ready to ship back to you guys for replacement...

Thanks!

Eddie

 

[dannas]

NS2300N Joining AD

This has been covered somewhat here, but I still cannot get my ns2300n joined to my AD domain. I'm on version 01.05.0000.06 of the firmware which was supposed to fix AD integration. I think that I've tried every possible permutation of entering the Domain Name, Domain Controller, Adminstrator Name and Administrator Password. Is anyone else having trouble making this work? Has anyone successfully joined AD with the ns2300n?

Thanks

 

[y2k-inc]

Hi,

Is there a exchange program for NS2300n Rev.A users?

Hey Storm, please see my answers below:

1. We use EXT3 File System under Linux 2.6 Kernel

2. Yes, we support incremental backup. The first backup is full copy and all subsequent backups are incremental ONLY.

3. As for Distrys and Retailers. Rev B started to ship to a few retailers at Christmas. Microcenter is the first to received Rev B as a new customer of ours. I need to check to see if the shipment has reached them and if they are on sale. Please send me an email as a reminder to follow up.

Speaking of Active Development, I will be posting SR6/SR2 (NS4300N and NS2300N) features soon.

 

[DSA44]

Is my RAID 5 toast now?

Hello, this seems to be one of only two places where people talk about the Promise NS4300n. Mine seems to have crashed and I wonder if anyone has any hope for me:

SmartStor NS4300N running as RAID 5 (Striping with parity) (x4) with 4 Seagate 7200.11 1TB drives. The firmware is at 01.04.0000.11

Last night the drive in slot 2 had a BSL and Task timeout error resulting in the array status going critical, with a red light on the front panel by the drive and the lower status light red. The RAID status in the web interface was critical.

I pulled the drive out and replaced it with a new 1TB drive.

Now the array status has changed to Off Line, and the Action Status is Rebuilding, Background Activity is Running, and Progress is 100%. In fact, the progress went to 100% almost instantly. The front panel LED is amber by the drive slot, and the status light is red.

Looks like something else went wrong because even though this is a RAID 5 x4 setup, The Raid Status in the web interface shows my RAID volume as consisting of Disk 1, Disk 2, and Disk 4, and it is now listing Disk 3 as a Free Disk and not part of the array.

Disk 3 was never a Free Disk, and always part of the array. It did not fail, reports no errors, and its status light remains green

Also, the RAID volume reports File System Errors, and says to check the file system. From the manual, it looks like my RAID is completely hosed if it has that type of error.

I think the problem with the file system is obviously that Disk 3 somehow got marked as not part of the array, and so now I'm missing 25% of my recovery system, and that's why the Action Status of Rebuilding never changes.

I can't imagine how Disk 3 got this status. I've had to replace a drive (the same Disk 2 as a matter of fact) once before, and all that happened was the array went into Rebuild status overnight, but remained On Line and functional.

Is there any hope to recover the data on here? Some way to force Disk 3 and its data back into the array? I've got about 2TB of non-backed up data on there (DVD files to back up and serve as a media center), plus some back up volumes from other computers. The data won't kill me to lose, but it will certainly be considerably difficult and time consuming to re-rip all those DVDs.

Are there any diagnostic checks to take that I can try? I've rebooted the array a couple of times with no change.

Really disappointed with the NS4300n right now, it has failed to do exactly what I purchased it for: protect me from catastrophic data loss in the event of a single drive failure.

Any help or suggestions appreciated.

 

[thiggins]

PromiseNASDude has not been responding here. I suggest you contact Promise directly billyh@promise.com

 

[DSA44]

PromiseNASDude has not been responding here. I suggest you contact Promise directly billyh@promise.com

Thanks Tim. I've got a ticket in at promise e-support, but not sure if I'll hear any suggestions from them over the weekend. I was hoping another more skilled user might have suggestions. I'll shoot PromiseNASDude and email as you suggest.

 

[BuckoNZ]

NEW 'PROMISE' DLNA PLUGIN - v1.01.0000.06

I have been given approval by the Promise R&D team, via the New Zealand distributor of Promise products, to make publically available the latest DLNA plugin. At the time of writing, this release is NOT yet available on the Promise website.


Please follow the following proceedure:

- Disable current DLNA plugin you are using.
- Uninstall current DLNA plugin.
- Restart Promise SmartStor NAS device.
- Install this new DLNA plugin (v1.01.0000.06).
- Enable the plugin.

Please allow at least 6 hours for the initial indexing process to complete. Enjoy.

To see my full investigation into this issue, please check out the following thread, on the official PS3 Forums:
http://community.eu.playstation.com...ard.id=bANZ_announcements_help&thread.id=1552

(As I am payng for the hosting of this plugin, I will remove it should my tarffic cap exceed).

Regards,
BuckoNZ