After much thought and search, I finally broke down and bought this unit to replace my nightmare - Javelin S4, basically looking for a really cheap ultra-low power server for DLNA (movies, music, pictures). I also have an old Netgear-Readynas that’s my daily work horse with Raid 1 containing stuff for my backup queue.
I’ve encountered the ‘500 internal server error ‘and regular unresponsive behavior described in this forum. The transfer speed is inconsistent ranging from 12-27MB/sec on an unloaded network. All connections are on a Cat6 Gb connection. I am also on the latest firmware. CPU is regularly maxed out, hopefully this will calm down as the nas gets done with whatever it needs to get done.
One thing I have not noticed being asked here is why does Twonky insist on sending user experience to home base? I turn this off every time and it reactivates itself….very annoying.
Secondly, as a feature request, can WD add a feature to ignore bad drives? Like I said, nothing on this server (JBOD mode) is going to be critical….just entertainment files…all files are redundant on an offline remote backup unit? I’m going to run these drives to death.
Finally, can WD add the ability to transfer files from NAS to NAS without going through the FTP function? (…come to think of it, I think my readyNas can do this….let me check….)
The feature requests are not top priority, but the server hang-ups and other stuff really must be fixed, WD has got 3 weeks to fix these issues…or this guy is going back to Frys’.
Thanks for the suggestion. Actually all my hardwired equipment are on Static IP except my desktop PC, and all are behind a firewall router.
Some more encounters I should mention…
I’ve read about the oddities of how this NAS interacts with USB drives. When I connect a USB drive (NTFS), the NAS will read some directories as empty while other directories are populated with my files. Freaked out, I reconnected the USB drive to the PC, and all directories and files are intact?!?! bleep?
I should also mention that this is my second unit. The first unit fan kept stopping and the unit would shut down. The first time I turned on the unit, the status message kept saying the unit was operating below normal temperatures….I’m in Texas….it’s been nice and warm here the last week or so.
Finally the Server Naming system does not permit the use of underscore…why not? My ReadyNas allows me to throw just about any character at it….confused….
Has anyone tested hooking up a powered USB HUB to the back to see if we can run a tree of drives to it? That would be cool. Can we hook up other stuff to the USB? That would be great.
Finally the Server Naming system does not permit the use of underscore…why not? My ReadyNas allows me to throw just about any character at it….confused….
There might be other resources avaiable, but this might help:
Complying with Name Restrictions for Hosts and Domains:
Although you can create long, complex DNS names, it is recommended that you create shorter, user-friendly names.
According to RFC 1123, the only characters that can be used in DNS labels are “A” to “Z”, “a” to “z”, “0” to “9”, and the hyphen (“-”). (The period [.] is also used in DNS names, but only between DNS labels and at the end of an FQDN.) Many DNS servers, including Windows NT 4.0–based DNS servers, follow RFC 1123.
Thanks for the article, so this NAS also needs NetBIOS….toss that into the list of features to add on. Really…progress should not be about removal of features, rather it should be about additional flexibility and improved ability… This is a step backwards.
Yes, I have uPNP enabled… But I don’t think that will help because my ReadyNAS allows this with or without uPNP enabled on the router…and everyone else on the net can see it just fine…except. Thanks…
Well… I tried to install another drive and it wouldn’t engage for some reason. I later discovered…after hours that there’s a rubber bumper that pushes the drive to engage… My rubber bumper fell off and had to go fishing for it. The rubber bumper is just double side sticky on the drive door…so watch out for that bumper…it’s easily missed, and a wrong bump into this bumper could knock it off the drive door.
This unit finally killed off my two old drives…oh well…
I still can’t see all my files on the ntfs USB drive…yet all the files show up just fine on the other nas units and when hooked up to the PC.
I also tried to copy files from the USB drive to the ex4 and discovered that only a partial copy was performed…so I was missing files…check and double check when moving files around on this unit…
Still haven’t figured out why the twonky keeps wanting to send my user experience back home…unchecked it, it kept rechecking itself…so I’m going to block this unit from accessing the net. I think that basically kills off the cloud/remote access functionality for me…
I’ll bump this up. Down to the wire now. Issues must be resolved very soon or this thing is going back. I’ll post here when the NAS is safely out of my hands and back in the consumer pool of failed devices to be picked up by some other unsuspecting consumer. I suggest that all of us post here when we finally give up and move on. I like this thread in that it has a proven solution (a green check mark) and may give hope to all others that there is a solution to all the problems we are encountering - just return it and get your money back.
R