I am excited about all the much needed upgrades to the software, Twonky 5, better itunes support, timemachine support, ect… but i certinally do not want to be one of the data loss victims due to the update.
I had previously downloaded it and luckily i decided to read the forums before i installed it. For a while after that i had the option to install the upgrade (which I was smart not to do) but now it has gone away and when i check for updates it says my aug 2009 is the latest version.
So my question is 1> did the update actually get pulled until which time WD can work out the bugs? 2> has the bug been worked out? 3> or am in some kind of dead zone with my sharespace where i can not install the new bios because I already downloaded it, but can not install it because i rebooted my system before I installed
First of all, you can’t download the firmware update for the Sharespace. It’s done internally over the internet to the Sharespace. So, I wouldn’t trust anything you downloaded to try and update the Sharespace.
Secondly, yes, the firmware got pulled, and when it’s fixed it will become available for update again, but internally and only to the Sharespace.
"First of all, you can’t download the firmware update for the Sharespace. It’s done internally over the internet to the Sharespace. So, I wouldn’t trust anything you downloaded to try and update the Sharespace. " - No kidding
As an owner of the product I am very familiar with how to log into the and download the updates. After logging into the system management page and selecting advanced Options you are able to access the menu item that allows you to check for update, download update, and finally install the update. It is a 3 step process and the update will NOT install automatically after download.
But thank you for answering the question, i will look forward to the release.
I have been a big supporter of WD products for a very long time and after reading about a lot of different NAS solutions I decided the WD Sharespace had a good set of features and was one of the best options (at the time) so I went and bought a 4TB version (running RAID5).
Unfortunately as a MAC user the Sharespace turned out to be one of my most disappointing purchases of 2009!!! The very limited support for Mac is ridiculous!! Firstly no support for Mac Journaled HFS+ and then no time machine support BIG Disappointment!
Some of the other issues include the fact that I had to pull iTunes back onto my direct RAID due to the slow communication with the Sharespace, and then having to connect to the shares via SMB is just painful and transfer rates are ridiculously slow (even between the shares).
I was on the verge of selling it off and starting again until I saw this update which includes some much needed feature enhancements however when I read a bit more I was further disappointed to find it had been pulled…even worse that some users have lost their data???
Maybe i have it configured incorrectly or am doing somehting wrong here? but the current performance is way below acceptable…(is there another way of connecting to it from the Mac? I haven’t seen anything in the manual)
Also would like to register my interest in the 2.2.8 firmware update…! We run AD 2008 and it would save us a LOT of headaches to have the compatibility. If anyone is able to provide the firmware via email for manual installation, please send me a PM - or alternatively can you guys let us know if it’s going to be days or weeks or months until this update gets released - just a rough idea?
I need to plan a lot of stuff around this problem - if it’s going to be weeks, I can wait, but if it’s going to be months then i’m going to have to find better solutions.
For all of you that did not get the chance to install the update: please consider yourselves very very lucky. I made the stupid mistake of reading the release notes and went ahead and installed the update on May 5th on a 8 Tb ShareSpace which contains approximately 5 Tb of multimedia libraries and other important data files. The result is as follows:
a. Connections to Windows machines are now read only and data transfer speeds are about 1/3 (about 4-5 Mb/s).
b. Connections to Macs with SMB are also read only with the same data transfer speed degradation.
c. Connections to Macs with AFP are read write with even worse data transfer speeds.
It is now more than 60 days - there is nothing repeat nothing officially said by the company. I became an expert on SSH, the underlying os, and a bunch of other plumbing and spent hours on community recommendations. Then I bought the competition’s hardware and transferred 5 Tb over a week !
Summary: do not buy this hardware - its service and support organization is at par with communist era Soviet dishwasher factory customer service. And please do not expect a better firmware release - with this mindset it is next to impossible.
yeah it is seemingly apparent that trusting my company data to WD products is not a smart move. I will likely have to reinvest in better supported hardware for our data.
and for WD, you need to learn this simple lesson (all companies do) its not that you had a problem that upsets people can costs you brand cache, its your attitude and how you react that burns bridges.
Come on WD, get your act together and make an effort to contribute to this “community”! I too am a victim of this new firmware - I have experienced significantly reduced performance, data corruption, shares mysteriously becoming inaccessible. If there is any humanity remaining behind the products, money, and greed, you still have the oppurtunity to remedy this situation by responding to the concerns of your loyal customers in a constructive manner. If we put our lives on your products, we put our trust in your company - that trust has been betrayed.
Let’s keep this topic at the top. It has been over a month with no fix. A lot of less technical users are completely stranded without access to data. Western Digital clearly doesn’t consider this to be important.
I notice plenty of work is being done on making sure people can watch tv and movies on other WD products which is clearly far more important than being able to access what is to a lot of people critical data storage.
That is the heart of the point… home users seem to be more valued to the small business user… and we are spending more for our solutions.its sad to think that if you had bought a consumer NAS from WD you would be in better shape then you are now
Ah back to Monday again… 42 Days since someone posted an issue with the new firmware although perhaps others had also posted earlier. Now even if you can’t fix the bugs in the newer firmware in over a month. Surely… Surely… you can offer a downgrade option to the last known good firmware to at least help people who haven’t been able to access their data for over a month…
No, it wouldn’t The “firmware” is actually based on Linux which has a lot of piece-parts. When you got the ShareSpace all the basic parts, including kernel and supporting libraries, scripts and binaries were present. Each upgrade only applied parts that were changed. To go back to the previous firmware, you would have to literally wipe the installation and apply a complete image which would also wipe your specific config changes unless they included a way to save those off and restore. It’s really too risky to attempt going backwards. If you miss some critical file(s) or they have to re-install the kernel, you could really “brick” your ShareSpace (if it isn’t already “bricked.” If you are Linux-literate, login to the ShareSpace with ssh and take a look.
I’m pretty sure there was a kernel change to support AppleShare and other things. It also looks like the driver for USB support for UPSes wasn’t enabled or loaded properly and that requires a kernel build (not 100% sure, but the Linux aliases describe how UPS support works and why there are errors when attempting to contact the UPS).
A downgrade is possible but not simple. It would require restoring anything that changed and possibly some conversion scripts if any data formats had changed. An older version of the kernel wouldn’t be a problem. But with WD’s lack of attention to detail on that last upgrade, my confidence in them assembling a reliable downgrade would be low. Maybe this is what we should expect now with off-shore, out sourced software development?
Downgrading is completely possible. Sure someone at Western Digital may actually have to spend a whole 1 day writing some scripts to maintain user settings and config, and then just maybe someone else might spend a day testing the process which leaves them 40+ days of what exactly are you doing WD?
Nobody is re-inventing the wheel here. You have a controlled hardware environment with limited and specific configuration options (for most users). A downgrade is just as easy as an upgrade. So far we have neither.
I’ve been a software tester for many years and have found that changes to software are never as simple as they sound. Any release of software has to go through the entire suite of test plans. Whether it’s an upgrade or a downgrade, it has to go through the same tests or you increase the risk of the release. Even then, as you’ve found out, no matter how much you test, there are certain user configurations you just can’t anticipate until it’s too late.
In this case, since WD normally doesn’t release downgrades, fixing this through a downgrade would be even riskier than fixing it through an upgrade. It would need even more testing to ensure that nothing goes wrong that could cause a true loss of data.
So, even though it’s possible to release a downgrade, WD would have to delay the upgrade to focus on the downgrade. This means the thousands of people who haven’t upgraded yet will have to wait even longer to get all the other fixes so the dozens of people who have upraded can get a downgrade. Granted, fixing this problem is more critical than releasing the other fixes, but since the downgrade would mean starting the entire development process over, it would actually take longer to release a downgrade at this point than a fixed upgrade.
You might feel a little better knowing the data is not lost; you just can’t get to it through Samba. While waiting for a fix, you should be able to get to your files through FTP (though you may have to enable it in the admin web pages). With Windows Vista and 7, you can even create a shortcut so you can access the FTP server through Windows Explorer. There are also third-party solutions in Windows XP to integrate an FTP server into the shell, but I haven’t tested any personally to know which ones would work.
Sorry NAS-T but this is a little over dramatic. Obviously as a software tester you feel your role is very important (and it is) but this is not new software, this is just a unique configuration of existing already tested software. WD didn’t write the samba daemon they just got the config wrong. And as for downgrading, putting out an emergency downgrade for those affected is very simple, they don’t even need to re-flash new firmware. There are many options available to them, this is more than demonstrated by the fact that users who previously have never used a shell in their lives have been able to configure optware packages and set up an entirely new instance of samba to solve at least part of the problems introduced in this firmware. If community members are able to fix these problems or at least patch them and easily advise others how to do so, then Western Digital who have all the engineers and support infrastructure should be able to provide a better solution in a quicker time than any of us.
Sorry NAS-T but this is a little over dramatic. Obviously as a software tester you feel your role is very important (and it is) but this is not new software, this is just a unique configuration of existing already tested software. WD didn’t write the samba daemon they just got the config wrong. And as for downgrading, putting out an emergency downgrade for those affected is very simple, they don’t even need to re-flash new firmware. There are many options available to them, this is more than demonstrated by the fact that users who previously have never used a shell in their lives have been able to configure optware packages and set up an entirely new instance of samba to solve at least part of the problems introduced in this firmware. If community members are able to fix these problems or at least patch them and easily advise others how to do so, then Western Digital who have all the engineers and support infrastructure should be able to provide a better solution in a quicker time than any of us.
Couldnt agree more!!! hopefully some of their highly-paid engineers would come to the rescue soon…hhhhmphhh…
Eleven weeks have passed since customers started complaining to WD about a software upgrade that had several bugs. Does anyone have any idea when we will hear about a new upgrade ?
