NASLite Network Attached Storage

Hey all

I'm hoping someone here can help me as this company is, as usual, ignoring all requests for technical support.

I've had this software for about 4 or 5 months now and it has worked fine since day one. However, when I turned on my NAS the other day I suddenly have a problem.

When my NAS finishes logging in and POSTing it normally gives me aset of beeps, 3 high 3 low, to say it is ready. Now hoever once it has done this it continues to to do these 6 beeps every 60 seconds exactly.

It is driving me nuts and I have had to turn the NAS off! Can someone please shed some light? What does this mean?

I have not altered the configuration of teh NAS in any way at all, btw.

Cheers

H

Hello Howard,

Checking your email address you used to register doesn't show up in our registered users database. Could you please send us a note with the email address you used to contact us, that we supposedly never responded too. Since we keep every email sent to us, I'd like to see what we didn't respond too.



Page 17 of the manual should answer your question regarding the beeps.

You are entirely correct. I'll address your request about emails later.

I have seen the page you reference in the manual but it is no real help. The beeps apparently mean that a disk has failed SMART self assessment. Great, but WHICH disk and how do I fix it?
If you think I am letting this thing sit here beeping every 60 seconds while it performs 5 sets of 90 minute long SMART checking you are sorely mistaken.

I need more information so that I can remedy whatever this problem is.

H

Look at the syslog in the html pages, there should be errors in there to which drive it is. And in some instances looking at individual drive pages might show smart failed. Post your syslog if you need help to determine what drive it may be.

Oh, cross referencing your IP address you posted with, I believe this is the email we didn't respond too. Sometimes requests for information that is right on the web page gets put on the backburner for more serious issues like the one your currently having


-------------------

realname: Howard
organization: N/A
email: xxxx.xxxxxxx@dsl.pipex.com
comments: Hi, very interested in this product. I think it will meet my needs perfectly!

Just one question: Does the software support such things as PCI SATA cards as well as native PATA/SATA drives?

Thanks for you time
media: Google, as ever!

------ eviromental variables ------
REMOTE HOST:
REMOTE ADDR: 81.86.xxx.xx
REMOTE USER:
BROWSER: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.4) Gecko/20070515 Firefox/2.0.0.4

Defensive and smugly patronising: a great combination.
I didn't answer as I knew that if you were half way useful you could do what you just did. Good to see you handled it well and didn't gloat and swagger.

I had already found out what drive supposedly has issues using the method you mentioned, though this was not exactly the most logical way for the information to be retrieved.

There is no evidence that the disk in question is failing beyond the fact that this software has decided that this is the case. I am now furiously trying to backup the data off it but it is now doing everything so slowly I may just give up. The thought of over 8 hours of this idiotic machine beeping like a fool while it transfers data at a speed that would make floppy disks look good is making me lose it.

I have seen some drives report incorrect smart status, or so I would have thought, but probably the safe thing to do is back up everything and low level test the drive. You can also turn smart off while your backing it up to avoid the beep.







I thought it was important to address your concern about no response (for which I take seriously), and give you an answer to why it wasn't. I think I accomplished that, I'm deeply sorry if you feel this is defensive or smug, but it is the truth.

Unplug the internal speaker if the beeping is driving you insane Some motherboards also have a jumper to disable the internal speaker.

Turning smart monitoring off in NASLite, reboot and it will stop it. NASLite is doing the beep beep beeping.

Well, I will have to admit to having my panties well and truly in a bunch this morning, so I apologise too. My initial statement was indeed wildly inaccurate.

My NAS has just been driving me crazy lately! Every few reboots the disk I have mounted as "Disk 0" would just fail and would not give me a reason, leasdt not a helpful one. Sure it would tell me that the SMART checks had failed so it did not mount it, but when I manually asked it to run the SMART checks, it passed evey time!

This was, to say the least, infuriating me, particularly as that drive has some 15,000+ MP3s on it that I had no wish to lose or to move.

Anway, when it started its beeping again this morning I finally found the problem. This time when I manually scanned the drive it showed up a dozen bad sectors on the disk. This is clearly the cause of the issue. I have managed to get all relevant data off (least I will in 2 hours when the file transfer completes) but I have another question for anyone who cares to pitch in:
If I do full hardware scan of this disk, once empty and formatted, so that it can identify an label the bad sectors, will I still be able to use it, or is the SMART warning a sign that the disk is toast?

Howard,

Reading you posts drove my blood pressure up dude. What do you think SMART is for? It did it's job detecting a problem with your drive. Naslite in turn notified you there is a problem. So, from where I stand, things worked as designed except, armed with a hefty dose of ignorance, you chose to crawl up Ralphs behind bitching.

Really dude, it's in the manual. What the alarms mean, what SMART does and how to disable it. But that does require some effort on your part. It's obviously easier to fault SE instead of fixing your broken shit.



You have my respect once again.

Simplistic rule of thumm - bad sectors = bin it.

Your raised blood pressure was due to your worry about losing the data. If the data is worth that much worry, the drive is worth replacing.

Hope you get all the data off successfully.

After formatting, try a complete check and repair while checking for bad blocks. That may take some time but will mark all deficient sectors and hopefully allow you to use the drive again. I'd probably not dedicate important data to that drive however. If SMART complains it's probably on it's way. I'd take NickC's advice and look into another drive if your finances allow.

Hope that helps.

Replacing the drives is not a problem. There is .75 T sat on my desk here if needed and there is already .6T still free in the NAS as it is.

Dimension, I don't recall asking for your respect I "crawled up Ralphs behind", as you put it, because I did not appreciate his tone. My opinion only and we had dealt with that. I was complaining because a system that sits there and beeps is NOT USEFUL. It has 2 perfectly good interfaces: why could it not use them to tell me of a problem? Relying on audible, encoded clues to diagnose faults? What is this, the fucking 80's?! And seriosuly, mate, don't lecture random strangers about how techied up you think you are: you will never win an online fight but you will end up being a troll

Nick/Tony - You are right, the drive needs binning. I am just concerned as to why this has happened and flatly my suspisions were resting on NASLITE having done something to the drive. Now, slap me around all you want, but while the drive is old (it's a 160G Spinpoint, nothing shiny) it was still sealed in its static bag until the start of this year when I purchased this software and has not received that much hammer. Like I say, I am just suspiscious is all, not actively pointing fingers, I am just still not 100% convinced about this software as I have various niggles with it.

I'll do a full scan on it and then see what the SMART report says after the bad sectors are analysed: you never know

Definitely a lesson: important data needs a twin, it is called "backup".

Another thing I would try before the full check Tony suggests: download the manufacturer's diagnostic and run (usually off a bootable CD) a full check using that.

I have also had some drives reporting failed SMART. They (in some instances) have continued to run, but I never ever let data I could not afford to lose back on them.

Glad to see the blood pressure is back down. "backups" have a way of helping with that, too.
Georg

Totally agreed, a backup of all this data would be helpful. However, my NAS is currently set up with just shy of 2T of space and has about 1.4T used. I would need another 2T NAS to back this all up and as I already have 5 PCs besides the NAS, I don't really fancy that. The NAS was supposed to be my backup as it is anyway!
I will samply have to replace all the drives in thsi current NAS with pairs of MUCH bigger drives and then see if I can implement a mirror set up, it's the only way I'll be safe really...