NASLite Network Attached Storage

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PostPosted: Thu May 11, 2006 11:57 pm 
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Posts: 7
Hi,

With my credit card in hand, I paid for and downloaded NASLite+ yesterday......

Setup was relatively simple. Had a bit of problem getting pinging the NASLite server but that was a mistake on my part with the IP address. When I got the PC (running windows XP) to recognize the server, it was quite exciting to see how easy it was to get the system up and running.

I then did some benchmark testing.

PC
P4 2.8GHz (Gigabyte 865G motherboard) with 512MB RAM, onboard 10/100NIC, 200GB Segate SATA Drive, running windows XP professional

NASLite Server
PIII 733MHz (Intel D815EEA motherboard) with 384MB RAM, onboard 10/100NIC. There were 2 HD on the NASLite Server

20GB Segate
Disk-1 Hardware (master)
* ST320423A, ATA DISK drive
* attached ide-disk driver.
* host protected area => 1
* 40011300 sectors (20486 MB) w/512KiB Cache, CHS=2490/255/63, UDMA(66)

Disk-2 Hardware (slave)
* ST3200822A, ATA DISK drive
* attached ide-disk driver.
* host protected area => 1
* 390721968 sectors (200050 MB) w/8192KiB Cache, CHS=24321/255/63, UDMA(100)

Both computers were connected to a D-Link DI704UP broadband router

To test the NAS, I transfered 9.9GBytes (mixture of small and large files (~880MB)) between both systems

With Disk-1
Performance results Time Tfr rate
from PC to NASLite 18:36 8.9MByte
from NASLite to PC 24:54 6.7MByte

which is relative consistant with the figures posted to the forums.

However, with Disk-2, I got the following...
Performance results Time Tfr rate
from PC to NASLite 22:00 7.5MByte
from NASLite to PC Killed the tfr

The network utilisation showed less than 2.5% activity over a long period and everything kinda slowed down on NASLite, ie. when I checked the status info page (took a long time to display).

I have done this tranfer testing with each individual HD and both HD in the NAS server with the same results.

1. Has anyone come across this type of problem before or have any idea what may be causing this?
2. Also, given the M/B supports ATA/100 and the 2nd Segate is an ATA-100 / 7,200rpm drive, one would have thought the write transfer rate would be faster than the 20GB ATA-66/5,400 drive. Interesting......

thanks for your help.


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PostPosted: Fri May 12, 2006 10:24 am 
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Joined: Wed Jan 04, 2006 2:18 pm
Posts: 172
Location: North Carolina, USA
Try turning off SMART testing and run your benchmark again. You can also use the diskwriggler program to easily get performance numbers.


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PostPosted: Fri May 12, 2006 10:39 am 
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Joined: Tue Jul 13, 2004 4:11 pm
Posts: 1771
Location: Server Elements
Quote:
1. Has anyone come across this type of problem before or have any idea what may be causing this?
2. Also, given the M/B supports ATA/100 and the 2nd Segate is an ATA-100 / 7,200rpm drive, one would have thought the write transfer rate would be faster than the 20GB ATA-66/5,400 drive. Interesting....

Are there any abnormalities in the system log info page after the problem occurs. The problem can be caused by many reasons, so use that as your first source for clues. If the kernel or daemons are unaware of any problems, then it may be other hardware or a network issue, but normally, the syslog will show anomalies.

The point you made about “slow info page transfers” leads me to believe that the issue may not be the drive since info pages are generated in RAM and are read from RAM via the NIC. No disk dependency at all other than during generation.

Just some observations based on your post ;-)


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PostPosted: Fri May 12, 2006 3:07 pm 
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Joined: Wed May 10, 2006 3:26 pm
Posts: 7
Hi Tony,

I think the “slow info page transfers” may have been a red herring as I tried it again this morning and it seems to be responding normally now.

I reformated the 200GB disk this morning and retested again.

The 20GB Segate works fine - good tfr rates.

The (slow) disk transfers from the 200GB Segate still has not changed after a reformat.

Transfer of a 880MByte file from PC to NASLite takes ~ 1 min 30sec
Transfer of a 880MByte file from NASLite to PC takes > 1hr.

These is what have been reported NASLite+/info.
Any ideas, suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks.

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

Operating System

Linux 2.4.27.NASLite #6 Wed Oct 12 12:16:31 UTC 2005 i686

Uptime

06:45:01 up 13 min, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00

Processor (CPU)

vendor_id : GenuineIntel
model name : Pentium III (Coppermine)
cpu MHz : 730.977
cache size : 256 KB
bogomips : 1458.17

Memory

total used free shared buffers
Mem: 385428 18132 367296 0 220

Disks

Filesystem Size Used Available Use% Device
System 7.7M 3.7M 4.1M 47% RAM Disk
Storage Area 18.8G 800.2M 18.0G 4% NAS Disk-1
Storage Area 183.4G 800.2M 182.6G 0% NAS Disk-2

Network Interface

e100: Intel(R) PRO/100 Network Connection
Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:D0:B7:BC:CB:79
inet addr:192.168.0.218 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:453 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:505 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:62662 (61.1 KiB) TX bytes:173857 (169.7 KiB)
Interrupt:11 Base address:0xdf00 Memory:ff8ff000-ff8ff038

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

Disk-1 Initialization Messages

1. Checking for Disk-1
2. Found Disk-1 partition
3. Verified Disk-1 filesystem
4. Attempting to mount Disk-1 filesystem
5. Disk-1 filesystem mounted successfully

Disk-1 Hardware

* ST320423A, ATA DISK drive
* attached ide-disk driver.
* host protected area => 1
* 40011300 sectors (20486 MB) w/512KiB Cache, CHS=2490/255/63, UDMA(66)

NOTE: Disk-1 is installed and available for use.

Disk-1 S.M.A.R.T. Status

S.M.A.R.T. Status is Currently Disabled.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Disk-2 Initialization Messages

1. Checking for Disk-2
2. Found Disk-2 partition
3. Verified Disk-2 filesystem
4. Attempting to mount Disk-2 filesystem
5. Disk-2 filesystem mounted successfully

Disk-2 Hardware

* ST3200822A, ATA DISK drive
* attached ide-disk driver.
* host protected area => 1
* 390721968 sectors (200050 MB) w/8192KiB Cache, CHS=24321/255/63, UDMA(100)

NOTE: Disk-2 is installed and available for use.

Disk-2 S.M.A.R.T. Status

S.M.A.R.T. Status is Currently Disabled.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Server System Log

* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager syslog.info syslogd started: BusyBox v1.01 (2005.10.01-00:52+0000)
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager daemon.info init: ^MStarting pid 343, console /dev/null: '/sbin/klogd'
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.notice kernel: klogd started: BusyBox v1.01 (2005.10.01-00:52+0000)
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: Linux version 2.4.27.NASLite (root@TZT) (gcc version 3.3.6) #6 Wed Oct 12 12:16:31 UTC 2005
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009fc00 (usable)
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: BIOS-e820: 000000000009fc00 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: BIOS-e820: 00000000000e0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 0000000017ec0000 (usable)
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: BIOS-e820: 0000000017ec0000 - 0000000017ef8000 (ACPI data)
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: BIOS-e820: 0000000017ef8000 - 0000000017f00000 (ACPI NVS)
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: BIOS-e820: 00000000ffb80000 - 00000000ffc00000 (reserved)
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: BIOS-e820: 00000000fff00000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.notice kernel: 382MB LOWMEM available.
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: On node 0 totalpages: 97984
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: zone(0): 4096 pages.
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: zone(1): 93888 pages.
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: zone(2): 0 pages.
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: Kernel command line: rw root=/dev/ram0 initrd=NASLite.02 BOOT_IMAGE=naslite.01
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: Initializing CPU#0
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: Detected 730.977 MHz processor.
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: Console: colour VGA+ 80x25
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: Calibrating delay loop... 1458.17 BogoMIPS
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: Memory: 383440k/391936k available (1313k kernel code, 8108k reserved, 372k data, 496k init, 0k highmem)
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: Dentry cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 7, 524288 bytes)
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: Inode cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: Mount cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: Buffer cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: Page-cache hash table entries: 131072 (order: 7, 524288 bytes)
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: CPU: L1 I cache: 16K, L1 D cache: 16K
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: CPU: L2 cache: 256K
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.debug kernel: CPU: After generic, caps: 0383f9ff 00000000 00000000 00000000
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.debug kernel: CPU: Common caps: 0383f9ff 00000000 00000000 00000000
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: CPU: Intel Pentium III (Coppermine) stepping 03
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done.
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: Enabling unmasked SIMD FPU exception support... done.
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: Checking for popad bug... OK.
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfda95, last bus=1
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: PCI: Using configuration type 1
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: PCI: Probing PCI hardware
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 00)
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: Transparent bridge - PCI device 8086:244e
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: PCI: Using IRQ router PIIX/ICH [8086/2440] at 00:1f.0
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: Initializing RT netlink socket
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: Starting kswapd
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: devfs: v1.12c (20020818) Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: devfs: boot_options: 0x1
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: Installing knfsd (copyright (C) 1996 okir@monad.swb.de).
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: pty: 256 Unix98 ptys configured
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: Real Time Clock Driver v1.10f
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 8196K size 1024 blocksize
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: loop: loaded (max 8 devices)
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Driver - version 5.2.52-k3
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: Copyright (c) 1999-2004 Intel Corporation.
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: dgrs: SW=$Id: dgrs.c,v 1.13 2000/06/06 04:07:00 rick Exp $ FW=Build 550 11/16/96 03:45:15
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: FW Version=$Version$
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: pcnet32.c:v1.30c 05.25.2004 tsbogend@alpha.franken.de
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: ThunderLAN driver v1.15
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: TLAN: 0 devices installed, PCI: 0 EISA: 0
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: dmfe: Davicom DM9xxx net driver, version 1.36.4 (2002-01-17)
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: ns83820.c: National Semiconductor DP83820 10/100/1000 driver.
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.notice kernel: Intel(R) PRO/100 Network Driver - version 2.3.43-k1
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.notice kernel: Copyright (c) 2004 Intel Corporation
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.notice kernel:
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: PCI: Found IRQ 11 for device 01:08.0
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.debug kernel: e100: selftest OK.
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.notice kernel: e100: eth0: Intel(R) PRO/100 Network Connection
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.notice kernel: Hardware receive checksums enabled
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.notice kernel:
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: sk98lin: No adapter found.
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: forcedeth.c: Reverse Engineered nForce ethernet driver. Version 0.25.
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00beta4-2.4
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: ICH2: IDE controller at PCI slot 00:1f.1
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: ICH2: chipset revision 1
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: ICH2: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: ide0: BM-DMA at 0xffa0-0xffa7, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:DMA
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: ide1: BM-DMA at 0xffa8-0xffaf, BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:pio
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: hda: ST320423A, ATA DISK drive
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: hdb: ST3200822A, ATA DISK drive
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: blk: queue c0349280, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: blk: queue c03493bc, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: >hdc: CD-ROM 52X/AKH, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: hda: attached ide-disk driver.
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: hda: host protected area => 1
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: hda: 40011300 sectors (20486 MB) w/512KiB Cache, CHS=2490/255/63, UDMA(66)
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: hdb: attached ide-disk driver.
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: hdb: host protected area => 1
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: hdb: 390721968 sectors (200050 MB) w/8192KiB Cache, CHS=24321/255/63, UDMA(100)
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: Partition check:
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0: p1
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0: p1
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: IP: routing cache hash table of 4096 buckets, 32Kbytes
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: TCP: Hash tables configured (established 32768 bind 65536)
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0.
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.notice kernel: RAMDISK: NASLite file system found at block 0
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: ...<6>Freeing initrd memory: 1490k freed
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: EXT2-fs warning: checktime reached, running e2fsck is recommended
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.warn kernel: VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: Mounted devfs on /dev
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.info kernel: Freeing unused kernel memory: 496k freed
* May 13 06:31:43 Voyager user.err kernel: e100: eth0 NIC Link is Up 100 Mbps Full duplex


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PostPosted: Fri May 12, 2006 4:05 pm 
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Joined: Tue Jul 13, 2004 4:11 pm
Posts: 1771
Location: Server Elements
Try this:

Make sure you are using the correct cables. If you are using cable-select, change it and jumper the drives slave/master explicitly. Move the CD from secondary master to primary slave and put the 200G drive alone as a secondary master.

Try transfers then...


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PostPosted: Fri May 12, 2006 6:34 pm 
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Joined: Wed May 10, 2006 3:26 pm
Posts: 7
Hi Tony,

I have only one 80 wire cable (the one connected to the CD drive is a 40).
Cable settings were either set to slave or master in the previous situations.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Testing outcomes....

I took out the 20GB drive. set the jumpers on the 200GB drive to master, plugged it in to the master connector on the 80 wire cable.

Results were the same - very slow.

I also reset the the jumpers on the 200GB drive to slave, plugged it to the slave connector and there was no improvement.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I think the cable connection is fine because
1. the tfr rates to the 20GB, 5,400rpm drive usnig the 80 wire cable was always working fine.
2. when I copy from the PC to NASLite, the transfer rate is around 7-8Mbytes per second.

However when the copy is done the other way, NASLite to PC
1. transfer slowed right down
2. the network utilization shows an initial peak of around 40-50%, then drops down to around 2%.

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

Could the problem be specific to Segate 200GB ST3200822A drives OR a ATA-100 driver problem?


Thanks.


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PostPosted: Sat May 13, 2006 2:55 am 
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Joined: Sun Apr 02, 2006 9:05 pm
Posts: 1688
Location: Up State NY in the USA!!!!
Nope, I have that exact same drive and there is no problems with it at all. It works just fine in my configuration which is a Master/Slave setup.

Mike


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PostPosted: Sun May 14, 2006 12:49 am 
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Joined: Wed May 10, 2006 3:26 pm
Posts: 7
Hi Mike,

I have tried various combinations but to no avail.

Can you tell me how exactly what your server configuration is please? i.e. what is set to master or slave on which cable, etc.

thanks in advance for your help.


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PostPosted: Mon May 15, 2006 1:15 pm 
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Joined: Sun Apr 02, 2006 9:05 pm
Posts: 1688
Location: Up State NY in the USA!!!!
My boxes setup is as follows.

Disk one is the ST3300831A, ATA DISK drive set as master on the primary drive controler channel.

Disk two is the ST3200822A, ATA DISK drive set as slave on the primary drive controler channel.

I have a CDROM that I boot from set as master on the secondary drive controler channel.

My configuration files are stored on a USB key.

The computer is a Dell GX100 with 128MB of SDRAM.
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
model name : Celeron (Mendocino)
cpu MHz : 396.713
cache size : 128 KB
bogomips : 791.34

Hope this helps.

Mike


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PostPosted: Wed May 17, 2006 2:48 pm 
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Posts: 7
Hi All,

I have tried all the various combinations I can think of and so far, with not much success. I tested it with a 8.4GB/20GB drive combination successfully. It could be something to do with the firmware on the 200GB drive or something else. Anyways, I don't want to spend too much time figuring out why this 200GB doesn't work on the PC combination.

I will leave the working 20GB disk in there and take out the 200GB back for my external USB backup drive.

Will look at getting another brand/make drive to try in the future.

Thank you all your feedback and suggestions.
Appreciate it.

Cheers
Kesda


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