TS-451A Potential Issues After Adding Memory
Posted: Sat Sep 10, 2016 6:40 am
I got a new TS-451A NAS in mid August 2016 -- just last month. I bought 4 4TB Seagate drives and 2 4GB SoDIMM mudules, with the same specs requires for this NAS.
I installed the hard drives and fired up the NAS. I went through the setup Wizard and a RAID 5 array started to be created. Half way this process, disk 3 & 4 were disconnected, followed by an error. I ended up doing a hard reset, and started all over. This time, I did not go through the Wizard, but use Storage Manager to create the array. It was successful. I finished all other configurations, and left a job running to copy all the data from my old NAS to the new one.
In the morning, I walked by the NAS and the top LED was flashing red. Logged into it, and...disk 3 and 4 had been dropped: Failure in Disk 3. And, this is when my nightmare started. I file a ticket with QNAP. After a 3 or 4 days, someone contacted me. After going through logs, the support person told me that I had bad disk drives -- 3 and 4. OK. I had my doubts, but I wiped the volume off, and so the disks, and did a hard reset. I moved disk 1 & 2 to 3 & 4, and vice versa. I went through the setup process again, and again it, the NAS reported errors in disk 3 and dropped 3 & 4. As in the first time, I created the array using Storage Manager, and everything was fine and dandy -- for less than 24 hours. While copying data from the old NAS, same exact problem occurred: Disk 3 failure. RAID inactive. blah. blah. I contacted the support person again, and again he came to the same conclusion that disk 3 & 4 were faulty. Notice, the disk in slot 3 & 4 are the ones that were in 1 & 2. So, it can't be the disks.
The support person pointed out that the model of the disks were not in the compatibility list, after I pointed out the fact that I had switched disks around, and still the NAS was reporting issues on disk 3. Fine. I sent the the 4 hard drives back to NewEgg -- which cost me $90 in restocking and shipping fees -- I bought 4 3TB HDs of a model in the compatibility list for the NAS.
I did a hard reset of the NAS to start anew. Once again, the NAS complained about disk 3 during the creation of the RAID 5 array. Hmmm...this are the "compatible" model HDs. I created the array, again, using Storage Manager, and every thing was fine and dandy. I ran a job to copy the data from the old NAS, and after ~36 hours, everything was copied, and no failures. Feeling a bit hopeful, I continued with setting up other features, such as creating two VMs. During that process, I had to reboot the NAS. After the reboot, the NAS complained that disk 3 had bad blocks, and again dropped 3 & 4. Rebooted again, and everything was just fine. I scanned all drives for bad sectors, and everything came A-OK. After that, it was back to failure after failure. I contacted the support person again, and his conclusion was that I had a bad hard drive. Really?
I do hardware validation for a living. This is NOT an issue with the hard drives -- and it wasn't either with the first set of hard drives I spent extra $90 to replace. This is an issue with the firmware, OR with the NAS hardware.
As a final test, I removed the 2 4GB (very expensive QNAP memory) SODIMM modules and put the original 2 1GB modules the NAS came with. No issues after 2 days. I put 2 1GB Samsung SODIMM modules, and no issues. I put back the two 4GB QNAP memory modules, and...disk 3 issues, again! I put back the original 2 1GB modules, and the issues went away. I installed 2 4GB Samsung SoDIMM modules, and once again, disk 3 failure issue came back.
So, before the QNAP supports suggests that I have bad memory modules, no! That's not the problem. The problem seems to happen when putting more than 2GB of memory -- well, at least when putting 8GB. I also tried a single 8GB module, and the issue happens. And, it happens whenever there is more than 2GB of memory installed.
Has anybody seen this, or similar issue?
I'm waiting for QNAP to send me an RMA I requested ...
I installed the hard drives and fired up the NAS. I went through the setup Wizard and a RAID 5 array started to be created. Half way this process, disk 3 & 4 were disconnected, followed by an error. I ended up doing a hard reset, and started all over. This time, I did not go through the Wizard, but use Storage Manager to create the array. It was successful. I finished all other configurations, and left a job running to copy all the data from my old NAS to the new one.
In the morning, I walked by the NAS and the top LED was flashing red. Logged into it, and...disk 3 and 4 had been dropped: Failure in Disk 3. And, this is when my nightmare started. I file a ticket with QNAP. After a 3 or 4 days, someone contacted me. After going through logs, the support person told me that I had bad disk drives -- 3 and 4. OK. I had my doubts, but I wiped the volume off, and so the disks, and did a hard reset. I moved disk 1 & 2 to 3 & 4, and vice versa. I went through the setup process again, and again it, the NAS reported errors in disk 3 and dropped 3 & 4. As in the first time, I created the array using Storage Manager, and everything was fine and dandy -- for less than 24 hours. While copying data from the old NAS, same exact problem occurred: Disk 3 failure. RAID inactive. blah. blah. I contacted the support person again, and again he came to the same conclusion that disk 3 & 4 were faulty. Notice, the disk in slot 3 & 4 are the ones that were in 1 & 2. So, it can't be the disks.
The support person pointed out that the model of the disks were not in the compatibility list, after I pointed out the fact that I had switched disks around, and still the NAS was reporting issues on disk 3. Fine. I sent the the 4 hard drives back to NewEgg -- which cost me $90 in restocking and shipping fees -- I bought 4 3TB HDs of a model in the compatibility list for the NAS.
I did a hard reset of the NAS to start anew. Once again, the NAS complained about disk 3 during the creation of the RAID 5 array. Hmmm...this are the "compatible" model HDs. I created the array, again, using Storage Manager, and every thing was fine and dandy. I ran a job to copy the data from the old NAS, and after ~36 hours, everything was copied, and no failures. Feeling a bit hopeful, I continued with setting up other features, such as creating two VMs. During that process, I had to reboot the NAS. After the reboot, the NAS complained that disk 3 had bad blocks, and again dropped 3 & 4. Rebooted again, and everything was just fine. I scanned all drives for bad sectors, and everything came A-OK. After that, it was back to failure after failure. I contacted the support person again, and his conclusion was that I had a bad hard drive. Really?
I do hardware validation for a living. This is NOT an issue with the hard drives -- and it wasn't either with the first set of hard drives I spent extra $90 to replace. This is an issue with the firmware, OR with the NAS hardware.
As a final test, I removed the 2 4GB (very expensive QNAP memory) SODIMM modules and put the original 2 1GB modules the NAS came with. No issues after 2 days. I put 2 1GB Samsung SODIMM modules, and no issues. I put back the two 4GB QNAP memory modules, and...disk 3 issues, again! I put back the original 2 1GB modules, and the issues went away. I installed 2 4GB Samsung SoDIMM modules, and once again, disk 3 failure issue came back.
So, before the QNAP supports suggests that I have bad memory modules, no! That's not the problem. The problem seems to happen when putting more than 2GB of memory -- well, at least when putting 8GB. I also tried a single 8GB module, and the issue happens. And, it happens whenever there is more than 2GB of memory installed.
Has anybody seen this, or similar issue?
I'm waiting for QNAP to send me an RMA I requested ...