Issue with IB-NAS4220 NAS box + Samsung HDDs. What to do?

[tfboy]

Dear Scan.

I'd like to point out that my recent dealings with yourselves have been very good and decided to post my issues with this combo in public in the hope that others can learn not to make the mistake with this hardware combination. Also, if I were evaluating what products to stock, considering the many public postings of the issues elsewhere, I would guess the failure / issue rate is likely to be very high and so I'd question whether I'd want to be a distributor for it It's a shame really; on paper, it looks really neat but in terms of compatibility and reliability, it's a complete disaster

Anyway, here's the story:

A couple of months ago, I purchsed an Icybox IB-NAS4220 along with a couple of Samsung Spinpoint F1 640GB drives (HD642JJ).

Since installing them into the NAS box, I've had nothing but issues. When it works, it appears to be fine, but after a while, the storage is inaccessible, 90% of the time you reboot the box, the OS appears to fail loading (the box is not pingable) and/or the storage is inaccessible.

The storage is arranged as a RAID1 mirror and formatted as ext2.

Today, I took the drives out and connected them up to my PC. Both drives report an identical SMART failure of AJ26. Unfortunately, I did not test the drives before installing them in the box, so not sure if the drives had this error from factory, or whether they have failed afterwards and if their failure is related / caused by the Icybox's apparent issues. Fortunately, the data on them appears to be accessible once I installed an ext2/3 driver on my vista machine. Vista does however pick up on the SMART failure and warn to change the drive.

Unfortunately, it gets worse: doing a search on the internet shows that the NAS box is incredibly unreliable when using Samsung HDDs. Apparently, WD drives are no better, Icybox / Raidsonic have no official drive recommendation and their apparent lack of support does not inspire confidence.

http://en.nas-4220.org/index.php?title=Harddrives

I only wish the update about the problems with Samsung was posted before and not a few weeks after I bought the drives!

Doing another search on Samsung drives, and there appears to be hundreds of people out there with the same AJ26 error.

So, I now have what appears to be a faulty or incompatible product with two harddrives that have failed. I don't think I can trust the Icybox any more, purely because the recent updated post on their forums clearly show that they are unable to certify / recommend any drive. And I ought to backup the data from the drives whilst I can and RMA them for replacements.


So my questions are:
- How do you suggest we resolve the Icybox? Is it possible to get an exchange or refund?
- Should I RMA the drives through yourselves or Samsung directly?


Thanks for your support

[tfboy]

Well, thanks to Ian for pointing out the beta firmware.

The drives are now recognised and the box boots up , but half the features appear to be broken and it's not possible to create users and shares.

It really feels like an "unfinished" product