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Thread: N299 Setup Issues

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    Unhappy N299 Setup Issues

    Hi,

    I've just recently tried setting up my new N299, installed a pair of identical drives, and configured them as RAID 1. The unit has gone through the setup process, sync'd the drives, and is reporting "OK" for both drives, and 0% used.

    Looking at the system folders list, I saw a number of folders, including iTunes and Nsync. This was before I rebooted the N299.

    Now, I still see everything being reported as OK, but cannot see any system folders.

    Also, if I try to enable the iTunes server or try manually adding a folder, I am informed I need to upgrade to the latest firmware -- but I have the latest already -- V1.00.15.

    Any thoughts?

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    Re: N299 Setup Issues

    When I setup my N299 it also made me update the firmware to the same latest version before I could add any users. I was given no choice but to to the update and everything seems ok except for my new problem hopefully not related! See my post.

    Steele

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    Re: N299 Setup Issues

    I had to do the same, the machine seems to have a Base firmware that runs off the board, but to get all the features you need to upgrade? to the full firmware which is about 25mb. I assume this is because it installs the main OS onto your drives? This is only a guess, as when I removed my raid to try and fix the problem steele had, I lost all the config and I am once again, uploading the 25mb file.

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    Re: N299 Setup Issues

    OK it definitely sounds odd that you need to "upgrade" to the same firmware version, but maybe it's true that it has a "base" install of that firmware... Worth a try!

    So I'm doing that now and will report my results -- thanks...

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    Re: N299 Setup Issues

    Well, blow me down. It worked!

    "Upgrading" my V1.00.15 firmware to, wait for it, V1.00.15 firmware resolved the issues I was having.

    Now I'm having some other issues, like not being able to successfully map drives to the N299 from Windows 2000, but that's another story. I had initially mapped a few drives to different folders, then started copying files across. Part way through the copy, it failed saying it couldn't find the mapped drive -- checking Windows Explorer, all drives had a red "X" through them showing they weren't mapped, and I haven't been able to get them back yet (even after restarting my PC).

    I suspect this is just silly setup issues introduced by myself, but who knows!

    Initially I had set the folder access to "public" for my own folders, and left the other system folders that were already there at "public". I believe this means any user can get to them without a username and password. This had worked, but then stopped. Any thoughts?

    Thanks again!

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    Re: N299 Setup Issues

    Good to hear you got your issues sorted Ausmark, Seems odd that it fixed your problem but perhaps there was some issue when it upgraded last time??

    I have a thread running regarding the performance of the N299. How fast is the copy speed on you N299 and do your drives spin down when not active? Mine are getting too hot to touch jammed in the little box
    Cheers, Dan

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    Re: N299 Setup Issues

    Dear Sir,

    Due to N299 CPU performance limitation, thus N299 network performance can’t same with N2100 or other high performance model, if need higher performance model we would recommend for N2100 is a good choose, on theory N299 performance about 40~70% from N2100 and following media review for your reference:
    SmallNetBuilder - Thecus YES Box N2100 Retest
    HEXUS.net - Review :: Thecus YES Box N2100 : Page - 4/5
    [ Hardware.Info ] - Thecus YES Box N2100

    Yvon.

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    Re: N299 Setup Issues

    Also have a problem copying files from PC across network to N299 with the same error, couldn't find the mapped drive -- checking Windows Explorer. At this point the only way I have managed to resolve this is to restart the N299, normally by using the power on/off button on the box. I did try resetting machine through admin screen but when I tried to login is said I was already logged in and therefore could not access admin screens.
    I contacted Thecus and they said this may be down to performance limitations with the N299. They even suggested that I copy one file at a time to see if this resolved the problem. Yes, copying a few files at a time is Ok but if you want to copy a folder from your PC that has a couple of thousand files then it is not reliable.

    As far as I am concerned the box does not do what its main purpose is and that is to store files. Also there is no information in the sales literature that it has performance limitations.
    Last edited by Davejef; 22-11-2007 at 11:12 AM. Reason: Additional comment

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    Thecus Staff Thecus - Yvon's Avatar
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    Re: N299 Setup Issues

    Dear Sir,

    If N299 system abnormal or freeze after large numbers copying and need restart N299 back to normal, we would release a new version firmware to fix this issue around next weekend, thanks for your patience in advance.

    Yvon.

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    Re: N299 Setup Issues

    could we have a version of firefly compatible with the Pinnacle Soundbridge installed also.

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    Re: N299 Setup Issues

    Now you all seems to be able to copy files to and from your N299. Maybe i'm stupid, but after one week i still didn't found out how to proper install the N299 with the manual on cd-rom.
    Can somebody please tell me the steps i should take, to map the N299 as a drive in Vista32?
    The only thing my N299 did last week was generating a lot of noise...

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    Unhappy Re: N299 Setup Issues

    I'm having the same problem Ausmark but 'upgrading' the firmware didn't fix it. It still refuses to keep the RAID config after a reboot. Anyone else find a fix for this?

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    Re: N299 Setup Issues

    i had a problem with mine, where after a reboot my web interface was just pointing at the local filesystem, no GUI at all. Logged a support call, no word back.

    I pulled both disks out, formatted them, and started all over again.

    So far, not too happy with the N299.

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    Thumbs up Re: N299 Setup Issues

    Quote Originally Posted by racerx View Post
    Good to hear you got your issues sorted Ausmark, Seems odd that it fixed your problem but perhaps there was some issue when it upgraded last time??

    I have a thread running regarding the performance of the N299. How fast is the copy speed on you N299 and do your drives spin down when not active? Mine are getting too hot to touch jammed in the little box
    Hi Dan,

    I agree, it seemed odd to "upgrade" to the same version, but after emailing Thecus about the same issue, I was informed this was required -- like suggested earlier, to setup RAID-related things on the drives. The upgrade I did to fix it was the first upgrade I did -- I had been using it as supplied, and only tried the update after I had trouble.

    As for performance... I haven't been able to get an accurate figure on that, can anyone recommend some good free software to test it with?

    Spinning down when inactive? I don't know. I can't tell when the drives are spinning or not, I can hear the cooling fan running continually -- not that it's overly loud, it's just obvious. Even when moving a lot of data, the box has never (so far) been too hot to touch.

    Sure, it doesn't seem to be blindingly fast, but I don't think it ever claimed to be. Though I do think it's odd that a unit with a gigabit network connection doesn't seem to be performing overly fast -- but maybe that's just the way I've set things up (it's still early days).

    All in all, I'd have to say things are going OK. Am learning more as I go.

    Mark.

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    Re: N299 Setup Issues

    Quote Originally Posted by Davejef View Post
    Also have a problem copying files from PC across network to N299 with the same error, couldn't find the mapped drive -- checking Windows Explorer. At this point the only way I have managed to resolve this is to restart the N299, normally by using the power on/off button on the box. I did try resetting machine through admin screen but when I tried to login is said I was already logged in and therefore could not access admin screens.
    I contacted Thecus and they said this may be down to performance limitations with the N299. They even suggested that I copy one file at a time to see if this resolved the problem. Yes, copying a few files at a time is Ok but if you want to copy a folder from your PC that has a couple of thousand files then it is not reliable.

    As far as I am concerned the box does not do what its main purpose is and that is to store files. Also there is no information in the sales literature that it has performance limitations.
    Some comments...

    - The "losing network drive" thing was odd. I haven't had that trouble for some time. The first thing I did was setup identical users on the N299 as used on the Windows PC's (i.e. same usernames, same passwords). This works great.

    - The other thing I did was look into using "Robocopy", a MS "Robust Copy" program. It's a command line tool, but there are GUI's available for it. There are bucket loads of options and switches for it, too many to mention, but it's a neat tool. One thing it lets you do is "slow down" the copy -- you can have it reduce the load on your network. Sure it slows things down, but it's perfect for doing an unattended copy; as I said, this hasn't failed me once.

    - I have also setup some simple scripting on our Windows PC's to map network drives. I have this kind of thing going on in a batch file that I have a shortcut to in my Startup group:

    if exist \\N299\shared (
    if not exist s: (
    net use s: \\N299\shared 1>nul
    )
    )

    This way, if I start my PC without the N299 turned on, no error messages. If the N299 is turned on, it maps my drives. If I start the N299 after I have started my PC, I have a Quick Launch shortcut to the same batch file -- so I can just click on that to map the drives. If I accidentally run the batch file again when the drives are already mapped, no drama's! Only at this stage, I have it redirecting error messages to nowhere -- this could easily be changed to append to a log file though.

    - I've also had trouble logging back in sometimes. I found this was always my fault though. If you tell the N299 to reboot, leave the countdown screen up. After it comes back up, you'll hear it beep, which may be before the countdown finishes. I tend to wait for the countdown to complete, and click on the link it provides -- which takes you back to the home screen. Then click the Login link, enter your details, and hey presto.

    - The other way I had trouble logging in was if I closed the browser window without logging out. If I did this, I would always get the error message. I found if I exited all instances of the browser, I was then able to restart the browser, go to the N299 home page, and login successfully.

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    Re: N299 Setup Issues

    Quote Originally Posted by MiloD View Post
    Now you all seems to be able to copy files to and from your N299. Maybe i'm stupid, but after one week i still didn't found out how to proper install the N299 with the manual on cd-rom.
    Can somebody please tell me the steps i should take, to map the N299 as a drive in Vista32?
    The only thing my N299 did last week was generating a lot of noise...
    Hmmm, it concerns me that you're saying your N299 made a lot of noise?! I would have thought any hardware generating noise (aside from reasonable cooling fan noise) was trouble?!

    OK I used the manual provided too, had a few hiccups, but got there eventually. Basically I followed these steps (noting that this is from memory, so I may be glossing over some steps a little):

    1. Did the physical install of the hard drives, connected everything up, and powered things on.

    2. Ran the Setup wizard on the CD provided. This found the N299 immediately at 192.168.1.100, the default address for it -- noting that I used the bottom network port.

    3. Via the web page at 192.168.1.100, logged in as the administrator.

    4. Did the Network -> WAN configuration, renaming the Host Name, and leaving it set to use the default static IP address.

    5. Went to the Storage -> RAID section and set my pair of drives up as a RAID 1, leaving it to format. At this point, I was surprised I didn't see some sort of blatantly obvious screens refusing me access to anything while it formatted the drives. From memory, it did show some kind of progress indication somewhere, but it didn't restrict me from doing other things. But you do need to leave things alone here to do their thing -- the drives need to be formatted and/or configured as a RAID. I am using a pair of ST3750640NS 750Gb drives, and I think it took something like 6 or so hours to format (I do know I didn't stay up all night waiting for this to finish).

    6. Following a reboot, I then started to try to set things up without success. This was where I then did the "upgrade" to the same version of the firmware.

    7. Now I set up my N299 users with the same usernames and passwords as the users have on our Windows PC's. All shares I then setup I set Public and Web Access to No, and then used the ACL settings to add Writable access for the users I'd just created. Note that for one share I had created originally with Public Yes, it seemed to take forever for the drive to stop chugging -- I am taking a guess that this is because I had already copied a load of music to this share, that the permissions were being applied to every folder (and file?) on that share. It did work OK, it just took some time.

    8. I setup scripts on our PCs to map network drives if the N299 is present, as indicated in an earlier post -- there probably is a much better way of doing this, so if anyone has any suggestions then please let me know! :-)

    9. I'm not sure if I'm still having problems when copying large numbers of files (e.g. the JDK API documentation extracted), where it was losing the network connection part way through the install and requiring a restart of the N299, but I've since been using Robocopy to move large volumes of data (something approaching 170Gb in total) without any trouble.

    10. When I have had trouble that I couldn't resolve, or just general queries that I couldn't find documented answers for, I've have had good responses from Thecus support via email (thanks Yvon). Do to time zone differences and no doubt other work commitments, Yvon doesn't answer immediately (understandably), but the answer does come fairly quickly. Like the new firmware Yvon has mentioned, it'll be interesting to try that out when it gets released soon.

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