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Thread: Thecus N7700 setup questions

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    Thecus N7700 setup questions

    Afternoon,

    I take delivery of a N7700 tomorrow with 4X1.5TB drives.

    I am a personal user and have about 4TB's of data to be copied over, no files are over 10GB. I am not interested in ACL or snapshot.

    I have a few questions after reading the manual and various threads on here.

    When I set up the raid 5 what is the best file system to use? I have read there is a firmware beta with XFS that seems to be quite stable but the official release for this may not be until May.

    Have the issues with 1.5TB drives and the N7700 been resolved?

    When I run out of space and need to add some more drives, how easy is it to add them to the existing raid and how long does it take to rebuild it? Has anyone had any system ssues with expanding a RAID?

    Thanks in advance

    Ross

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    Re: Thecus N7700 setup questions

    My n8800 arrived a few days ago. I believe the n8800 and n7700 are more or less the same, except for the form factor. Thus, I think my experience will be applicable to your scenario.

    Specifically regarding the 1.5TB drives. I purchased 8 of these for the n8800. I received four of the -301 (CC1G firmware) and four of the newer -302 part numbers (CC1J firmware). I requested the newest firmware for all the drives from Seagate. They provided CC1H for the -301 drives; they did not provide newer firmware for the CC1J drives.

    I installed the four -302 drives in the n8800. I have not upgraded the 301s yet and thus, I have NOT installed them. Upon the first boot of the n8800 with firmware 2.01.06, one of the four 1.5TB drives almost immediately went into a warning state. I started formatting the four drives with RAID6 and it has been formatting ever since. So far it has been about 40 hours. Yes, it let me create a RAID 6 array including a drive that is in a warning state.

    I have not tried the beta firmware for the n7700/n8800, but some have reported success with it. I would recommend upgrading to 2.01.07 (the beta firmware) before you start formatting an array to avoid as many issues with the drives as possible. A link to that firmware can be found in these forums. Maybe I'll try to add it later.

    Thus, in response to your question, the seagate "fixes" have not completely resolved the issues, but the Seagate fixes and the firmware update from Thecus ma resolve them. I just don't have enough data to give a definite answer.

    I hope that helps, at least a little.

    Dave

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    Re: Thecus N7700 setup questions

    Well, I realized that even though my setup said it was formatting the RAID, it was sitting there doing nothing. Long story short, the format was stopped, I upgraded the firmware and rebuilt the array using RAID6 and XFS. It took about 8 hours and everything is working well now.

    The CC1J drives are all showing a status of "OK". One drive has one reallocated sector all others are at zero.

    So, for now, it seems things are working with the Seagate 1.5TB drives.

    Dave

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    Re: Thecus N7700 setup questions

    Thanks for the info, will go and do a search for the beta...

    Re the file format, am I correct in saying the that ext3 has a limit of 7TB's? So if I have 7*1.5 drives I will need to use the zfs format?

    Final Q, if my hard drives have the older firmware, is it quite easy to update them to the new one?

    Thanks... Looking forward to playing with the new tech.

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    Re: Thecus N7700 setup questions

    Quote Originally Posted by KennyDies View Post
    Thanks for the info, will go and do a search for the beta...
    The link for the firmware is here.

    Quote Originally Posted by KennyDies View Post

    Re the file format, am I correct in saying the that ext3 has a limit of 7TB's? So if I have 7*1.5 drives I will need to use the zfs format?
    ext3 I believe has a 8GB limit. Zfs does not have the limit but, I think, is lower performance. XFS, which is supported in the beta, is not constrained to size and is faster than ZFS, I think. Maybe Thecus can chime in on that point. I also don't know if XFS will be supported in official firmware builds.

    Remember also that you don't have to create just one partition on the array, either. If you can live with two ext3 partitions you can avoid the 8GB limitation (i.e. 2x4.5TB partitions or 1x6TB and 1x3TB partitions). I have 4 drives (the CC1J drives) allocated to a RAID6 XFS and then I have 4 drives (the CC1H drives) allocated to a RAID6 ZFS. My plan is then to create backups of the XFS partition and, to a lesser extent, client computers, on the ZFS. But note, I have these on different drives. You don't want to be backing up to the same drives you are trying to protect.

    Quote Originally Posted by KennyDies View Post
    Final Q, if my hard drives have the older firmware, is it quite easy to update them to the new one?
    It is easy to update, but just be careful when you do it. Unplug all your other hard drives and boot off their update CD. Check and recheck that the firmware you are using applies to that part number. The update software, supposedly, does not check to see if it is applying an update to the correct hardware. Thus, if you flashed a -302 part number drive with a -301 firmware, it would likely brick.

    It took me about 20 minutes to do four drives and I went slow and verified each drive before continuing. It's not hard. (Fair disclosure: I have about 10 years of experience in IT and software development.) If you're not confident in the process, ask for help.

    BTW, the flashed drives with the beta firmware seem to work well, so far.

    Let me know if you have more problems or questions. Good luck.

    Dave

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    Re: Thecus N7700 setup questions

    I just noticed there is actually a newer beta firmware here. You should be able to figure it out by name and date.

    I have not used it and know nothing about it.

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    Re: Thecus N7700 setup questions

    Excellent, cheers for the heads up, will see what drives arrive tomorrow before I go off looking for the firmware.

    Did you update the firmware for the drives in your nas box or your pc?

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    Re: Thecus N7700 setup questions

    What are the chances of the drives coming with the new firmware anyway? What is the quickest way to check which firmware version they are using?

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    Re: Thecus N7700 setup questions

    Quote Originally Posted by KennyDies View Post
    Did you update the firmware for the drives in your nas box or your pc?
    You need to do it from an x86 PC. There is a bootable CD from Seagate you burn and then reboot into FreeDos to update. It won't work on the NAS, for one because there is no CD drive. It could probably be hacked into working because the NASes run on x86 hardware, but it wouldn't be worth your time.

    Quote Originally Posted by KennyDies View Post
    What are the chances of the drives coming with the new firmware anyway? What is the quickest way to check which firmware version they are using?
    It's definitely possible they might come with new firmware. I got mine about two weeks ago from newegg.com and half the drives(4) had new firmware and the other half (4) did not. I would guess it is primarily a function of how much inventory turnover your vendor experiences.

    The drives specify which firmware is installed on their label. It should state the model number, the part number, the serial number and the firmware version. There is also a software tool provided by seagate named "drivedetect" to read it electronically.

    If you request firmware from seagate remember it will take them nearly a week to give you a download link. If you happen to get the -301 part number I can always get you the zip file with the CC1H upgrade, too. The -302 part number AFAIK doesn't have an upgrade. The rest (-300) have numerous upgrades, but I don't have them.

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    Re: Thecus N7700 setup questions

    Bah! after all that, span just emailed me and told me they updated the firmware, saves me a job I suppose.

    Will post how the beta firmware on the nas box goes.

    Ross

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    Re: Thecus N7700 setup questions

    Quote Originally Posted by KennyDies View Post
    Bah! after all that, span just emailed me and told me they updated the firmware, saves me a job I suppose.
    Who updated what?

    FYI, the newest beta has some samba bugs, as I have seen. You might want to stick with the 07.4 firmware for now.

    Also, I had one drive with 1 reallocated sector. It jumped up to 37 or so today and so it is getting RMAed. The rest still seem fine.

    Dave

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    Re: Thecus N7700 setup questions

    The place I bought the nas box from, apparently I ticked a box for a set up, they have updated the drives with the new firmware and created a Raid 5 for me...

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    Re: Thecus N7700 setup questions

    Ahh. . . gotcha.

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    Re: Thecus N7700 setup questions

    Awsome, had a play today.

    Updated the firmware to the beta.

    Re created the RAID over 3x1.5TB copied some file over and am now expanding the raid to my 4th drive.

    All seems to be working well...

    Is there a guide anywhere decribing how to access this over the web, expecially how to configure my router to let the connection to the nas box?

    Ideally, I want to be able to remote access the box and start a BT....

    Ross
    Last edited by KennyDies; 18-02-2009 at 09:23 PM. Reason: added text

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    Re: Thecus N7700 setup questions

    That's going to depend on your router. You can always forward a port from your router to port 80 or 443(https) of the thecus. I think that's what you are suggesting.

    Of course, because of my own paranoia, I can't recommend such a solution, though I know people do it. I must recommend implementing some kind of VPN and then accessing the thecus through a secure tunnel. My VPN of choice is OpenVPN.
    Last edited by dpankros; 18-02-2009 at 11:53 PM.

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    Re: Thecus N7700 setup questions

    mmm, have a new problem, used usbcopy to backup one of my hard drives fine but I am now unable to delete any of the files in those directories.

    It is only me using this so I have no need to set up access control, am I missing something on the permissions of this folder? I can read, write delete on my share fodler fine...

    Ross

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