Perhaps I can get some tips on this AS3304T before I kill it.

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stilly
Posts: 2
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Joined: Sat Apr 30, 2022 9:23 am

Perhaps I can get some tips on this AS3304T before I kill it.

Post by stilly »

This forum seems like it has some really smart folks in it that know what they are talking about. I am coming here as a last hope. I tried to contact tech support but they wanted a login and full access to me NAS. I have a problem with that. I do not know who they are and they just want to have admin access through my network and into the AS3304T because they can not tell me what to try or even ask questions on anything I did.

So now for the THIRD time this NAS seems to have dumped my files. But I am thinking it is a windows 7 x86 problem more than the NAS itself. According to this drivestore it is working fine, I have done everything properly and all drives and data are correct and fine. But the FIRST time I installed 4 iron wolf drives of 4TB each into this 4 drive bay NAS I followed the directions to a T. I am not a network expert, but I have setup a NAS or two in the past, both with the NAS4Free OS and one was just as headless share... But I set this up- except the LUN might have been bad at first. I was installing 4 drives at 4 TB each and I wanted it to be a RAID6 setup. I was asked what size to make the LUN and It showed 96000 GB so I chose that. I had already setup the RAID6 and I was aware that for these first 4 drives my actual space was going to be 7.9x TB of data but if I added more it would expand greatly. SO I told it 96000 GB thinking that I can grow into that space if I really need to... I then proceeded to make the LUN, then went into windows and had it do the iscsi initiator and I told it that the drive was going to be 7.5TB in size so it formatted it and gave it a drive letter and it looked good to go. After letting everything SYNC UP and get green lights across the board I was finally in a position to move data onto the drive so I started moving my files from my windows 7 32bit system and after I moved those files, I moved some downloaded videos and movies onto it from another system on the network that was storing some of the files temporarily. Essentially I was moving my old movie collection first. I moved files to the NAS from my second system that I also ran the iscsi initiator on and I moved the files like they were a part of my computer, through the windows file explorer. Everything was looking great, until the next morning when I looked at the directory folder on my original system and I noticed that all of the files that I had moved onto it were gone and only a handful of files from the other system were showing up. I freaked out but I was able to go into DOS and XCOPY things back to a new 2TB drive that I cradled that was supposed to be an internal drive, now turned USB. When I got home I saw only 294GB of the 490 were copied over and the rest appeared to be corrupted. This was what windows told me. So I got a dir listing and ended up starting a helpdesk ticket here where I was told that I would have to provide direct access to someone by giving them an admin account. Yeah sorry. If I buy your equipment and the first thing it does it crap the bed and kill half my files, I am not about to give you full admin access to my NAS. I will figure it out. SO after talking to some folks at work and recovering MOST of my files, I decided to SCAN it and let windows FIX the corruption. When it was done, I deleted the corrupted files and added more FAKE/ not needed files to see if I could get it to do it again. For about a day it behaved itself, then I came home and tried to see the files and it gave me an error and said the older was corrupted nd unreadable again. SO I decided to unmount the RAID array, then redo it and remake the LUN except this time the LUN was 7150 GB in size instead of the 96000 that it let me do the previous time. I got it setup and moved about 150GB of files to it. They sat there for a week, I put files on it from the other system on my network, which was a windows 10 pro system. Then After about a week I felt it was good to go and the problem had been solved and I had a 96000 GB LUN which was inaccurate so the files were all over the place and NOT properly stored. I made the new LUN, windows found the old SCSI connection and it made the connection again. I moved 150GB of files to it, waited and it was working FINE. SO I decided to start moving my entire F drive contents, a lot of images and and some movies and other things that I needed to sort through on my new system. Except windows kept hanging up moving files, gave me stupid errors saying it could not delete files without admin access, no worries, I just had to click the ALL button and things were flowing again. I am not sure how many files were moved, but over the course of a solid 24 hours+ I got a lot of files moved over. Then I saw that the file transfer stopped again and I was not sure what had happened, so I got a message about the U drive not being there. like the network drive had been disconnected. SO I rebooted the windows 7 computer and I have been unable to get my drive letter BACK to the NAS. I have used the iscsi initiator to disconnect and reconnect it but it has had no effect. The NAS software says it is fine, EVERYTHING IS NEW/EXCELLENT or whatever, green lights all volumes are good but when I tried to access the drive letter (that I now moved to T: thinking it just needed a new letter) I was told that the folder was unreadable. I will also say this though and I think this might be important: When everything was working FINE the windows disk management told me the drive was healthy and formatted with NTFS. NOW it shows the drive needs to be initiated and it is RAW, no longer NTFS, which is what it did the first time as well. It showed RAW and all of a sudden my files were no longer readable when they had been NTFS just hours prior...

So now I have come here thinking, WHY could not I just make a damn folder on the drive, give it a shared name, and then access it with a login and pw as a network drive (NAS) and moved my files to it that way and everything was fine? WHY THE HELL COULD I NOT DO THAT? The instructions had me use this stupid scsi initiator and I had never used that before. SO WHY COULD I NOT MAKE IT WORK LIKE ALL OF MY OTHER NASs THAT I HAD MADE IN THE PAST? Clearly I am doing something wrong here OR this thing is just a solid PIECE OF JUNK that I lost $250 on. Maybe that other guy was not wrong, MAYBE I should have got a SYNOLOGY or QNAP instead. But this one had such a nice long list of great things and features and what not that I was suckered in... And now I realize that if I am not careful, I might actually have just lost a crapload of my files and photos. All because I trusted it to work properly...

So maybe one of you kind folks can give EVERYONE here some tips on setting up your NAS for the first time and maybe point out some problems to avoid so that it is done right. Because if I seriously just lost 20k+ of my photos I am going to be LIVID... I WILL be taking this damn thing out to the range and putting a bullet in it if I can not get it to work right. That or I will sell it off on ebay and let the future buyer know what it did to get on ebay... I am not an idiot. I am also not an expert, but I am closer to an intermediate computer guy here with light networking skills. Any tips or tricks would be GREATLY appreciated.
sksbir
Posts: 395
Joined: Tue Aug 25, 2015 9:23 pm

Re: Perhaps I can get some tips on this AS3304T before I kill it.

Post by sksbir »

hi
I got a situation of data corruption on my nas AS5002T in 2015 and I almost gave up at that moment.
problem was : my Harddisks where not listed in hcl.
Take a look here https://www.asustor.com/service/compatibility
your disks MUST be listed there, this is mandatory in your situation.
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father.mande
Posts: 1808
Joined: Sat Sep 12, 2015 2:55 am
Location: La Rochelle (France)

Re: Perhaps I can get some tips on this AS3304T before I kill it.

Post by father.mande »

hi,
This forum seems like it has some really smart folks in it that know what they are talking about. I am coming here as a last hope. I tried to contact tech support but they wanted a login and full access to me NAS. I have a problem with that. I do not know who they are and they just want to have admin access through my network and into the AS3304T because they can not tell me what to try or even ask questions on anything I did.


I can understand the fact that you don't want to open your data to anybody ... but in this case
replace a direct access, to an access to your own PC using a tool like Vnc, anydesk or teamviewer (depends of your own skills), so you can register what they do (screen recorder), and control any operation, also on some a chat is possible to have exchange during the session or using an external chat tools..
also change the password, or better cerate an administrators user only for this purpose, so you never send your real password (if you delete this users after the session)
you can also limit drastically the visibility of your share (so your data), , the analyze of your problem don't require access to your data, or just add a share for this access (delete it after) to permit creation of files / folders
This is not 100% locked but very limited, so after it's your survey of all action they do.

I think, in this case you prevent a deadlock between you and support and get advantage of the full Asustor technicians skills. .... even nobody can guaranty a solution ... but you increase chance to ...

Philippe.
NB it's difficult to read your cobble of text, please, if possible, try to do a more readable presentation. ;)
AS6602T / AS5202T /AS5002T / AS1002T / FS6706T
stilly
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Apr 30, 2022 9:23 am

Re: Perhaps I can get some tips on this AS3304T before I kill it.

Post by stilly »

Thank you for the responses. I am not 100% certain as to what happened and why so I am typing all over the place. I tend to do that from time to time.

I will check out that list.

When it comes to technical operations with this drivestore, I am not certain of what I am doing. I am even uncertain of all of the services and ways to access it.

Perhaps I can reply better when I am educated more on this device. I will update later.

Thanks.
dec0de
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Sep 16, 2022 12:16 am

Re: Perhaps I can get some tips on this AS3304T before I kill it.

Post by dec0de »

I think this might be a tough one to crack. you have quite a few components that all need to do fine to end up with a working solution, and you will be the one and only having to prove they all work (or what does fail).
My gut feeling tells me your problem is probably rather on the computer side than the NAS itself, and network might play a role as well. To prove this I would start with proving the NAS works (as you probably only have one of those)
by getting hold of two computers (the one you have) and another one. Then do the same setup on both and do some heavy transfers to see the result. I would also play with the difference of simply using the unit as a CIFS or NFS storage
and do some heavy transfers to check the outcome. Even better would be to get some bootable linux CD on a USB stick (which will not need to be installed on your computers) and do some test which eliminates a whole OS.
Also when doing these testes I would eliminate as much network hardware in between if possible, in its simplest form use a cross over TP cable between your NAS and computer.
Maybe this will reveal something of interest, and once you pinpointed the problem I would slowly build the system back to how you want it.
Remember you will have to "prove" that any part works, as soon as you do an assumption, you will probably not be able to crack where the problem is.
Your problem might of course be hard ware related, but to me ASUSTOR NAS'es are basic units with a simple and limited embedded linux on them, thus its not that much that usually will go wrong with them. Hard disk wise, they either
work, or they don't. I have used non certified disks in my NAS'es for years without any problems. I can imagine support might use it as an excuse though...
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