Livestation CHL Backup to USB DD Errors

[russellweed]

Last week I bought a Livestation NAS and it's working great, except for backups. I can't get the thing to backup to an external HDD. Every time I get errors.

 

At first I thought it was because the hard drive wasn't getting enough power. It's one of those "self-powered over USB" ones, so I figured maybe the Linkstation's USB port wasn't giving enough juice. Posts on these boards confirmed that. So I picked up an AC powered USB hub to plug it in to and set that up last night.

 

I woke up this morning to a dozen error message e-mails the nas sent when it tried to back up last night:

 

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NAS Status Report:DISK Error Notification:Error:Read error

HDD error occurred
Disk(s) the error occurred:"USB Disk 1"

(sdb) READ sector:374867976 count:1
Disk writing error
RAID drive error will be repaired automatically.
Continuous backup is recommended.

 

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NAS Status Report:DISK Error Notification:Error:Write error

DISK Error Notification

HDD error occurred
Disk(s) the error occurred:"USB Disk 1"

(sdb) WRITE sector:2048 count:2
Disk writing error
Some data may not be recoverable.
Immediate change of disk is recommended.

 

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And after another 8 of these I received:

 

NAS Status Report:DISK Error Notification:Error:Disk performance down.

DISK Error Notification

HDD error occurred
Disk(s) the error occurred:"USB Disk 1"

 reached alert level.

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However I don't believe the USB HDD is bad. It's never given me any problems before, and I ran a full SMART test on it from the manufactor's provided diagnostic tools. It wrote successfully to every sector to the hard drive without error. I ran it again just to make sure, and it's still good.

 

Is it possible for the USB HDD to be passing the SMART tests while still being bad? Or is this just an issue with the Linkstation? Will I be able to use this hard drive for backups, or do I need to buy a new one?

 

If I have to get a new one, I was considering this one: Western Digital WD Elements 1 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive

It's AC-powered w/o the need of a hub and it's 1TB so I can just mirror the whole NAS instead of only my most important files. But I don't want to buy it if this won't work either...

 

 

Below is the technical info for my NAS and the USB HDD:

 

Model: LS-CH1.0TL (1TB)

Name: nas

 

Firmware version: 1.37

IP Address1: 192.168.0.50

Workgroup: WORKGROUP

Storage:

  - Disk 1: 119.1 GB / 917.1 GB (13.0 %)

- USB Disk 1: 0.2 GB / 295.7 GB (0.1 %)

 

External USB Hard Drive: WD 320GB Passport Essential, Model #WD3200ME-00

 

 

Thanks for any help on this one.

[CapnSmith]

To backup to an external usb hard disk drive, the usb drive must be formatted as either XFS or FAT32.  Our NAS drives can only read from NTFS, but not write to them.

 

Please connect your USB drive to your PC and confirm the file format used on the drive.  If it is NTFS, it will need to be re-formatted, and any data on the drive will be lost when that is done.

 

You can reformat your external USB disk through the web console of your Linkstation Live, System->Storage, select USB Disk 1 and then click Format Disk.  You should see an option to format in either XFS or FAT32.  Be aware, that if you format the drive in XFS, you will no longer be able to connect it to your PC and read the data on it, as XFS is a Linux-based format.  If you need to be able to connect the drive to a PC, choose FAT32, but also be aware that FAT32 has a 4GB file size limit.

[russellweed]

I re-formatted the hard drive to XFS (it was EXT3). The Linkstation admin UI kept timing out during the Format, so I tried again w/ a GParted Live CD. EXT3 is the default format when you format via the admin tools, so it would be nice if there was a warning that you can't use that one w/ the backups...

 

This morning I woke up to no e-mails, so I thought everything was good. Alas there are still no backups, and while I was using the Admin UI usbdisk1 went away and I suddenly got a splurge of e-mails:

 

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HDD error occurred
Disk(s) the error occurred:"USB Disk 1"

(sdb) WRITE sector:0 count:10
Disk writing error
Some data may not be recoverable.
Immediate change of disk is recommended.

 

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(sdb) WRITE sector:63 count:1
Disk writing error
Some data may not be recoverable.
Immediate change of disk is recommended.

 

(Repeat 20 more times)

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I ran another SMART test and the drive passed, but I guess it's still got something wrong with it. I'll go and buy the 1TB drive from Amazon...

 

Just to verify, this drive will work correctly with the NAS, right?

[Jotin]

If the NAS failed to format it then it could be a problem with the NAS's firmware. I would either update it to the latest version or reflash the firmware with the one that is on there. After that I would do a restore through the system tab. 

[russellweed]

Turns out the error was the hard drive after all.   I tried to secure-wipe the drive in a separate tool on my PC, and the drive failed that with write errors too. This was the first time it ever gave me an error when not connected to the NAS.

 

I bought a new one (self powered, 1TB) and everything backed up fine. No more problems.

 

Sorry about that, and thanks for the help!