I have a new Linkstation quad (LSQ4 - 4 1TB drives) running in RAID 1 (where I hve 3TB available).
I created several Drives, one for each computer plus a media and a shared drive.
At the moment I have 4 computers on it: 1 Windows 7 Wired), A win Vista laptop (wless), a Win XP(wless) netbook and a Mac Mini with Snow Leopard(wless). Soon I'd like to add another XP machine (my dedicated music computer) and another netbook (my daughter's).
Everyting is sort of working, I have mapped all shared drives (media and shared) on each computer and then each machine has its own backup drive.
When I say "sort of working" is because the connections are not very solid, regardless if I connect through a mapped drive or I use the network. Whenever I try moving or sinc to the LinkStation at some point I am assured that the drives will unmount or be otherwise unaccessible. That interrup[ts any large backup or sync I am doing (which then I have to start from scratch in some cases).
On both the Mac and the PCs most of the times I am able to reconnect to all the drives automatically at restart. But sometimes I can't and I am asked username and passwrod all over again like I never logged in before.
I went out of town for the weekend and I tried connecting remotely to get some files (which I already tried ans succeeded at while in the office). No dice, it found the drive but then it kicked me out and from then on refused to reconnect giving me an error (being in a yurry I could not record the error, but it has something to do with the drive not being recognized).
I read the manual and as I said it works most of the time, it's just not reliable. Often I'll start a sync before going to bed and in the morning I am stuck at 5% for some reason or another (usually "cannot find the drive" yet if I navigate to the drive I can browse it no problem. Obviously at some point the drive disconnected and my sync/backup software (I have tried several) did not get the memo it was back online. Needless to say it's annoying and considering I intend to use it as my priimary backup/media center, I really would like for it to be reliable.
Is this something I have to live with or is there a way to set yup the system so it's more reliable? Maybe new firmware (The linkstation is a week old, but it was a refurbished model). Maybe it's not set up properly? (but I am pretty positive I followed every step to the letter).
Thank you for any help, especially from those having te same issues that were able to solve them.
Am I the only one experiencing this issue?
Just today I had to restart my computer several times. Each time I restarted my mounted drives from the LinkStation showed up cossed in "My Computer"
When I tried opening one every time it asks me for username and password. Once I do that, the other two drives on the linkstation still appear crossed but if I click them then they mount without problems.
I am wondering:
1) Isn't the linkstation software or windows supposed to mount these drives each time I restart?
2) What is that checkbox in the user/pass screen that says "remember me"? Is it a joke? It never remembers me. Each time I have to sign in as if I were never there.
I am really disappointed with my Linkstation. I love the backup but I feel like I am constantly nursing this machine at logon, when it disconnects while syncing or copying and so forth. I am sure it's not supposed to work like this.
Just this morning I found a copy job stuck at 9% after I got it started last night at midnight. Appoarently at some poiunt the linkstation disconnected and the copy job got stuck. It must have reconnected shortly thereafter because a Sync job I had scheduled went through without a itch, but the copy I started was busted.
Hi,
From the description I would look closer to your network connection not LinkStation itself. You've mentioned that you're using multiple computers wired/wireless. That means you have a wireless router/access point - hope you're not using Linksys :-)
M$ Windows will not re-connect network drives automatically if network connection is lost. You have to re-map (re-connect) the drives manually. As you described, once you click on the crossed-out drive it will re-connect and ask for credentials - nothing will happen automatically though. Same thing with Mac. If you have problems with stale connection you need to remove the mapping first and re-do it from scratch.
From what you described I'm guessing that you either lose network connection with LinkStation or there is a routing problem on your network. It may be as simple as replacing a bad ethernet cable that connects LinkStation with your network.
I am doing a lot of video edits on files that are over 40GB and never had problems moving anything over the net. I'm on Mac OS X Tiger and LinkStation Quad (4x500GB) - in addition I have 3 other computers + XBox + PS3 all streaming video directly from LinkStation - not to mention 60GB iTunes library.
Hope it helps
I have a similar setup. A Linkstation Quad connected to 4 computers over wireless or powerline ethernet. All the computers are running Norton 360 and backup periodically to the Quad. I have about 600MB on the Quad. The Quad shuts down at midnight and starts up at 6am except on Thursday, where it runs until 4am backing up all changed files to a constantly attached USB drive. It works reliably with no disconnections.
However after about 3 months of continuous running, so much dust will have clogged up the input vents that unless I clean it, on a hot day where the area around the Quad reaches 95F+, the Quad will hang and has to be power cycled. So far, it has happened twice in the year that its been running. Fortunately, no problems with corruption, but I take comfort in having a backup on a USB drive. I also have an emergency boot drive for the Quad, where I can take out all the drives and put a single drive in to startup and check the condition of the hardware.
Note that in some situations such as running a disk check, the Quad shuts down all its network connections. It may also get so slow during a backup that it cannot handle file serving well and disconnect. I would suggest that you schedule all backups for early in the morning around 1am when everyone is asleep and unlikely to be using the Quad. Hence the Quad never has to deal with a bandwidth sapping backup and have to service 4 computers.
I have found the same situation. When transferring large files (usually over 1gb) to my Linkstation Quad, the network share disconnects or is interrupted at which point it is up to the program to sort out the issue (it usually means restarting the program or file transfer).
I have upgraded from my old Linkstation (HD-HLAN Series - Firmware 2.05) 250GB, which has never given me a problem by the way, to my new Linkstation Quad 4TB drive (LS-Q40.TL/R5 - Firmware 1.11).
From my observations it is NOT the network. I use both wired and wireless connections over two computers running Windows 7, Windows XP, and Ubuntu. All operating systems and networks encounter the same problem when transferring large files to the Linkstation Quad. Note. I don't have an issue transferring large files to my old Linkstation (HD-HLAN).
This situation is disappointing as I really just wanted a larger NAS drive that would also stream media.
Things I have tried :-
. Copying files using rsync seems to be the best way for me to transfer large files, even though restarts are often required.
. Turned off all extra options available on the Linkstation ie. Media Server, Torrents, Web Server etc. just to make sure it wasn't being interrupted whilst I was transferring large files.
. Different operating systems
. Different computers
. Different network connections (wired and wireless)
I wonder if changing the Raid array so that I just have four separate 1TB drives may help. I'm currently using RAID mode RAID0.
Hope someone has some ideas about this problem.