Linkstation Quad-replaced two in nine months

[mbunge]

   

Has anyone else had trouble with the LinkStation Quad?

 

I bought two 4TB units in 9-9-09, intending to use one as my primary photo storage device and the second as a backup. In January I had to replace a defective disk in my primary device. It continued to give me problems and the entire unit was eventually replaced. In April the fan quit in my backup unit, rendering drive two inoperable. That unit was also replaced. It's been operation for maybe two weeks. Today the backup drive experienced a problem--during a backup--with drive three and turned itself off.  I am currently rebuilding the raid array to see if this fixes this problem.

 

My concern is that I really shouldn't be experiencing these types of problems. I understand that drives go bad and that's why I opted for the RAID arrays. But I've had both units fail (not the drives, the unit itself), leaving my photos without a backup. Could there be a problem with the quality/design of the Linkstation Quad? A temporary lapse of quality control? Or am I just unlucky? I'm thinking I will need to buy another drive of some sort to backup my backup so I'm covered when the next failure occurs.

 

I just wonder if other people are having the same types of problems.

[tsammyc]

   

I don't trust NAS in general as they are all quite fragile devices compared to say a real file server. If you read the internet, its not just Buffalo products that are failing, but QNAP, Thecus etc.I also don't trust RAID 5 because of the need to rebuild a failed array and the rebuild can fail. For my Quad, I run RAID 1, which is just a 1:1 mirroring. If you have four HDD, you will have two shares. One for disk 1&2 and the other share for disk 3&4. That way, when a HDD goes down, any surviving drive should still boot by itself in an empty NAS and be acessible. Second, I backup changed files to an external USB drive once a week. That way if my Quad fails, I can still access the files off the USB drive (with some Linux drivers for Windows). I don't backup across the network, because I found that to be complicated and fragile. USB drives are usually quite robust compared to a NAS.