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Review: SimpleTech SimpleShare Office Storage Server

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thiggins   07-21-2006 at 04:58:17 PM

If you've got about $300, there are plenty of options for adding a few hundred gigs of storage to your LAN. But Jim Buzbee found that SimpleShare's Office Storage Server has some unique features that could land it in your shopping basket.

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thiggins   07-21-2006 at 05:00:58 PM
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Michael said:

Quote :

Hi Jim,

I wanted to add a few things to your review:

1. The RAID function did not seem to work with a USB-mounted WDD Caviar drive. I was particularly interested in the mirroring aspect of the drive (Maxtor and WD don't offer that in their NAS line-up), but although the mirroring was set up as per instructions, it did nothing.

2. My drive failed the Read portion of the Extended Diagnostic test. I found that a Repair function was lacking (Maxtor Shared Storage Plus has such an ability.) So, with no ability to attempt a repair, the corrupted data (whatever it may be) is not recoverable. Trying to figure out which data file is corrupted also is a pain.

3. The drive, despite its aluminum enclosure, gets quite hot as compared to the Maxtor SS+ -- drive reliability immediately became my concern.

4. Firmware updates are difficult to find on SimpleShare's website. However, Googling for it will eventually reveal the latest version (1.07.) The drive's internal "Check for Updates" feature only detected version 1.04.

Without Mirroring working and a Repair function, I'm getting rid of the drive for something different.

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zingalala   10-06-2006 at 11:24:49 PM
- 0 +

Following from the SimpleShare FAQs on SimpleTech's web site.

Quote :


Q: How do I create a mirror pool (raid 1) on the SimpleShare?

A: Mirrors can only be created on Pools of Equivalent size. This means that the USB drive you are attaching needs to be the same size or larger than the pool on your SimpleShare. It is recommended to turn off the print server before attempting to create a mirror.

1. Plug the USB drive into your SimpleShare and power it up.
2. After plugging in the USB drive go into the SimpleShare Advance Config
3. Go to the Disk Management Basic screen
4. The drive should be listed near the bottom of the page under Foreign Disks with a red claim button
5. Choose to claim and you will be taken to the next screen
6. Now select a name for the drive and type the line in the instructions
7. Make sure you do not check the Claim as Fat32 box
8. Click on Claim and the reformatting process will begin
9. When the process completes you will receive a message telling you it was successful
10. Click okay and you will be returned to the disk management basic screen
11. Go to disk management and choose add mirrors/spares
12. In the box for number of mirrors select 1
13. Check the box next to the name of the USB drive
14. Click the Add Mirrors/Spares button at the bottom of the page and click OK on the dialog box that pops up

The mirroring process is now underway. Depending on how much data is on the drive that you are mirroring it can take up to 10 hours for the process to complete. You can check status on the disk management basic screen. Do not use the drive while in mirroring is in progress.

Reply to zingalala
zingalala   10-12-2006 at 05:17:54 PM
- 0 +

One more piece of ifo for people interested in RAID features: The firmware 1.07 does not support disk spin down power management feature. They fixed the feature in firmware 1.09 but they also removed RAID functionality in 1.09. Work around: Keep 1.07 firmware. Hookup the HDD to IDE connector of you PC, boot using systemrescuecd, use smartmontools (smartctl -s off; smartctl -S off) to turn off the SMART monitoring on HDD. Plug back the HDD to SimpleShare. Now disk spin down will work but you will not have SMART monitoring feature. To me spin down is more important than SMART monitoring. You can peridically login to SimpleShare and check to see the RAID1 mirrors are in sync.

The future firmwares should have RAID features as per tech support but till then this work around should save life of your drive.
[/quote]

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