Trouble in Paradise

[Don Smith]

Thanks Dave. Yes, pass along the number. I’ve been going back and forth through the web with a guy that’s apparently in India. The answers come overnight. The answer I got this morning was from me attaching the subsystem report two days ago and the guy tells me the subsystem report was not attached. Arghhh! I didn’t know I could call someone.

This morning the bottom four drives have no lower light at all. All other lights are blue.

The Controller section shows a green checkmark however, and the Dashboard is all green checkmarks.

*sigh*

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[Don Smith]

Thanks Dave. I’ve been going back and forth through the web with a guy that’s apparently in India. The answers come overnight. The answer I got this morning was from me attaching the subsystem report two days ago and the guy tells me the subsystem report was not attached. Arghhh! I didn’t know I could call someone.

But your message spurred me to look further and I found a tech support number ending in 1400. It’s open until 7pm PT tonight which is 9pm Texas time so I’ll be calling it tonight.

This morning the bottom four drives have no lower light at all. All other lights are blue.

The Controller section shows a green checkmark however, and the Dashboard is all green checkmarks and says everything is OK.

*sigh*

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[Don Smith]

Didn’t get the time last night to call tech support. This morning I got the reply from the web tech support (because I suspect they are in India and work opposite my clock) and they told me I’ve got problems with my brand new Promise Pegasus2 R6:

“Found that PD4, PD5 has developed command times out errors and Also I could see PD1 has detected 2,065,921 NonRWRequest in drive. I suspect that PD1 is causing the problem also other drives detected error. So please back up the data immediately to avoid data loss. Once you backup the data. Please remove the PD1 from the unit and check whether it works. If still the same please attach the latest subsystem report. Regards Hariprasad Promise Technical Support.”

This is crazy. The RAID was bought on Dec. 12th. Promise should ship me a new one, let me save my data and ship back the defective unit. I don’t have 8TBs laying around to which I can copy the 8TB of media on the broken RAID. Rats.

Since I bought it from the Apple Store (online) I wonder if I can just return it? Hhhmmm…. Still, I would have the problem of saving all that data.

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[Joe Marler]

[Don Smith] Promise: “I suspect that PD1 is causing the problem also other drives detected error. So please back up the data immediately to avoid data loss.”

This is crazy. The RAID was bought on Dec. 12th. Promise should ship me a new one, let me save my data and ship back the defective unit. I don’t have 8TBs laying around to which I can copy the 8TB of media on the broken RAID. Rats.

Since I bought it from the Apple Store (online) I wonder if I can just return it? Hhhmmm…. Still, I would have the problem of saving all that data.”

The good news is this may explain your observed symptoms. The bad news is further isolation and replacement is required.

Promise sent me a complete replacement R4 but I had to twist their arm a bit. I originally ordered it from B&H. I was under the impression that items ordered from Apple are covered under their (usually more robust) support policies.

Whether now or the future, you pretty much need something to back up the R6 to. Just because it’s RAID 5 doesn’t mean it can’t fail — as you are now seeing. Also software problems, device driver bugs, etc. can damage data, and RAID 5 is vulnerable to those.

In my case I have an 8TB Thunderbolt G-RAID (RAID 0) which backs up my R4. Besides that I have separate Time Machine backups on a 6TB Thunderbolt WD MyBook Duo.

That said, even if you had another 8TB, it would possibly result in a double copy: From failing R6 to your backup, then transfer that to the replacement R6. If there’s any way you could talk them into shipping you a fully-equipped R6, you could do it in one step.

Sorry about your problems. The R4/R6 are great storage systems and after my initial problems I am very happy with mine.

[Don Smith]

I realized I had a 4TB USB3 drive laying around that I had put media on that I no longer needed. Reformatting that drive allowed me to copy off my last project which was the only thing new on the R6. The rest of the media on the R6 is still around on their original drives and is safe. I’ll be calling Promise when I get home this evening to see if they could hold a credit card and send me a replacement with the guarantee that mine will be shipped back or offer to take mine and fix it or something. I don’t want to be their tech on a brand new unit.

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[Craig Alan]

try this: Kristopher.Bose@Promise.com

I could not understand the rep from India. Kristopher is helpful with both tech issues and return issues.

That said: here’s my experience. I’m at a school and we ordered 18 or the 8TB R4s. They were in storage for almost 2 years due to the lab taking forever to be finished. So although in storage too long, they were brand new a few months ago when I began to use them. Two of them out of the box had serious enough issues to warrant an exchange. They sent me refurbished enclosures which really annoys me. If I had tested them when they were newer, I would really insist I get brand new enclosures. So I’m a little annoyed with myself as well. Still enclosures still in their sealed boxes don’t really go bad. Drives might, but they were not the issues. Promise deliberately left off certain features from the utility program because they were afraid that end users would loose data if they tried certain steps in an incorrect way or order.

My latest issue was a drive was seen as dead by promise utility and by a red top light on drive three. Kris talked me through using the terminal to remount the third drive and all was well. He said that this feature is not done through the utility because in a raid 5 config it could amount to total data loss if not done correctly. They will offer tech support for issues like this even out of warranty.

I had chosen raid 0 for these media drives but am second guessing this decision. My logic was these drives have no wear on them and are unlikely to fail for a couple of years. I would back up important projects. But all that happened here was a drive got unmounted (most likely a student popped one out) and then the entire raid was unseen by the mac. Raid 5 would have prevented any problem but at the expense of 2 TB per drive and slightly slower speeds. Thunderbolt raid to thunderbolt raid back-ups work pretty fast. So my plan now is to swap out the raid 0s for one config. as raid 5.

I really like the drives turning on and off with the computers. Cool feature when you need to turn off multiple editing stations.

Tapeless work flows have a many advantages over tape, but ease of archiving original media is not one of them. One of these days storing media will be fast, cheap, and good. Not just faster, cheaper, and better; but virtually effortless.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Don Smith]

I got wise and found the call number instead of waiting a day for a reply only to be told that my subsystem report wasn’t attached after all then waiting a day to hear that one drive is failing but dropping it that with no suggestion of how to proceed to get it replaced. The guy who answered my help call (quickly, I might add) was great. He had me upload a current subsystem report and saw that drive 5 was failing. Next thin you know I’m authorizing a RMA shipment and now I’m just waiting for my replacement drive to appear.

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