BlackArmor NAS Network Storage Server

[pamelaz]

Hello mshamblin,

Thanks for bringing this to our attention!

The accepted solution has been removed and this thread is no longer "solved".

Thanks!

[Yeprem]

Hello good folks and fellow victims to this "wonderful" device. Since my last post, the "NAS" was replaced free of charge. Yayyyy. My clients unfortunately decided to give it another chance. I was ready to replace it. We installed the latest firmware because it did not come updated. Setup the backups and started working. For the first few days I checked the backups regularly and even restored to another pc. It appeared to be working well. I would login at night, the backup status would be running, I would go to bed happy. A week passed, we could no longer read from the NAS. The backup drives were wiped clean, also Seagates, and I could no longer login to the web gui. After a lot of swearing, screaming, and cursing at he poor seagate tech support reps, which I think are just put there by seagate to take a beating from clients, we contacted Ontrack who recovered our data for only 7500.00$. If you can still access your data, get it off and get rid of this piece of junk. If anyone from Seagate has the courtesy to contact me, I would be greatly appreciative. I will tell you now though, if you contact me, I expect a check for my 7500$. Yeprem

[michaelp]

have 2 month old NAS 440 with same issue here! Can see files via network but not access them. computers with XP get this message "The specified network name is no longer available". computers with windows 7 see files with a gray X.

Was able to access all data by creating an ftp site. contacting seagate support monday.

[slabbi]

Same problem here with a BA 220. Unit works fine for three months then it was not longer possible to access it using CIFS though FTP and NFS were still fine.

Seems that the Samba server stopped working (0631 firmware).

Unit was repaced by Seagate within one week and is working for about one month now. I hope it will not fail again.

[Yeprem]

Good luck to the both of you. A piece of advice if you'll accept it. Backup your data as often as possible and double check that your data is "real" on your backups. Make sure you can open the files.

My Blackarmor was apparently backing up every night but it was all a big lie. The firmware is horrible and stopped working after 2-3 months with BOTH units I had. The original and the replacement. It cost us 7500$ to recover the data off the drives.

The unit is now sitting under my desk by the wall. I use it as a foot rest.

[blackarmour]

Hello,

I have today received a replacement BlackArmor NAS 220, as after about 6 months or so, my previous unit kept dropping off the network and failing to copy files.  I have been testing the replacement unit this evening, and it does exactly the same thing.  These BlackArmor units are completely rubbish!!!  I have always bought Seagate in the past, but following this, I doubt I will ever touch them again.

I find it incredible that there are so many returns, and the replacements they supply are clearly NOT TESTED before being sent back!

Nick

[BA220User]

Hello.  After reading many of these forum threads, here is a possible solution.  I do not know which step actually resolved the problem, so I am posting everything I tried thanks to this forum.  I am running XP, and have just got the 220 up and running to replace an old device. I am attempting to copy files but keep receiving the specified network name is no longer available error.

1.  Update to latest firmware that addresses the Master Browser issue:

http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=217171&NewLang=en

November 16th, 2010
Versions:
BA NAS 400 series - 4000.1101
BA NAS 220 - 2000.1091
BA NAS 110 - 1000.1081
Release Notes:
The new firmware updates includes many new features and many important bug fixes.

Bug Fixes:
False fan failure messages
Recycle-Bin manager
NAS to USB task manager
Master Browser conflicts resolved
Backup issues with MS Windows Server 2003/2008 seen in previous release

2.  Remove all occurrences of the NAS device listed in My Network Places

http://stx.lithium.com/t5/BlackArmor-NAS-Network-Storage/BA-220-network-share-becomes-unavailable-wh...

Re: BA 220, network share becomes unavailable while coping large or many filesOptions
Mark as New 
09-22-2010 10:10 AM
The "BROWSER" errors you are seeing is for the Network Browser function.
That is to say... The function that builds what you see under "My Network" Neighborhoods.

3.  Reboot the device using the admin UI.

I did not reboot the PC but maybe that would be a next step to try and help reset or sync things up.  If this does not work for you immediately then maybe give it some time because steps 1 and 2 did not resolve it for me until maybe an hour or 2 later I rebooted the device and that is when the errors stopped.  I copied many gigs of data without the error occurring, and some files were huge, over 1 gig video, some were even multiple gigs.

Please reply back if this works for you so that others can resolve this frustrating issue.  I would have returned this box if I could not resolve it.  Needless to say this has been a huge pain.  I wonder if the firmware update alone resolves this issue?  Oh well, I am not going to expirement any longer.

[NotAgainSeagate]

I had the problem described in this thread, six months ago.  Seagate tech support was pretty much useless and the solution ultimately required a replacement.  Today I'm having the same issue with the replaced drive.  This thing is a piece of junk and this company should stop selling this worthless drive, because they are clearly putting in no effort to develop a fix.  Fortunately for me, all of my family photos have been backed up on an external USB drive.  I will NEVER purchase another Seagate product again and would warn anyone considering Seagate drives for their storage needs.

[Hermann]

I had the same problem, I recovered my data by removing the HDDs from the BlackArmor and inserting them into a HP Proliant Microserver.

I booted using a Ubunto 11.04 Live CD, installed the software raid controller package, mdadm, and the Logical volume management package LVM2.

I then used mdadm's auto-detect feature to enable the Raid drives.

[chicago720]

Same problem here.  Even with the latest firmware.  But I found a fix FWIW: I upped the MTU to 3000 (basically twice the default) and that seemed to fix it.  Not sure why it would make a difference but it did...