Cannot setup new NAS, help?
Any NAS experts here?
I'm giving up, returning everything to Amazon. I need help to start over. :depressed: I had bought: - Asustor 3304t - WD Red Plus 14tb (x2) - Asus XG-C100C 10gbe NIC The Asus NIC is a POS. It would double install drivers, and not be seen by Win7 using either. The Asustor fan was loud, made grinding/buzzing noises, and that was with no drives in it. It insisted on using the IP 169.254.1.2, so I could never connect. We run a static IP network, for our own sanity. There's nothing worse than device grabbing random IPs when you're sharing drives and printers on the network. I see no way to set an IP for it. I never got to test the drives. Those Red Plus seemed really quiet, but no point in keeping them, since I don't know what I'll be doing next. I can always re-buy. My Mac Mini M2 Pro has a 10gbe, so that's why I got 10gbe for the Win7 system. I'm probably giving up on Marvell here, grabbing a used Intel X540 from eBay (and for less than the apparently-inferior Marvell AQC cards). No idea about a NAS. Asustor is garbage, no instructions. I'm disgusted by all of it. A home NAS shouldn't be this difficult. I just want a DLNA on a drive, with some central backup storage on the other. No RAID, no external file serving, nothing complex. |
Take a look at Synology. Friend of mine has had no issues with his. That IP means it hasn't grabbed config info from a DHCP server. One really shouldn't have to manually input static IP information. Your router's DHCP server likely supports reserved addresses. Just input the MAC of the network adapter and the IP you want and the machine will always grab the same IP from DHCP. Been doing it that way for years....WAY easier.
Regarding the Asus NIC, Marvell has newer drivers and a possible firmware update for the AQC107 based cards. Asus notes that the Windows 7 drivers don't work with v2 boards, so maybe that is the reason? Other vendors make AQC107 based cards too, so that is worth trying. I wouldn't expect support for Windows 7 on anything released the past 3 years anyway. Your Mac Mini has a Marvell AQC113 in it (later PCIe 4.0 design). Note that the "Intel is superior" rule is partly because Marvell and Realtek didn't have FreeBSD drivers for a long time, thus making it difficult to use their cards in TrueNAS setups. Intel completely blew their reputation with the I225V 2.5Gbe chip having tons of issues. Lucky me that I just bought a motherboard with both an onboard Intel I225V and Marvell AQC113 controller. :rolleyes: Supposedly it is a fixed revision of the chip and it does work under Windows 7 at least. Also the Intel X540 is an old design predating NBaseT. It will only connect at 10G or 1G as it does not support 5G or 2.5G link speeds. The board also likely needs a fan since many of those cards were intended for server chassis with flow-thru ventilation. |
Thanks much for replying. :)
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I'd be curious - how you friend uses it (DLNA? backup?) - where it is located, aka the noise tolerance for the location - model? - drives? (and RAID with level? no RAID?) Quote:
I hate that Google Chromecast required DHCP for setup, so the network must be rebooted, the Google stick setup. The Chromecast then allows static IP to be specific. So, so dumb. And yet, I understand, because it's made for low-knowledge users. But NAS shouldn't be made for dullards, and I have to wonder what else doesn't work well. In fact, I know some NAS features are swiss cheese invites to network attacks, even through router NAT. So, yikes! That was something I planned to fully disable, and harden the NAS. Quote:
Should be here soon, and it's supposed to just work OOB. Quote:
I just ordered another AQC107 from Amazon, different brand, supposedly works in Win7. We shall see. I can always return whatever does not work. Quote:
For the moment, I've returned to simply keeping a share drive on a system with Serviio, shared SMB folders. That has worked well for at least 15 years now. NAS was mostly for convenience, but it turned out to be a PITA instead. I went ahead and opened the WD drives, tested both. My main worry was drive noise, but one of these WD Red Plus 14tb is almost silent! The other was a vibrating noise maker, and was returned as planned. So those drives can vary. |
I'm a Synology user. For a good price, order a manufacturer refurbished unit from Newegg. The 8-bay DS1817 (non-plus model) is $512 and has built-in 10GbE.
For media, I run Kodi on an Nvidia Shield TV Pro. It has gigabit ethernet so it plays 4k remuxes better than my smart TV which only has 100Mbit ethernet and skips like crazy on them. The only thing the Shield doesn't support are Youtube 4K 60fps HDR videos which my TV supports. I use shucked WD EasyStore drives from Best Buy, shucked WD Elements drives from Amazon, WD Red drives (CMR), and Seagate Exos and Seagate Ironwolf drives depending on what's on sale. I try to mix them up so if there's ever a bad batch of drives, I'll never have more than 1 drive from that batch. For RAID level, I use Synology's SHR so I can replace smaller drives with larger ones and expand the volume. I've done this many times over the years. I've never had an issue with reserved IPs. My router is a Mikrotik which is slightly above consumer level so maybe that's the reason it works well for me. I paid $80 for that router in 2015 and it's been rock solid. |
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