WD Sharespace, the NAS you DO NOT want to rely on.

[Woody3366]

I recently purchased a WD Sharespace NAS with a whopping 4TB of RAID 5 storage, given the size of the files from my newly acquired Beyonwiz I figured an off-pc store would be ideal. Three weeks into service one of the HDD's failed and the RAID continued to perform in "degraded" mode pending the defective drive being replaced. After several emails to and from WD support (staffed by Kindergarden dropouts) in which they were/are clearly on their own learning curve, I finally reinstalled my brand new HDD into the unit and performed a recovery in accordance with the WD tech support instructions - the unit recovered the full RAID array and presented me with a fully restored and ready to go unit sans data.!!! That's right, if you have a drive failure and then replace the drive the unit will restore the datastore to the factory state - blank! The unit deletes all user created shares as part of the recovery process, so if you have created a custome share or folder and placed data in it, then backup first, because the idiotic WD coding will zap everything. The point of RAID is redundancy, but not if its a Western Digital, they have their own idea of what the RAID5 specification is all about, there you go - backup your redunant device - what is the point (I think the concept is lost on the boffins at Western Digital)

Bottom Line: If you value your data - do not use Western Digital.

Looks like the official response from Western Digital is to hide and say nothing. A great way to treat a customer that has just spent over $1000+ on their product.

Lab test: To be sure it wasn't me, I have just finished trying to repeat the error by reinstalling the drive, syncing and then creating shares "Upload" and "Cabinet" - I populated the shares with a few hundred meg of files and pulled drive #3. The NAS then dropped into "degraded mode", I reinstalled the drive (after formatting) and then selected the "clear drive" option from the NAS control interface, the drive then presented as "new", I then re-synced as per the instruction from the WD support team, and hey presto - exactly the same result, a perfectly clean and blank drive, all shares deleted by the OS.

DUMB, DUMB, DUMB - Bad Firmware, Bad Coding. Violation of the RAID-5 specification (see re-sync).

I doubt WD will ever formally respond, but steer clear of this unit if you need a truly redundant NAS, get something else.

[thiggins]

Thanks for the post.

I am asking WD for comment on your findings. I'll let you know what I find out.

[claykin]

Sounds like WD decided to beta test with the public. Nice!! This is exactly why I'm not an early adopter!! I've been burned too many times.

Sorry to hear about your WD disaster. While I can understand your concern, I'm quite sure WD will fix something as severe as this. probably sooner than later.

[Woody3366]

thiggins: Thanks for the response. Forgive my cynicism but dont hold your breath. I just got a note back from WD support letting me know that my issue has been escalated to WD in the US office for further review and I may expect to hear in a few days as it is thanksgiving holidays right now and they will response after the festivities. Fortunately all WD Raid-5 units are pre-programmed not to fail during thanksgiving so my data will remain safe for now.

It seems this may not be the first time this type of problem has surfaced on this site: I re-read an article by TIm Higgins at this url:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/conte.../30586/75/1/2/
and it appears Tim had a similar issue that required additional undocumented support from WD. Tim doesn't say if he actually tested the late advice from WD on inserting a clean-new drive to overcome his initial difficulty, however I can confidently say it would not have made a scrap of difference. Tim's data would be lost. He may wish to update his review.

Another point: The undocumented assistance from WD that Tim refers to in his article is still undocumented. You'd think that if WD were even slightly customer focussed, they'd update the WD KB with a post addressing how to replace a failed drive in a WD SS NAS RAID-5. Well they have not. Maybe WD think that Tim is the only person in the whole world that will suffer a HDD failure in a NAS unit? Silly boys and girls at WD aren't they.

claykin, Thanks for your response: You said "While I can understand your concern, I'm quite sure WD will fix something as severe as this. probably sooner than later." I'd love to agree, but I am not so sure and dont share your confidence. Apart from the above comments that put WD in a certain box concerning customer focus, WD recently removed the user feedback forums from their support site because users were voicing too many negative comments and flaming WD.!!! Now, if that isn't stuffing your head in the sand I don't know what is. Hey WD guys - the user community is giving you feedback and railing your quality for a reason. I doubt the quality is any better or worse than most other offerring from your competitors, the difference is that your technical support and consumer management systems are woeful.

I feel that WD technical management suffer from primadonna syndrome, the conceit is palpable. Do WD actually believe there is nothing to be learned from the user community? It's bad enough that we are treated as guinea pigs, it's something else to be then treated as idiots and somewhat ignored. I have offerred suggestions for updated FW and front end features - silence is the response, at least have the strength to tell me I'm off the rails if you dont like my ideas! Better still, have the strength to recognise that if your product is less than ideal, to accept constructive criticism and improve, before the constructive criticism becomes negative. (Consumer Managment 101)

McDonalds has better systems for dealing with bad fries.

[claykin]

Well, if you really have such little confidence (and maybe I can't blame you) its best to take the bull by the horns and see what dirt you can stir up.

Below is WD's corporate office info. Ask for John Coyne, its CEO and President. I shouldn't have to tell you that you get a lot further with honey than fire.

BTW, if they won't connect you, ask for the President's office or their escalation team. Tell them you've worn out all support options.

Good luck to ya!

Corporate Headquarters
Western Digital
20511 Lake Forest Drive
Lake Forest, CA 92630-7741
Phone: 949.672.7000
Toll Free: 888.935.8893
FAX: 949.672.5408

[Woody3366]

Here is the latest from WD on this issue...

I wanted to take a moment and thank you for bringing this to our attention. We have created a new knowledge base article that will be release in the next 1 to 2 business days addressing this issue.

[Woody3366]

Update from WD.

They have finally posted a "fix" on the WD KnowledgeBase.
http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc....p?p_faqid=2746

Sadly it's wrong. What WD do not tell you is that the unit will now boot into a completely pointless UI blank white screen, with a small green dot in the corner, and the words "Starting up" in the middle of the screen. Somehow, you are supposed to understand that the unit is actually doing something.

This is what the screen should say:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Progress Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Hello there user, the system has detected a new drive has been installed and is now re-syncing the RAID-5 array. The useless green dot you see in the top corner is actually a progress bar, that will slowly grow across the screen as the RAID array rebuilds. Please do not interrupt this process.

If you are rebuilding a large array this may take up to 16 hours before the dot becomes a line, patience little one :-)

This is what is does say:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
.


Starting up...





--------------------------------------------------------------------
Did you find the green dot?



All of the above is not documented and the update in the KB is next-to-useless, I have informed WD of this, it seems the update to the KB may take another week to fix. The quality assurance and sanity checking process at WD don't seem to extend to the KB support group (sadness)....

[thiggins]

Did you use a WD drive as the replacement drive?

Aside from not informing you as to the progress of the rebuild, if you replace the drive and wait, does the array successfully rebuild?

[claykin]

It sounds like your unit does not have a fault, aside from the piss poor rebuild screen that WD provides??

The Sharespace appears to have some LED's on the front panel. What were they telling you during the rebuild?

I own a WD NetCenter and want to remote access it outside of my network. It has been designed more as just an external hard drive that can share folders and files within your network. It is not equipped with any sort of additional software for remote access and the only file that was on the NetCenter when I bought it was the default .html file, which is used as the admin settings page. However, you can not see the shared folders or their files from this area. I was wondering if there was a way to add html code to the .html file or add an additional file to be able the view the shared folders and files. I have already assigned a static IP address to the NetCenter and opened the port on my router, and can actually access the admin settings page from outside my network, but as I said, I can’t view the shared folders and files from this page. If anyone has any ideas it would be appreciated. Thanks.