Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[stuartma]

I have a DIR-645 router with an external USB Seagate desktop drive attached. I use this to store video files, which I access from my HTPC (Windows 7) using the mapped drive letter and the Shareport utility. The HTPC is connected via 1Gbs ethernet.

All worked perfectly until recently when I switched from an older 250 Gb external drive to a new Seagate 2 Tb drive. Both USB drives are externally powered.

Now I find while watching video the drive disconnects for a short period of time (resulting in the video stream being lost) and then recovers 4-5 seconds later. This seems to happen after about 10-15 minute interval i.e. it happily streams at about 3-4 Mbps for a while, then the drive mapping is temporarily lost and the video stream is lost.

I have checked the Power saving settings in the external drive and checked it is off (and powersaving should not kick in when data is being transferred continuously at 3-4 Mbps anyway).

Also upgraded the router firmware from 1.01 (which it shipped with) to 1.03.

Shareport version is at 4.0.0.

Neither of these actions have fixed my issue.

Before I give up and just directly connect my new drive to the USB (which I prefer not to, as one cord less  to access over Ethernet), does anyone have any suggestions to resolve this.

[stuartma]

Bit more diagnostics, as I am still not sure whether issue is with the router, SharePort or the Seagate drive.

Tried a robocopy copy of a 4.3 Gb file in restartable mode. This fails every 3 minutes or so (but restarts) finally completing at a rate of 67 MegaBytes/min...

...
 64.7%      New File               4.3 g        THE_WEST_WING - Disk 2.ISO
2013/05/07 20:43:39 ERROR 64 (0x00000040) Copying File Z:\Video\TV Series\West Wing Series 1\THE_WEST_WING - Disk 2.ISO
The specified network name is no longer available.
Waiting 30 seconds... Retrying...
 67.2%      New File               4.3 g        THE_WEST_WING - Disk 2.ISO
2013/05/07 20:46:09 ERROR 64 (0x00000040) Copying File Z:\Video\TV Series\West Wing Series 1\THE_WEST_WING - Disk 2.ISO
The specified network name is no longer available.
Waiting 30 seconds... Retrying...
 85.1%      New File               4.3 g        THE_WEST_WING - Disk 2.ISO
...

If I check the router logs at the failure times, say from the error above about 20:46:09 I can see an error reported and the drive being re-mounted...

[Time]Tue May  7 20:46:04 2013
[Message:377]ntfs_attr_pread_i: ntfs_pread failed: Input/output error
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Time]Tue May  7 20:46:07 2013
[Message:378]Failed to read vcn 0x2: Input/output error
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Time]Tue May  7 20:46:07 2013
[Message:379]ntfs_attr_pread_i: ntfs_pread failed: Input/output error
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Time]Tue May  7 20:46:07 2013
[Message:380]ntfs_attr_pread error reading '/Video/TV Series/West Wing Series 1/THE_WEST_WING - Disk 2.ISO' at offset 3146219520: 4096 <> -1: Input/output error
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Time]Tue May  7 20:46:07 2013
[Message:381]ntfs_attr_pread_i: ntfs_pread failed: Input/output error
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Time]Tue May  7 20:46:07 2013
[Message:382]Failed to read vcn 0x2: Input/output error
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Time]Tue May  7 20:46:07 2013
[Message:383]ntfs_attr_pread_i: ntfs_pread failed: Input/output error
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Time]Tue May  7 20:46:07 2013
[Message:384]Failed to read vcn 0x0: Input/output error
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Time]Tue May  7 20:46:07 2013
[Message:385]ntfs_attr_pread_i: ntfs_pread failed: Input/output error
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Time]Tue May  7 20:46:07 2013
[Message:386]Failed to read index block: Input/output error
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Time]Tue May  7 20:46:07 2013
[Message:387]ntfs_attr_pread_i: ntfs_pread failed: Input/output error
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Time]Tue May  7 20:46:07 2013
[Message:388]Failed to read vcn 0x2: Input/output error
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Time]Tue May  7 20:46:08 2013
[Message:389]Unmounting /var/tmp/sda1 (Seagate Expansion Drive)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Time]Tue May  7 20:46:09 2013
[Message:390]( (1020)action 1,major 8,minor 0)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Time]Tue May  7 20:46:09 2013
[Message:391]( (1021)action 1,major 8,minor 1)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Time]Tue May  7 20:46:09 2013
[Message:392]umount (/tmp/sda : /tmp/storage/Seagate_Expansion_R7TJ0) success
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Time]Tue May  7 20:46:19 2013
[Message:393]Version 2010.10.2 integrated FUSE 27
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Time]Tue May  7 20:46:19 2013
[Message:394]Mounted /var/tmp/sda1 (Read-Write, label \"Seagate Expansion Drive\", NTFS 3.1)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Time]Tue May  7 20:46:19 2013
[Message:395]Cmdline options: 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Time]Tue May  7 20:46:19 2013
[Message:396]Mount options: allow_other,nonempty,relatime,fsname=/var/tmp/sda1,blkdev,blksize=4096
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Time]Tue May  7 20:46:19 2013
[Message:397]Ownership and permissions disabled, configuration type 1
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Time]Tue May  7 20:48:19 2013
[Message:398]Web login success from 192.168.0.100
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[FurryNutz]

Does this happen with the 250Gb drive as well?

[stuartma]

No - worked fine with 250 Gb drive.

Although had no problems with the 2 Tb when directly connected (when I copied the content from old to new).

[FurryNutz]

Makes me think if the 250Gb drive works with out problems, that there might be a problem with the 2Tb.

What PC platform are you using? Windows? Version?

I can run a test with my 645 and my 2Tb WD usb and see if I notice anything...

[stuartma]

HTPC is Windows-7 64-bit.

Verified that it is not the Seagate 2 Tb drive. Disconnected the drive from the router USB port and connected via USB to my laptop (also Windows-7), which in turn is cable connected via Ethernet to the router.

Mapped a drive to the laptop mounted external from my HTPC, and repeated a 4.3 GB file copy using robocopy i.e. exactly the same test as previously - a network copy of a 4.3 Gb file from the same external Seagate drive connected using a USB port over the same network to the same PC, except this time my external drive is mounted on another networked PC instead of mounted using the DIR-645 router USB port.

File copied with zero errors at 118 MB/minute (quite a lot faster than before - even allowing for the errors and timeouts while the external drive re-mounted on the router after every error).

To me this indicates the DIR-645 router is the problem.

Maybe my old 250 Gb external drive is slower, and does not load the router the same way. Given the router  only has a USB 2 port, maybe it has an issue with the USB 3 capable drive.

[FurryNutz]

Well again, if your 250 is working on the router and the 2Tb isn't, probably an issue between the router and this 2Tb drive. My 2Tb drive isn't USB 3.0 though so this could be the issue.

I'll test with my USB 2.0 2Tb drive on my 645 and see what happens...

[DLT]

I'm intending to buy a 500GB usb drive to use with my DIR-645 is it possible to partition it for use with PC and MAC would the router support this?

[FurryNutz]

Use NTFS formatting and use 1 partition.