IOCELL 351UNE NetDISK (NDAS) Reviewed

[zjohnr]

Link to original article:
Fast and Cheap Network Storage: IOCELL 351UNE NetDISK Reviewed

I searched and didn't find a forum thread already created for this article. My apologies if I missed it and please just point me towards it.

My comments are actually based on my experience with a much older PATA and 100 Mbps ethernet NDAS device sold under Other World Computers (OWC) label. They call it an OWC NASPerform.

I have encountered a very strange and, I'm guessing, OS specific bug with this device. The Ximeta device driver for use with Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) shows drastically reduced read speeds when accessing the NDAS device using wireless 802.11n.

Curiously, the write speeds are not affected, only the read. Write transfer rates are around what you might expect given the limits of the 100 Mbps port on this older NDAS device, around 6-7 MiB/sec. But the read speed when using 802.11n is more like 130 KiB/sec.

So when I saw the Smallnetbuilder review of the 351UNE I immediately wondered if the bug I'm seeing might also affect it.

On the unlikely chance you might still have the device laying around I was wondering if you could try a quick transfer rate test for reads from a 351UNE NetDISK under OS X 10.6 using 802.11n?

(OK, I realize it's probably completely unreasonable for Tim to be able to try this. But maybe someone else out there might be able to. While I've tackled this thing 7 ways from Sunday and am 97% convinced I'm correct in pointing a finger at the Ximeta device driver, I 'd still like to minimize that nagging "Is it just me??" voice in my head. )

-irrational john

 

[thiggins]

I've linked this thread to the review, John. And sorry, I can't run your experiment since I don't have a Mac handy.

 

[zjohnr]

OK, thanks. I'll try to test it myself then.

I've linked this thread to the review, John. And sorry, I can't run your experiment since I don't have a Mac handy.

Thanks, Tim.

No Mac? How can you function?? More seriously, I find I enjoy the convenience of my MacBook much more than I ever expected I would. Especially since the latest step towards a full 64-bit OS X in Snow Leopard seems to have made it a tad faster most of the time.

(Also, after using Windows all these years I'm still trying to comprehend buying Snow Leopard, a full retail OS install with no activation required, for < $30).

But I digress ...

I've ordered an IOCELL 351UNE from buy.com. There is currently a rebate which drops the price (assuming I get the rebate) to ~$45 (including NY state sales tax). Given that it supports eSata, USB 2.0, & (hopefully) network access, I decided to risk it. If I can get it to work well (enough) with Snow Leopard then it would satisfy my (very simple) goal at this time of enabling wireless Time Machine backup for my MacBook.

I expect to find that the 351UNE has the same problem with OS X 10.6 that I've seen with the older, slower unit I already have since it looks like all the units use the same host (?) software. (I'm guessing Ximeta uses a standard enough interface among their different hardware versions to allow them to do this). But no way to be sure without trying. Perhaps the different chipsets used on the 351UNE will mean it doesn't experience this problem?

I'm also hopeful that I can get Ximeta to fix whatever might be wrong in their driver. I've had a few good initial exchanges following my email problem report to Ximeta tech support. I'm still surprised that they released code with (apparently) this OS X 10.6 bug in it, but at least their level 1 person has been open to looking into it. I'll try to keep this thread updated with my experiences as they develop for whatever they're worth.

OWC "tech support" also appears to want to be helpful, though I did have to "reason with them" a bit more. At one point it was suggested that the drastic drop in read speed with wireless was probably just a result of "error correction". MiB/s when writing and KiB/s when reading. Because of error correction? Yeah, right. I wasn't convinced.

-irrational john

 

[thiggins]

Thanks, John for running the experiment. Looking forward to your update on this.

 

[Karlsbad]

I'm thinking of buying one of these and connecting it via USB to my WD Live and via ethernet to my DAP-1522 at the same time, even though their manual online says that will cause the drive to malfunction. Thoughts?

Edit: somewhat generic manual online https://www.iocellshop.com/files/drivers/manuals/WinUserMan.pdf

 

[zjohnr]

Not sure what you're asking about ...

I'm thinking of buying one of these and connecting it via USB to my WD Live and via ethernet to my DAP-1522 at the same time, even though their manual online says that will cause the drive to malfunction.

It's not clear to me what sort of use you're considering.

The only way I think you could use the 351UNE is to connect it to the WD Live via USB as an external hard drive. But if all you wanted is an external USB hard drive enclosure, then you could get one for a lot less money.

The main "draw" for me of the 351UNE is the possibility of being able to access a drive from one or the the other of my computers over my home network relatively inexpensively. If all you want to use is either the USB (or eSATA) why bother with the 351UNE?

-irrational john

 

[Karlsbad]

It's not clear to me what sort of use you're considering.

The only way I think you could use the 351UNE is to connect it to the WD Live via USB as an external hard drive. But if all you wanted is an external USB hard drive enclosure, then you could get one for a lot less money.

The main "draw" for me of the 351UNE is the possibility of being able to access a drive from one or the the other of my computers over my home network relatively inexpensively. If all you want to use is either the USB (or eSATA) why bother with the 351UNE?

-irrational john

I want to be able to write to it over the network and read it from the media player's USB port. You can't use the WD Live player to turn a USB drive into a network drive, you can't read or write to it over the network.

 

[zjohnr]

I think that could work, but would probably be awkward.

I want to be able to write to it over the network and read it from the media player's USB port. You can't use the WD Live player to turn a USB drive into a network drive, you can't read or write to it over the network.

Well, from what I think I understand about the 351UNE you could do that, but not easily. You can't use the NDAS function while it is connected as a USB or eSATA drive.

So to connect it via USB to the WD Live I believe you'd have to disconnect from the network before you hooked it up as USB storage. And, versa-vice, to use the network you'd have to first disconnect the USB from the WD Live before (re)connecting it to the ethernet.

I have no idea what would happen if you tried to connect USB and ethernet simultaneously. All I know is that Ximeta says it's only one way or the other, not both. I believe them and would never try to use it any other way.

-irrational john

 

[zjohnr]

With OS X 10.6 the hardware is willing but the software quite frankly sucks.

First apologies for not posting this update sooner. I actually received my IOCELL 351UNE back on 12/23. (In time to be a Christmas gift to myself of dubious value? ) Not sure what I was waiting for, but it's way past time to say something about my experience with it so far.

I haven't done much and I was primarily focused on seeing how the device works with my MacBook under OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard. As far I could tell, the same OS specific software is used to support all NDAS devices access from that OS. I have installed an older Seagate 400GB ST3400620AS 7200.10 SATA drive in the 351UNE.

The 351UNE shows up as hardware version 2.0, revision 16. My older model, an OWC NASPerform, shows only as hardware version 1.1. But both are configured on both Windows 7 Home (64-bit) and Mac OS X 10.6 or 10.5 using the same NDAS configuration utility for either the Windows or Mac OS, respectively.

My Kill-A-Watt showed power usage of around 16 watts when the drive was in use and around 8 watts when the 351UNE switched to whatever "power saving" mode it uses.

The 351UNE with v2.0 hardware experiences the same performance "bug" as the NASPerform hardware v1.1. Using wireless 802.11n via Snow Leopard, OS X 10.6.2, I found reading from the device was reduced to KiB/s versus MiB/s rates when writing to the device. Things were slightly better in that I could read from the 351UNE at ~0.61 MiB/s versus ~0.13 MiB/s for the NASPerform. (Possibly a consequence of a slightly "better" NIC on the newer device and/or the 351UNE's gigabit ethernet support??)

In the same context I saw write speeds from ~4.7 to ~8.2 MiB/s or roughly 10 times faster. I attribute the wide write speed variations to the fact that I wasn't trying to be very "controlled" about my wireless environment. All I did to test transfer rates was to note the approx start & end times to the nearest second by looking at the clock on the MacBook. I then used a spreadsheet to divide total bytes transferred by the transfer time in seconds.

Aside from not starting any other file transfers, I continued to use the MacBook as I normally would while the "test" was running. I used drag'n drop to do the file transfers to/from the NDAS device.

The bottom line for me is that reads are always at least 10 times slower than writes when using 802.11n and Snow Leopard. I can only explain this as being caused by "bad" device driver code.

Other things I have noticed that I believe support this conclusion are:

• I do not see this reduction in 802.11n read versus write speeds when the MacBook is running Leopard, OS X 10.5.8. In other words, the problem disappears when using the same hardware but an earlier version of the OS.
  
• I also did not see the read speed reduction when I ran Windows 7 RC1 under OS X 10.6 using Parallels v5. Both reads and writes were in the MiB/s range even though I was running Win 7 in a virtual machine running in Snow Leopard. (To put it another way, if I use the Windows 7 NDAS driver on my MacBook running Snow Leopard, I don't see this problem).
  
• Error messages (see excerpt below) in the Snow Leopard kernel log.
  Dec 18 23:36:29 MacBook kernel[0]: [com_ximeta_driver_NDASPhysicalUnitDevice:591][updateStatus] Change Status from 2 to 4
  Dec 28 11:29:01 MacBook kernel[0]: [com_ximeta_driver_NDASPhysicalUnitDevice:591][updateStatus] Change Status from 2 to 4
  Dec 28 11:29:01 MacBook kernel[0]: [com_ximeta_driver_NDASPhysicalUnitDevice:591][updateStatus] Change Status from 4 to 6
  Dec 28 11:29:03 MacBook kernel[0]: Warning - com.Seagate.driver.PowSecDriver declares no kernel dependencies; using com.apple.kernel.6.0.
  Dec 28 11:29:03 MacBook kernel[0]: Couldn't alloc class "com_seagate_FDEBootStrap"
  Dec 28 11:29:03: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
  Dec 28 11:29:03 MacBook kernel[0]: com_seagate_IOPowSec00 overriding init
  Dec 28 11:29:03 MacBook kernel[0]: com_seagate_IOPowSec00: No USBInterface found
  Dec 28 11:29:03 MacBook kernel[0]: com_seagate_IOPowSec00: GetVendorAndModelIDInfo failed
  Dec 28 11:29:03 MacBook kernel[0]: Couldn't alloc class "com_seagate_FDEBootStrap"
  Dec 28 11:29:13: --- last message repeated 4 times ---
  Dec 28 11:29:13 MacBook kernel[0]: [com_ximeta_driver_NDASDevice:1880][processReadCommand] too Long time!!! Reduced 0
  Dec 28 11:29:18 MacBook kernel[0]: [com_ximeta_driver_NDASDevice:1880][processReadCommand] too Long time!!! Reduced 1
  Dec 28 11:29:21 MacBook kernel[0]: [com_ximeta_driver_NDASDevice:1880][processReadCommand] too Long time!!! Reduced 0
  Dec 28 11:29:51 MacBook kernel[0]: [com_ximeta_driver_NDASDevice:1880][processReadCommand] too Long time!!! Reduced 3
  Dec 28 11:29:52 MacBook kernel[0]: [com_ximeta_driver_NDASDevice:1880][processReadCommand] too Long time!!! Reduced 4
  Dec 28 11:30:12: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
  Dec 28 11:30:12 MacBook kernel[0]: [com_ximeta_driver_NDASDevice:1880][processReadCommand] too Long time!!! Reduced 3
  Dec 28 11:30:13 MacBook kernel[0]: [com_ximeta_driver_NDASDevice:1880][processReadCommand] too Long time!!! Reduced 2
  Dec 28 11:30:13 MacBook kernel[0]: [com_ximeta_driver_NDASDevice:1880][processReadCommand] too Long time!!! Reduced 1
  Dec 28 11:30:41 MacBook kernel[0]: Insomnia: Lid was closed
  Dec 28 11:30:41 MacBook kernel[0]: Insomnia: kIOPMClamshellOpened sent to root
  Dec 28 11:32:43 MacBook kernel[0]: [com_ximeta_driver_NDASDevice:1880][processReadCommand] too Long time!!! Reduced 3
  Dec 28 11:33:54 MacBook kernel[0]: [com_ximeta_driver_NDASDevice:1880][processReadCommand] too Long time!!! Reduced 2
  Dec 28 11:33:54 MacBook kernel[0]: [com_ximeta_driver_NDASDevice:1880][processReadCommand] too Long time!!! Reduced 0
  Dec 28 11:33:55 MacBook kernel[0]: [com_ximeta_driver_NDASDevice:1880][processReadCommand] too Long time!!! Reduced 4
  Dec 28 11:33:55 MacBook kernel[0]: [com_ximeta_driver_NDASDevice:1880][processReadCommand] too Long time!!! Reduced 3
  Dec 28 11:33:55 MacBook kernel[0]: [com_ximeta_driver_NDASDevice:1880][processReadCommand] too Long time!!! Reduced 2
  Dec 28 11:33:56 MacBook kernel[0]: [com_ximeta_driver_NDASDevice:1880][processReadCommand] too Long time!!! Reduced 0
  Dec 28 11:33:56 MacBook kernel[0]: [com_ximeta_driver_NDASDevice:1880][processReadCommand] too Long time!!! Reduced 2
  Dec 28 11:33:57 MacBook kernel[0]: [com_ximeta_driver_NDASDevice:1880][processReadCommand] too Long time!!! Reduced 0
  Dec 28 11:33:57 MacBook kernel[0]: [com_ximeta_driver_NDASDevice:1880][processReadCommand] too Long time!!! Reduced 2
  Dec 28 11:33:59: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
  Dec 28 11:33:57 MacBook kernel[0]: [com_ximeta_driver_NDASDevice:1880][processReadCommand] too Long time!!! Reduced 1
  Dec 28 11:33:59 MacBook kernel[0]: [com_ximeta_driver_NDASDevice:1880][processReadCommand] too Long time!!! Reduced 0
  Dec 28 11:33:59 MacBook kernel[0]: [com_ximeta_driver_NDASDevice:1880][processReadCommand] too Long time!!! Reduced 3
  Dec 28 11:34:00: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
  Dec 28 11:34:00 MacBook kernel[0]: [com_ximeta_driver_NDASDevice:1880][processReadCommand] too Long time!!! Reduced 1
  Dec 28 11:38:36: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
  Dec 28 11:38:36 MacBook kernel[0]: [com_ximeta_driver_NDASDevice:1880][processReadCommand] too Long time!!! Reduced 9
  Dec 28 11:38:36 MacBook kernel[0]: [com_ximeta_driver_NDASDevice:1880][processReadCommand] too Long time!!! Reduced 7
  Dec 28 12:17:30: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
  

I've started the process of trying to get Ximeta to fix this, but haven't heard back from anyone other than their level 1 tech support contact. Perhaps everyone else is still on vacation?

-irrational john

 

[Karlsbad]

Well, from what I think I understand about the 351UNE you could do that, but not easily. You can't use the NDAS function while it is connected as a USB or eSATA drive.

So to connect it via USB to the WD Live I believe you'd have to disconnect from the network before you hooked it up as USB storage. And, versa-vice, to use the network you'd have to first disconnect the USB from the WD Live before (re)connecting it to the ethernet.

I have no idea what would happen if you tried to connect USB and ethernet simultaneously. All I know is that Ximeta says it's only one way or the other, not both. I believe them and would never try to use it any other way.

-irrational john

I called them and they said it should give precednece to USB and drop off network, so I could just turn on and off the WD Live.

 

[zjohnr]

If you can, please let us know how that works for you.

I called them and they said it should give precednece to USB and drop off network, so I could just turn on and off the WD Live.

Well, if you get a 351UNE and try that out let us know how it goes.

I would recommend not storing data you don't have backed up someplace else until you're sure that using it the way you intend to does not inadvertently lead to any problems.

-irrational john

 

[Karlsbad]

Well, if you get a 351UNE and try that out let us know how it goes.

I would recommend not storing data you don't have backed up someplace else until you're sure that using it the way you intend to does not inadvertently lead to any problems.

-irrational john

Yeah its only going to be 4gb mkv's on a spare drive.

 

[Hjortron]

I would not buy these. The reason I'm reading through the reviews on this site is that I have 2 Ximeta NetDisk enclosures and have had no end of troubles using them. I've finally given up and am looking for a replacement.

The hardware is decent enough but the software and drivers are atrocious. I've had the NetDisks for about 3 years now and the update pace from the company is very slow and sporadic. They seemed to close down for a while a year or so ago but then revived their website. They're also selling their devices through a large number of other vendors and/or names; Ximeta, Klegg, IOCell, and currently their main site (www.ximeta.com) seems to be just a basic page. I'm wondering if they're trying to sell the company or just changing name to get rid of any old bad reputation.

The software has always been a problem, every time I want to update the version, I have to update all 3 of my computers at the same time since they usually don't support running different versions at the same time. This is hard to do because you have to uninstall the previous version before you install the new version, and you can't uninstall the previous version if programs are running that accesses the Ximeta drive, which happens at bootup. Also, you can't (or couldn't, maybe you can now) prevent the Ximeta drive from mounting. I finally figured out that I could disable the network interface and reboot the PC to do this.

Still, for every version upgrade I had to get all 3 computers in a room, disable their networking, reboot them, and then install the new version.

Also, normal operation is difficult. I often lose connectivity to the drive for no apparent reason, which blocks Windows Explorer so it never comes back until reboot. It's gotten to the point where if I need to access documents on the NetDisks I copy them locally first and edit them and then copy them back.

Finally, I upgraded my media server to Windows 7 so that I have 2 Windows 7 PCs and one Windows Vista PC, and I have not been able to have the two Windows 7 PCs access the NetDisks at the same time. I can access it from one, but if I try to access it from the other, it'll block explorer forever until I reboot.

So this is the point where I'm looking for a new NAS.

 

[willy]

802.11n problems with ByteCC 850NAS and OSX 10.5

Just picked up a ByteCC NDAS IDE enclosure and have been baffled by the atrocious performance... write at ~6MB/s and read at ~1.5MB/s over wireless network. After (finally) finding this thread I tried plugging it in via ethernet, and lo and behold the speeds almost quadrupled. This is especially noticeable when accessing large directories, where it would take 20+ seconds to even display the contents wirelessly, compared with a second or so via wired connection.

This enclosure uses the Ximeta drivers as well so I imagine you have a point that there is something wrong with how it handles wireless connections. I don't suppose trying different disk formats has any effect on this problem, although I was just about to try reformatting because I was beginning to wonder if it was an issue with the Tuxera NTFS drivers for OSX.

Please keep us posted on any workarounds/developments you come across.

 

[zurge]

Ximeta NDAS

About a year ago I had bought the Iocell Netdisk 352ND enclosure but I ended up returning it for a few reasons:

1. The enclosure has an odd-ball fan size so trying to find a fan that fits the fan hole was impossible. I contacted Iocell and they told me that they dont have a fan I could buy from them and they know that the correct size is basically impossible to get.

2. With no fan, the plastic enclosure was going to cook my two hard drives

3. The NDAS drivers for Linux and OS X are limited. They don't allow more than person being connected to the NDAS device at a time. Not very useful if you want to share a music libary, etc...

Visit the NDAS Wikipedia page for more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Direct_Attached_Storage

I ended up getting rid of the enclosure because it was of no use to me. I hope this helps you out.