LG NAS N4B1 nightmare

[spike13]

Just thought I'd let folks know about the troubles I went through with the lg N4B1 nas and seagate barracuda drives.

I setup the system and it was running fine, until the power went out. At which time it displayed error code 53_00. There is little to no documentation on the lg site about this error so I was forced to call Customer Support. The guy at Customer Support, after 45 minutes, concluded I had to reinitialize (nuke) my entire system. Re-set it up, and then install the latest firmware. He got to this step only after repeating and meandering with faux tech speak - never really asking any problems. Even though I could connect to the drive via samba, just the web interface was down - the only solution was to start from square 1.

So I proceeded to do this. When it came time to install the firmware, it kept erroring out. This lead me to try stepping through the previous firmware updates (found only on the German lg site) to try to get to the latest. 3 installs later, this also errored out and I had to reinitialize yet again. Finally, I was able to get the system up with the latest firmware. This took all of a weekend - urgh.

Then 1 week later we had another power outage, and the system showed 53_00 again.

This time I called and asked if I could return the system under warranty, at which time I was told it was not compatible with the seagate drives I used. Even though this was sold as a bundle through newegg.com, and even though no where on their site does it note there is an issue with this drive. In fact on their list of tested HDDs there are 13 different Seagate Barracuda drives.

He blames the hard disk, in spite of the fact that I was still able to connect to the machine and put/get files from the disk. After I insisted to return the item, I was put on hold for 15 minutes, he never returned to the phone, I hung up and called back and was once again put on hold. I never was able to get information on how to return the unit.

In total I spent about 3 hours on the phone with LG to no avail. I emailed their customer support only to receive form responses telling me to call.

They did zero troubleshooting or diagnostic steps to isolate the issue. They did not consider that the problem was with the restart, even though it ONLY occurred after power failures.

The end of the long story is that LG provides minimal support, their tactic appears to be to stall the user or place them on infinite hold in an effort to avoid helping them. Their systems are unreliable. Buyer beware.

 

[thiggins]

Probably not what you want to hear, but I'm afraid some of your pain was self-inflicted.

First, if a NAS isn't on a UPS, it's not unusual for it to become corrupted or worse
if there is a sudden power failure.

Second, unless the specific drive you are using is on a manufacturer's approved drive list, you are assuming the risk (and hassle) if you have a problem. They can't test every drive, which is why they have approved drive lists.

That said, LG could have handled the situation much better than they did. They could have issued an RMA so that you could return the NAS without drives, checked it with approved drives and returned / replaced it as needed.

But again, if the problem is that the NAS threw an error code because of a power fail, that's not really a product defect. That's normal behavior.

 

[spike13]

re: UPS - fair enough except for the fact that this question/issue was never mentioned by the LG customer support during my calls, nor is it listed in their manuals. Even though I told them it happened during a power outage. LG never attributed the error to the power outage. So that's only my conclusion.

re: supported drives - The drives were sold as a bundle by NewEgg.com. So perhaps I was not as rigorous in my research as I should have been by assuming NewEgg would not bundle drives+NAS that were incompatible.

Lastly, I can accept fault for my lack of knowledge but even so, the support from LG was the absolute worst, most unprofessional I've ever received. I agree with your suggestion for how they should have handled it, as that would be the only way to really know what the issue is.