I've got a ReadyNAS on my network and use two mapped drives in Windows to access it from that computer. I've noticed that if I restart the NAS that windows will display and continue to display "Disconnected Network Drive" next to both mappings in Explorer until I actually open them (double-click into them).

When this happens, other programs, such as uTorrent, that access one of those mapped drives seem to be unable to connect to them until after I've manually opened them in Explorer - in other words, windows won't remount them otherwise.

That was the issue up until a few days ago and was somewhat workable - every time I'd restart the NAS I'd then also restart Windows - this solved the issue mentioned plus it also enabled SageTV to once again see my network, as that ability would disappear when the network drives went down.

However, over the past few days I've noticed that the two drives just disconnect all by themselves. This seems to coincide with a firmware update I've done for the NAS to version 4.2.12 of RADIATOR. I'll manually go into the drives to reconnect them, but at some point in the day, they'll once again show up as disconnected. The current issue doesn't seem to affect SageTV nor the other software I've mentioned (uTorrent, etc.), and both shares can be accessed from those programs even when Windows is reporting them as disconnected.

I'm not seeing the same thing in Mac OS. When the NAS legitimately goes down, Mac OS will alert me quite quickly that the shares have been disconnected.

The NAS is accessed with CIFS/SMB from both Windows and Mac machines.

Any ideas? I haven't seen anything similar mentioned in the ReadyNAS forum yet. Is there any small program/agent I can keep running in Windows that will remount the shares? Is Windows even behaving properly with regards to the first instance of the issue I mentioned?

A batch file?

@set mypassword=!F0obar!
net use /delete *
net use \\server.domain.com\sharename1 /u:domain\username %mypassword%
net use \\server.domain.com\sharename2 /u:domain\username %mypassword%
net use \\server.domain.com\sharename3 /u:domain\username %mypassword%
net use \\server.domain.com\sharename4 /u:domain\username %mypassword%

Apart from scheduling that batch file to run every few minutes, is there a way I can trigger it based on the shares becoming disconnected?

I think this def. has something to do with the updated ReadyNAS software. I just saw a "delayed write failed" error from Windows while writing to the NAS - the third one in the past 3 days since updating the box.

I friend of mine developed a program that does just that- executes a directory listing on all file shares every few minutes just to keep them connected. That was way back in probably 2005- you'd think Windows would have fixed this "feature" by now. If interested I can probably dig up that program for you.

I've regressed to a previous firmware and it appears the shares don't just mysteriously drop off any more. I'm pretty sure this is a fault of the ReadyNAS 4.2.12 firmware.

With regards to the initial issue I mentioned, about restarting the NAS, I'd love to try out the program if you can dig it up. At the very least it should stop any Windows software that doesn't cause the shares to be remounted not to fail. I'm pretty sure SageTV, my PVR software, still has it's own issue here as well though.

I think my wife's computer does this occasionally under Windows 7 with our Western Digital World Book, but unfortunately I don't have an explanation for it, and I think it stopped doing that after I recently updated the firmware.

FAR more annoying to me is that the stupid drive will simply quit during big file transfers. Like, I'll try to move 8GB of files to it, and the transfer will freeze after about 5GB, and be completely unresponsive until I reboot it. I can't tell you how annoying it is, and I've had zero luck with support from Western Digital on this. In fact, in my first call to them, they stated that the drive wasn't compatible with Windows 7. That seems highly unlikely to me.

Anyway, sorry to hijack there. I just needed to vent a little

Seems unlikely to me too!

tanstaafl.

Have you tried the new firmware (4.2.13) to see if it has the same problem? One of the bugfixes was a memory leak in the network driver.

Stig

Yes, I even participated in the beta testing of 4.2.13. The other issue with every firmware after 4.2.11 is also that their CIFS driver is considerably slower than the previous versions on some systems.

I'm now running Windows 7 and cannot recommend Windows XP for a ReadyNAS at all. If an issue comes up, ReadyNAS/Netgear are not equipped whatsoever to offer any assistance/support.

IMO, with Netgear products you're pretty much on your own and at the mercy of the user-to-user forum for any kind of support apart from obtaining an RMA.

I'm running 4.2.11 right now because even with WIndows 7, 4.2.13's CIFS performance is lack-lustre (to put it mildly)

I'm starting to sense the engineering team working on the ReadyNAS releases are being stretched too thin. I still like their products, but seeing some of the issues in the latest firmware releases makes me uncomfortable. 4.2.12 was initially the Ultra firmware, but then it quickly turned into "fix the iSCSI issues" of 4.2.11. Hopefully they can hire a few more people to help with the issues, or consider splitting the firmware releases out into "enterprise" for the big rack mount units, and "home/smb" for the little toaster box NASes.