20 minutes ago, n4gix said:

That is true unless like me you are cursed with mega bad luck. I had a 2TB drive fail in my NAS and installed a new 2TB drive to replace the failed drive. During the cloning of the new drive, the so-called good drive failed. Both were Seagate HDs. They were also the last Seagate drives I'll ever purchase...

That is rotten luck. Were you able to retrieve any data? I think mine are WD and designed for NAS boxes.

13 minutes ago, Wolf0 said:

There is another issue at play here. Even if you keep your downloads from let's say FSPilotshop (and I have them on a backup also) that doesn't guarantee that you'll be able to install them again in the future due to the anti-piracy features.

The .exe contacts the server during setup to validate the installation key. Suppose there is no server online answering these calls (the vendor goes kabum for instance...). Thus the software will not install.

In two decades of saving files I’ve never had that happen to me. I keep emails that have the serial number and have installed many times without problem. The system you describe sounds similar to that used by the big boys like Aerosoft. God help us if they go under.

And remember that Microsoft still keeps the servers running that validate FSX. That’s 11 years after they announced their withdrawal.

9 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

That is rotten luck. Were you able to retrieve any data? I think mine are WD and designed for NAS boxes.

No, the drive motor(s) failed so the platters wouldn't spin up. I replaced the now empty NAS box with a 4TB WD Personal Cloud device, which has been reliably running for over 5 years now. I also set up a Dropbox account at the same time so every critical file is instantly mirrored to my WD Cloud drive and the DB account.

8 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Bill,

That's the beauty of a RAID0 NAS box. Two HDDs but one is a mirror of the other. If one fails you simply replace it and the software will copy data from the other good drive. Yes you only get 2Tb of storage for two 2Tb HDDs but it gives you security.

And I also backup that NAS box to an external HDD. For £40 it's double insurance. 👍

 

Thanks Ray,

The RAIDO NAS box was not something I was aware of so I will look into that for my backups. At £40 that's pretty good value considering what external HDDs cost a few years ago and if 2TB proves insufficient in the longer term, it won't break the bank to add another at some stage.

Bill

17 minutes ago, scianoir said:

 

Thanks Ray,

The RAIDO NAS box was not something I was aware of so I will look into that for my backups. At £40 that's pretty good value considering what external HDDs cost a few years ago and if 2TB proves insufficient in the longer term, it won't break the bank to add another at some stage.

Bill

 Bill, make sure you buy the special HDDs designed for NAS boxes. Synology make good NAS boxes and I chose the WD HDDs.

For whoever wants a new NAS storage box.

Make sure it supports Microsoft´s SMB2 or higher protocol or it wont work with Windows 10.
Or you'll end up like me with a nice Toshiba Canvio doorstop.

Cheers.

Ramon,

Where do you check for that? I've had my Synology DS212J for 6 years - before Win10 was available - and it seems okay.

7 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Ramon,

Where do you check for that? I've had my Synology DS212J for 6 years - before Win10 was available - and it seems okay.

Hello Ray

First time I noticed was a couple months ago, after a Windows 10 Update (forgot which one), Trying to navigate to the NAS shares I got this message:

and the MS link is here:  SMBv1 is not installed by default in Windows 10 Fall Creators Update

So nowadays I'm accessing the NAS through an older Win7 PC which I will probably be converting to a Windows Storage Server.

BTW: I'm using Windows 10 Enterprise.

 

Edited September 20, 20187 yr by RamonB

Thanks Ramon. I have a folder on my NAS mapped as a Z drive and that was fine with Win 7 PCs. But with a new Win 10 laptop it has a red x showing over it in Explorer but the contents are visible when I click on it.

I’ve never seen that message so perhaps my Synology is compatible. I’m running W10Pro.

Edited September 20, 20187 yr by Ray Proudfoot

On 9/18/2018 at 6:54 AM, Ray Proudfoot said:

That's the beauty of a RAID0 NAS box. Two HDDs but one is a mirror of the other.

Not to be pedantic, but this configuration is actually RAID 1.

RAID 0 stripes data across various drives instead of mirroring.

1 minute ago, Greggy_D said:

Not to be pedantic, but this configuration is actually RAID 1.

RAID 0 stripes data across various drives instead of mirroring.

Quite right Greg, my mistake. RAID1 it is. 😊

8 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Thanks Ramon. I have a folder on my NAS mapped as a Z drive and that was fine with Win 7 PCs. But with a new Win 10 laptop it has a red x showing over it in Explorer but the contents are visible when I click on it.

I’ve never seen that message so perhaps my Synology is compatible. I’m running W10Pro.

Ray, I hope your Symology is compatible.

Perhaps it is working on Your new Win 10 laptop because it is Win10 Pro or because it has not yet updated to Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (v1709  or later.)

In any case make sure you can access it from the Win7 PC and check with Symology.Download Center.

Cheers.

Ramon, I accessed my Synology from my P3D PC earlier today. That has Win 7 HE on it. I’ll check the download centre, thanks.

Funny thing I stumbled on to this post while searching for a store to buy Active Sky XP. I have over 2 pages of orders from FSPilotShop over the past 4 years. I have only downloaded when an update was posted for something I purchased. I keep everything backed up... even previous versions.

What gets me is I have to pay more to download an update after a certain period of time. I could understand if I were to only receive a fair finite amount of downloads. But I should be able to update my purchase as long as the author updates his product and is not charging for a new version.

It's a shame I have to go through all my FSPilotShop purchases to see if there is a recent update before my purchase times out.

I always look for another store and do not purchase from FSPilotShop anymore.

 

 

4 minutes ago, strat919 said:

What gets me is I have to pay more to download an update after a certain period of time. I could understand if I were to only receive a fair finite amount of downloads. But I should be able to update my purchase as long as the author updates his product and is not charging for a new version.

Just email them.  I've done this a couple of times recently and they reset my timer for another year on the updated products.  No charge.