Seagate NAS - warning

Posted by: DrPo on 12 October 2015

I am posting this just in case there are other forum members using Seagate NAS. I have such a device for 2.5 years and it has so far been reliable (apart from being quite affordable). I have had my issues with album art (the NAS uses Twonky) but I have been able to work around them.

As of yesterday though things have changed: recently Seagate responded to criticism about a security leak with a new firmware which on one hand adds functionality using the latest Twonky version ( from what I can see this includes some goodies like allowing art to be displayed also at genre and folder level, as well as offering a richer search including "composer") but on the other hand prevents root level access.

This is a disaster as the Twonky implementation in Seagate requires to change to "root" before changing any Twonky configuration (like enabling web access to the twonky manager page!). I cannot access the web management page anymore and despite contacting Seagate there is no response. Moreover back up scripts from the NAS to other devices that I had written are not executable any more.

..so, Just a warning in case there are others using the said NAS (if you don't have configured to do automatic firmware updates you may want to think twice before uploading the latest one). I have so far ignored comments and suggestions by this forum about investing in a better NAS solution simply because what i had used to work - but not anymore. What I found exasperating is that there apparently are other users who have complained about revoking root access whose posts are only available as "cached" items in Google, Seagate has somehow "removed" them.

Posted on: 12 October 2015 by hafler3o

Let us hope this post is not removed here then. It's vital information, even though I am not affected I would hate to be inconvenienced in the same fashion with my WD NAS / Twonky.

Posted on: 12 October 2015 by rjstaines

I have nothing constructive to add, other than to moan about Netgear's similar approach to its customer base... ' You bought it, we're changing things, you're on your own'. Netgear's remote backup service suddenly stopped working a couple of moths ago... no response, no support.

So it seems it's buyer beware in the minefield of NAS drives. No wonder so many folk on the forum express their nervousness at jumping into the streamed-music-collection pond.

But the saving grace for me has to be the way the Naim servers handle things... my brand new NS01, replacing an HDX SSD, just does things the way one expects it to, irrespective of what Netgear is doing to sabotage my 'long-stop' data backup strategy (i.e. one NAS in the house, another off site on the end of a different internet connection, a few miles away).

Posted on: 13 October 2015 by DrPo

I have seen several not so flattering comments about twonky but in this specific case I must emphatically state that the support I had from twonky was exemplary with around the clock responses to a ticket I filed, until a working solution was proposed (for the record, using remote procedure calls within a ssh session). In stark contrast, SEAGATE (who has implemented twonky in such a way that web config of twonky settings is prevented!) have yet to respond...