web GUI inaccessable, external drive issue

Have come across a problem. We have two identical NAS machines running with the same version of DSS Lite. and one of them seems to every few days loses detection of the external ESATA drive connected to it. the web GUI also becomes inaccessable, but there have been times when the web GUI works but the external does not.

connecting directly to the machine, the selftest screen shows, but as soon as we try to do something, it will show a cursor in the top corner and will become unresponsive.

the S/W RAID5 drives, which are where the NAS files are stored, remains accessable to all client computers and appears to work fine.

a restart fixes all the issues, but only temporarily..

any ideas of where the issue might be originating from? Thanks

Could be some issues with the volume/array from the SW RAID 5, you might want to try using the Repair Filesystem from the Extended tools from the Console screen, this will fix any file system issues and you will be able to see the errors that it cant correct and or it could be something with the RAID, you can check the logs.

This video shows some details about the logs.

http://www.open-e.com/library/webcasts-and-videos/
2010.11 How to view and understand the log file from DSS V6

thank you
does the repair file system tool have any effect on the files and the accessability to them?

It will reboot the system after completing but not damage the files.