Ubiquiti UDM Pro Hard drive failure

[shadow431]

Has any one else experienced a hard drive failure on a UDM Pro?  What was your experience?

 

While I understand hard drive's fail, its everything else that bothers me.  Took me 5 days to get support to give me the link to the RMA link, which won't accept the drive serial number.

 

My Experience thus far:

7/2/22 - purchased the udm pro w/ hard drive, a switch, cameras, etc.

5/6/23 - upgraded OS and software - every thing seemed fine after upgrade

5/11/23 - got a bill for pest control yet had never been notified of their presence.  Checked cameras and they where down.  

                Logged into the console and the protect app was not running.  I tried starting it a few times.  looks at "logs" and saw nothing. 

                Took a support file and restarted the unit.  Still no protect app or indication what was up

                Contacted support.

                Few hours later they suggested it was the drive

                Immediately I asked about the warranty.

5/12/23 - I get tired of waiting and order a new drive from amazon and install it

                 I then get notified a new drive was installed

                 I get notified its compatible

                 I get notified its ready

                 Everything works again

5/13/23 - They replied with the warranty

                 I replied asking to start the replacement

5/16/23 - they replied with a website to file an RMA that wont accept the hard drive serial number.

                I have replied and am waiting.

 

 

What I'm concerned about is:

1) the lack of any care of urgency to restore access to my cameras by support

2) the fact that the hard drive failed and I received no notification from the udm, but when i insert a new drive it was all to excited to share the good news

3) the protect app failed to start and I received no notification from the udm

4) the hard drive failing took down the cameras from even being able to be viewed live.

 

 

In the past Ive had $300 cheepo bundle packs have failed hard drives and i was either notified by the unit, or at a minimum I could still get  live view from the system without playback.

My plan was to eventually upgrade to a unifi NVR but if their eco system can't tell me when the ONLY drive dies, not sure I can trust it to tell me when one drive dies and the system is still working.

 

Any one else run into this, what was your experience?  Am I wrong that I should expect better behavior on drive failure?

 

 

[Oshino Shinobu]

I don't have any experience with the RMA process for it, but the UDM in general and protect simply aren't fit for anything other than low importance home use IMO. The fact that it lacks any redundancy when a HDD fails, no built in way for easy backups/replication and the lack of basic features in the Protect application and unjustifiable.

 

I'd expect better behaviour ona  drive failure, but at the same time I'm not surprised because of how many basic features are still missing from protect. I also wouldn't hold out hope for it being addressed either. From my experience with them, Ubiquiti are more interested in pushing out constant UI changes and hiding things behind more menus than actually implementing feautres or fixing things.

[shadow431]

Yea, it's our vacation house with neighbors that keep a good eye on the place.  I only went with the full on unifi solution for simplicity.   If the live view still worked I would have let it ride tell we are back there end of june but since even live view was down i couldn't wait.  

[seanondemand]

Part of what a lot of people find out when they install unifi gear is that while you got a pretty great product for the price, their support is usually dogs***. Installers will keep an inventory of hot swaps for this purpose, because RMAs are slow and hard to get. But what are you gonna do, get another unified security and networking appliance from some other vendor with no subscription fees?

[Falcon1986]

5 hours ago, shadow431 said:

1) the lack of any care of urgency to restore access to my cameras by support

If you buy Ubiquiti gear yourself, you better be ready to be your own support. They're not in the business of offering that; that's how they keep costs down for consumers. The support you get is from other customers who have played with the hardware long enough to know the ins and outs.

 

However, you can still use their hardware and get support if you go through a local third party firm. And because their hardware is relatively inexpensive due to no licensing fees, the firms pass those savings on to you [hopefully].

 

5 hours ago, shadow431 said:

2) the fact that the hard drive failed and I received no notification from the udm, but when i insert a new drive it was all to excited to share the good news

3) the protect app failed to start and I received no notification from the udm

4) the hard drive failing took down the cameras from even being able to be viewed live.

The UDM is not meant to be a complete NVR solution. You're better off getting the dedicated NVR or NVR Pro which have built-in support for redundancy.

 

That being said, I've heard folks like Tom from Lawrence Systems recommend other NVR solutions since they are more versatile and reliable.

 

Not because one part of UniFi is good means that the other parts are also good. But then again, some of their solutions are fairly new, so time should allow for maturation.

[TheHuffsta]

Unifi OS WILL alert you to a failed drive. I have received alerts on all devices, UNVR, UDMP and CKG2+...but you have to turn those notifications on or it will not notify you. Yes, they are off by default. In the Protect app, set the notifications to "Custom" and turn on the option for Hard Drive Issues.