I have an NV+ that has failed in a way that I have not seen. If I try to power it up, I see that the 2nd and 4th disk status LEDs are not lit. The power LED blinks a few times and then goes out, then nothing, no indication of any activity at all. This doesn't seem like normal disk failure, but I tried to put new disks into the 2nd and 4th slots, with no change in behavior. I am aware that the RAID can't tolerate two disk failures, so I don't really know what would be the symptoms or how to proceed if this is the only problem (I'd be kind of relieved if it is). I would appreciate any guidance on this, because if at all possible I need this device as a backup server for quite a bit of data. thanks

well I would remove power, carefully take out all 4 disks and label their order, test each on a PC with the disk manufacturers diagnostics tools (like WD tools, data life guard, etc).while testing the existing disks, I would see if a new/used/different disk will boot up by itself, IE factory default with a separate disk, it won't affect anything on the 4 removed disks.this will at least determine if the unit itself is failing. There are some known issues with certain devices that have power supply problems and these are covered under warranty. You would have to contact online support and provide them your device serial to see if yours falls under the known series.However if the device powers up and appears to work with a new drive, then it doesn't sound like a power supply issue, and you may in fact have a dual drive failure. unfortunately if thats the case, then likely your only solution would be starting from scratch with good drives and/or possibly sending the drives in to some kind of data recovery service.

Thanks for the response, the two disks that have no LED status do in fact test as bad. I don't think there is a power supply failure since there is power, 2 of 4 disk LEDs light up, etc. I'm kind of puzzled by the fact the LEDs are not lit, as opposed to blinking. I'm guessing I have to do a reset and start completely over, but I don't want to go thru the reset if there is some other problem or if there is some way to get the device to boot w/ new disks.

there is no way to recover from 2 disk failures other than reset with working disks, there is simply insuffucient data remaining on the 2 good disks to rebuild the 2 new disks.if somehow you can get 1 of the bad disks working (meaning you have 3 original disks booting), you could theoretically add 1 new disk, let it resync get the array redundant again, then replace the other paritially/failed disk and let it resync.else, you are pretty much screwed and learning the hard lesson that raid is not a substitute for backups (meaning multiple copies of your data, preferrably on different devices in different locations).

Thanks again for the response, I understand I can't rebuild the data on the disks, and I understand about backups, this device is a backup. I was just thinking it might be possible to somehow boot the os and generate a new raid set w/o destroying my os configuration in the nvram. I also don't want to go thru trying to start completely over if there is some additional problem w/ my hardware, which I sort of suspect since the blank LEDs are not what I expected for simply failed disks.

If a disk fails completely, the led will be blank. I have had this on two different disks. Normally, a disk will give you some indication of degradation of the platter and you will get warnings. However, in the case of a complete mechanical failure or a failure in the on board electronics, it will just die on the spot. You will see a similar reaction if you have a functional healthy array and are increasing the size of disks. When you hot remove the first one, the light will go out and it will be reported as dead. When I lost my first one like that, it was overnight on a two drive array. I came in to the computer room to only one disk light. I shut the unit down normally and removed the first disk. It was cool to the touch. I then removed the other drive and it was warm to the touch. This confirmed to me that the first drive was indeed dead and I replaced it and rebooted the NAS. I was concerned because the drive that failed was only a month old. After the resync, they ran 24/365 for three more years before being replaced by larger drives.

Disaster Strikes! Advice requested!

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PapaBear1
Apprentice
Jul 19, 2011
Not really. If the drive in your PC died, and you did not have a clone, then when you put the new drive in, you would insert the install disk, install the OS and then go through the set up to customize the BIOS settings. The flash memory with the OS simply replaces the install disk (since there is no CD/DVD drive).
jsdeprey
Aspirant
Aug 18, 2011
Seems like a strange way to do it to me, why not just have a small 4GB flash drive for the OS in the NAS? and the Array for stored data? seems more logical to me really. I was told by tech support that the OS is only installed on 1 of the 4 drives in my NV+ and that is a BASE drive and if that drive dies you can not ell what is wrong with the NAS, like it wont boot up, till you remove that drive, even though my NAS did not show any drive LEDs out at all, and my BASE drive was dead or having issues of some kind. was a very strange problem and made me think that this was not the way to go, installing the OS on a single drive in the array seems strange.
TeknoJnky
Hero
Aug 18, 2011
jsdeprey wrote:
installing the OS on a single drive in the array seems strange.

its not stored on a single drive (unless there is only a single drive installed).

I'm not sure of the exact format, but the os partition is at least mirrored to one other drive, if not in a raid0+1 array.

jsdeprey wrote:
installing the OS on a single drive in the array seems strange.

sphardy1

Apprentice

Aug 18, 2011

TeknoJnky wrote:
jsdeprey wrote:
installing the OS on a single drive in the array seems strange.

its not stored on a single drive (unless there is only a single drive installed).

I'm not sure of the exact format, but the os partition is at least mirrored to one other drive, if not in a raid0+1 array.

I believe it is RAID-1, such that the OS is mirrored across all drives and always accessible irrespective of which drive fails/is removed

That's why the capacity of each drive is reported as reduced by 4GB (for x86 units) in Frontview >> Volumes - the 4GB being the root partition

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Disaster Strikes! Advice requested!

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