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Forum Discussion
NAS boot issue
One of the lads at work gave me his old, 8 year old NAS, I took it home booted, configured etc and it's been working fine as cold storage.
The other week I come downstairs to see it's turned off, thought it was weird, turned it back on, accessed it, all good. Came downstairs the other day and it's off again but now won't boot, has power as 1 light on LAN 1 flickers on and off, every now and then I press the power button, the power light flashes on, CPU fan tries to spin and it just dies.
To top it off, I pulled all the WD NAS drives out, put in an external reader and they appear as empty and inaccessible even though there is about 200GB of data on one of the 5 drives...
Anyone have any ideas what the issue could be? How I can recover the data? Moving to cloud storage after this.
The other week I come downstairs to see it's turned off, thought it was weird, turned it back on, accessed it, all good. Came downstairs the other day and it's off again but now won't boot, has power as 1 light on LAN 1 flickers on and off, every now and then I press the power button, the power light flashes on, CPU fan tries to spin and it just dies.
To top it off, I pulled all the WD NAS drives out, put in an external reader and they appear as empty and inaccessible even though there is about 200GB of data on one of the 5 drives...
Anyone have any ideas what the issue could be? How I can recover the data? Moving to cloud storage after this.
11 Replies
Andropheonix wrote:
To top it off, I pulled all the WD NAS drives out, put in an external reader and they appear as empty and inaccessible even though there is about 200GB of data on one of the 5 drives...If you are using XRAID, any data is striped across all 5 drives. Even if you had all 5 drives connected to the PC, you would not be able to access the files in Windows (or macOS) because neither operating system supports the ext file system used in your legacy NAS.
Andropheonix wrote:
The other week I come downstairs to see it's turned off, thought it was weird, turned it back on, accessed it, all good. Came downstairs the other day and it's off again but now won't boot, has power as 1 light on LAN 1 flickers on and off, every now and then I press the power button, the power light flashes on, CPU fan tries to spin and it just dies.It is possible that the power supply has failed. What happens when you boot it up with no disks? Maybe also check the no-disk status with RAIDar while the system is running. https://kb.netgear.com/20684/ReadyNAS-Downloads#raidar
Andropheonix wrote:
How I can recover the data? Moving to cloud storage after this.FWIW, you should always have a backup of data you care about (even with cloud storage).
You'd need to be able to connect at least 4 of the five disks to recover data. Once you've accomplished that, there are RAID recovery software packages you can use. One is R-Linux. https://www.r-studio.com/RAID_Recovery_Presentation.shtml
If it is the power supply, which is high on the list of probable causes, it's fairly easy to connect a standard ATXV12 supply to the NAS externally in place of the internal one and run it with that to recover the data. That's actually also the easiest way to determine if it is the supply that's the issue.
Since you will be running it that way for a bit, you should block the internal power supply fan exhaust hole and any gaps created to allow the power cables to come out. Masking tape works fine. The remaining internal fan will then properly cool your drives.
Sandshark wrote:If it is the power supply, which is high on the list of probable causes, it's fairly easy to connect a standard ATXV12 supply to the NAS externally in place of the internal one and run it with that to recover the data. That's actually also the easiest way to determine if it is the supply that's the issue.
Since you will be running it that way for a bit, you should block the internal power supply fan exhaust hole and any gaps created to allow the power cables to come out. Masking tape works fine. The remaining internal fan will then properly cool your drives.
So any standard PSU that I can pull out of a dead PC in our graveyard at work should work? I literally need it to run for 2 or 3 hours so although cooling would be ideal, probably not the end of the world if I can't get a good seal.
StephenB wrote:
Andropheonix wrote:
To top it off, I pulled all the WD NAS drives out, put in an external reader and they appear as empty and inaccessible even though there is about 200GB of data on one of the 5 drives...If you are using XRAID, any data is striped across all 5 drives. Even if you had all 5 drives connected to the PC, you would not be able to access the files in Windows (or macOS) because neither operating system supports the ext file system used in your legacy NAS.
Andropheonix wrote:
The other week I come downstairs to see it's turned off, thought it was weird, turned it back on, accessed it, all good. Came downstairs the other day and it's off again but now won't boot, has power as 1 light on LAN 1 flickers on and off, every now and then I press the power button, the power light flashes on, CPU fan tries to spin and it just dies.It is possible that the power supply has failed. What happens when you boot it up with no disks? Maybe also check the no-disk status with RAIDar while the system is running. https://kb.netgear.com/20684/ReadyNAS-Downloads#raidar
Andropheonix wrote:
How I can recover the data? Moving to cloud storage after this.FWIW, you should always have a backup of data you care about (even with cloud storage).
You'd need to be able to connect at least 4 of the five disks to recover data. Once you've accomplished that, there are RAID recovery software packages you can use. One is R-Linux. https://www.r-studio.com/RAID_Recovery_Presentation.shtml
So this is the first NAS I've actually ever used so I just went with all the deault settings but XRAID sounds familiar...I'm starting to think it might be the PSU, annoyingly the only way I can really test that theory is by plugging it in and pressing the power button, there is no change booting with no disks, clutching at straws I removed the CMOS battery, didn't do anything.
I don't really have a way to connect 4 disks, I'm going to need to think of something else.
Andropheonix wrote:I'm starting to think it might be the PSU, annoyingly the only way I can really test that theory is by plugging it in
If you have an ATX supply or can borrow one, you can jury-rig an extension cable to connect it to the NAS. That would let you test it, and if it works you can boot and off-load data.
The cabling isn't quite standard, you will need to make a mod to the extension cable if you go this route.
- Alrighty, plugged a different PSU in and have exactly the same issue, feel like it may not be a power issue after all, perhaps the board has died?
- Only difference is that the network light no longer flashes
Andropheonix wrote:
Alrighty, plugged a different PSU in and have exactly the same issue, feel like it may not be a power issue after all, perhaps the board has died?Could be. Just to confirm - no signs of life when no disks are installed?
You didn't leave out connecting the square 4-pin connection for CPU power, did you? It's easy to miss.
Assuming it's connected, then the board probably is the issue. A RAM or CPU problem doesn't usually act that way, and they are the only replaceable components.
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