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Netgear ReadyNas Pro 6 corrupt firmware
First Netgear NAS user. I bought a defect Netgear ReadyNAS Pro 6. The previous owner said something went wrong during a firmware update and the NAS had some sort of corrupt firmware. It was 40Euro an...
This post How-to-update-BIOS-w-OS6-x-installed tells how to update the BIOS from OS6. While that part isn't applicable to you, it includes information on extracting the BIOS from the OS4.2.x package Netgear has provided and points to that package.
Thanks a lot for the suggestions. I have some reasons to believe the previous owner was quite smart and did not left many rocks unturned in trying to repair it. When I picked up the nas I saw he had at least 4 or 5 other ReadyNas in operation at the site (altough it seemed to me 2 slot models, perhaps ARM, not Intel based). It is quite likely that the internal EEPROM (containing the motherboard bios) is corrupted so I either find a way to reprogram it "in circuit" using my JTAG rig or desolder and replace it with another pre-programmed in my standalone eeprom programmer. Anyone knows a location where this BIOS might be available ?
Of course the existing board have a connector on the under-side for the drives backplane and there will be no other board having that but if I do not use the drives backplane and connect the drives using individual SATA cables to a mini-ITX motherboard with 6 SATA ports (such as Supermicro X9SCV-Q) perhaps also desoldering some connectors (HDMI and VGA) and replacing other (LAN ports) with headers, it might fit since 17x17cm is about the same size as the existing motherboard). But I am not there yet.
This post How-to-update-BIOS-w-OS6-x-installed tells how to update the BIOS from OS6. While that part isn't applicable to you, it includes information on extracting the BIOS from the OS4.2.x package Netgear has provided and points to that package.
- This forum absolutely and totally rocks ! I took the motherboard out and found the Winbond SPI flash was actually socketed. I took it out, put it in my programmer and read it. When I checked the image it was bit by bit an image from RN_Ultra6_061010.ROM. This was of course the wrong image, this being a Pro 6 it needed RN_NV6_072610.ROM I programmed it with the correct one and the nas came to life (on the VGA). I see is also booting a linux image (probably from the 128MB flash, but I did not investigate yet if it shows in the discovery tool. Thank you again to everyone and especially to SandShark who pointed me to exactly the right posts. If you have suggestions on what should I do next - recover it as ReadyNAS Pro 6 or convert it to Nas4Free (this is for home use) I'd be grateful to hear opinions. In any case I'll try to replace the E2160 with an E7600 and the 1GB DDR2 with 2x2GB DDR2.
I have converted all of my legacy systems to OS6. It's not officially supported, but it works and instructions for doing so are here in the forum. But I've been a ReadyNAS user since the Infrant days, so am quite accustomed to the ReadyNAS look and feel (even with the changes on OS6). And I like it that somebody other than me is doing the work of keeping the OS up to date. With OS4.2.x being based on such an old Debian distro, I certainly recommend against just getting started with that. OS6 or an open source solution would be better.
Again thanks, Sandshark. I decided to give a try to OS6 and take a final decision in a few weeks before I'llk have to much data in there. I got a few more questions: The Pro 6 boots and after it loads the kernel and inird.gz it says "Ready" and the VGA screen goes immediatelly dark.
On the embedded OLED Screen messages continue to change "Initializing Network interfaces" etc. and ends up with "No disks found Installed" or something similar. I tried in the boot menu both "Normal" boot and "Factory Default" boot. Did not try yet the "OS Install" boot.
In the NAS there are currently 2 drives installed, one 1TB WD Black which came with the ReadyNas and another 1TB Samsung HDD which I used to have in my Synology DS211j. Both are in fact "foreign" drives, when I boot the Readynas in Linux Mint I see in Gparted the 128MB Flash and the 2 x 1TB drives. The WD Black have a MicroSoft NTFS partition on it so I do not think it was actually used in this ReadyNAS.
I did not find last night an easy way to figure if the 128MB USB contains OS4 or OS6.
No matter what I did I could not see the NAS in RAIDAR, tried both version 6.3 and 4.2.8 on a Windows 10 machine with local firewall disabled. Both Network ports when I connect them to my Gigabit switch blink when there is (broadcast) traffic but do not query for a DHCP address or similar. When booting Factory Default mode I tried multiple times since I understood the NAS should be visible in Raidar for about 10minutes after it boots and finishes a disk check which should take about 5min.
And now the questions:
1. Does it matter if I connect Lan1 or Lan2 when looking for NAS via Raidar ?
2. Does it matter the Raidar version ? For example if I run Raidar 6.3 will it find a OS4.2 NAS or the other way around ?
3. Are both Raidar 4.2 and 6.3 compatible with Windows 10 64 bit ?
4. Should I try OS Reinstall Boot mode to write the OS to the WD Black drive ?
Or should I already create the USB disk for recovery to 4.2.8 and try that ?
5. During troubleshooting I removed temporaritly the Bios battery. As I read during Bios upgrade to Flame 2.0 the only non-default setting seem to be setting the Fan speed from Manual to Thermal/55 degree. Are there any other settings I might need to review in the board BIOS ? For instance I saw Intel SpeedStep is disabled. In principle is good to have SpeedStep enabled, especially for a NAS which will be lightly used but if not supported by ACPI/OS it will not work properly. Are anywhere listed the recomended Bios settings ?
Sorry for all those questions, I still try to wrap my head around on how it works and what does what.
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