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Forum Discussion
Axius27
Apr 29, 2026Aspirant
Old ReadyNAS 212 won't boot up
So, many, MANY, years ago, my workplace merged with another company, and as part of that merger, I took over their IT system, which consisted of a few peer-to-peer PCs and a central storage system co...
StephenB
Apr 30, 2026Guru - Experienced User
Axius27 wrote:That brings me to my current issue. The old NAS is able to power up, but then all the lights go out and it doesn't load anything. I have probed the Hard Drives on my PC, and while I haven't been able to access the files directly, the disks themselves seem to be fully functional. Most worryingly, attempting to access the Boot Menu with the reset button has failed entirely.
Try installing RAIDar on a PC
Then power up the NAS diskless, and see if RAIDar detects it (showing a "no disks" status).
The LED status is in the manual (page 49)
Though there are also these indications that are not in the manual:
LED blink behavior for 2 disk systems is three quick blinks of all disk LEDs and the backup LED, followed by an 1s delay, followed by a number of slow blinks. The number of slow blinks will be the error code.
Current error codes:
1 - Vendor mismatch
2 - No disks detected
3 - Bad contents on root partition of disks
4 - Flash error
5 - Unsupported RAID configuration
It is possible that the issue is the power brick. So you could do a risk-buy of a replacement in parallel.
- Axius27Apr 30, 2026Aspirant
StephenB wrote:
Try installing RAIDar on a PC
https://kb.netgear.com/20684/ReadyNAS-Downloads#raidar
Then power up the NAS diskless, and see if RAIDar detects it (showing a "no disks" status).Nothing on RAIDar, but the old NAS might be configured to an older network setup with a static IP that's no longer in use.
StephenB wrote:
LED blink behavior for 2 disk systems is three quick blinks of all disk LEDs and the backup LED, followed by an 1s delay, followed by a number of slow blinks. The number of slow blinks will be the error code.
While Diskless, only the power light turns on, nothing from the other lights. It blinks a bunch during boot up, then there's a long pause, then it blinks once and goes out. The NAS is still powered on, fan whirring away, but there's no more activity from the indicator lights.
StephenB wrote:
It is possible that the issue is the power brick.
The power brick 'seems' to be functioning fine, but I'll swap it out for its sibling during the weekend. I'll also give the suspect power brick a proper inspection, see if there's any obvious damage.
- StephenBApr 30, 2026Guru - Experienced User
Axius27 wrote:
Nothing on RAIDar, but the old NAS might be configured to an older network setup with a static IP that's no longer in use.
FWIW, that shouldn't matter, since the discovery protocol uses layer-2 broadcast packets. But internet security software (including some AV packages) might be interfering.
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