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Readynas 1500 corrupt root
I am having problems setting up a never used Readynas 1500 unit. I can see it RAIDar it tells me to press the setup button and after slecting RAID type, it starts setting up but it always ends up wit...
Initially I had a pair of 4TB Hitachi drives bought back in 2012. Before I started with the NAS I was able to connect them to a Windows machine, and create and destroy partitions. After the 510 minute format, erasing the drive fails in Windows and OSX on multiple machines. On OSX it fails with 'unable to write to last block of device' and on Windows the drive started showing up as 1.8Tb.
I thought the drives were bad, so I bought a pair of new Seagate Ironwolf drives, went through the whole process again (minus the 510 minute format) and I still can't get the NAS to work.
The memory test has been running for over 5h and it was still cycling LED, ending on the blue one on the right.
Is this a firmware issue? I was not unable to restore it via USB and I'm wondering if I should try TFTP at this point.
JaSn6 wrote:
Initially I had a pair of 4TB Hitachi drives bought back in 2012. Before I started with the NAS I was able to connect them to a Windows machine, and create and destroy partitions. After the 510 minute format, erasing the drive fails in Windows and OSX on multiple machines. On OSX it fails with 'unable to write to last block of device' and on Windows the drive started showing up as 1.8Tb.
My guess is that these disks have simply failed. You could put them back into the Windows PC, and test them with WD's Lifeguard program (HGST having been purchased by WD back in 2012).
In general, there's no need to format the drives in a PC first, as the NAS will just need to reformat them anyway. But it is a good idea to test them before using them in a NAS (even when the drives are newly purchased). If you want to test the Ironwolf drives, you should use Seagate's Seatools utility (which has similar functionality to Lifeguard). Personally I run both the long non-destructive test, and the full erase (write zeros) test on my drives before I use them. I have found some drives that pass one test and fail the other.
JaSn6 wrote:
The memory test has been running for over 5h and it was still cycling LED, ending on the blue one on the right.
Is this a firmware issue? I was not unable to restore it via USB and I'm wondering if I should try TFTP at this point.
Corrupt root is usually something with the disks. The NAS boots from the disks, and it is telling you that it can't do that with yours. If you did format the Ironwolf drives (maybe with a quick format), then I'd go back to Windows and remove the partitions with the windows disk manager. Then try inserting just one disk in the NAS, and power it up again. Normally it will do a fresh factory install. Trying with one disk eliminates the need for the NAS to build the RAID array, so it is a quicker test.
One thing to keep in mind - with the old NAS, there is a ~10 minute window after you start the factory install before the install actually starts. That is to give you time to go in with RAIDar and switch to FlexRAID if you want. That gap can mislead you into thinking the NAS isn't working.
Thanks, I will try diagnosing the drives again. I had the unit on for hours to be sure, so I was definitely past the 10 minute window.
The new drives were inserted straight out of the box into the NAS, so it would be rather unusual that these have an issue as well.
I will report back after running Lifeguard and Seatools. Thanks for the help!
JaSn6 wrote:
The new drives were inserted straight out of the box into the NAS, so it would be rather unusual that these have an issue as well.
It is unusual, but it does happen. FWIW, I purchased two drives myself last month, and one failed out-of-the-box.
I checked the drive with Sea Tools and all tests passed. The only one I did not run was long, generic as it is crashing or not making progress on my computer.
After that, I zeroed out the drive, inserted a single one into the NAS and let it do its thing. It failed with 'corrupt root' once again.
I repeated the process and tried bay 4 just in case but no go there either.
Further more, I can no longer even initialize the pair of Hitachi drives that I was able to partition before the Readynas disabled through formatting them.
At this point, I am certain it's not an issue with the drive. Any other clues on how to solve this?
Thanks!
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