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Forum Discussion
ReadyNAS 2100 bricked
I'll confess to have been a bit stupid. I picked up a pair of ReadyNAS 2100s off eBay recently, one of which is running OS 6 and the other OS 4. I wanted both to run OS 6 and found instructions to do that. Unfortunately, at that time I hadn't realised that the one running the older version was a V1 and not a V2 (they both look identical on the outside) and I've managed to brick it completely.
I've tried all the suggestions thus far: Factory reset, OS reinstall, blanking disks, using a USB boot to recover it... nothing has worked. I've tried six different USB sticks, most of which have lights on them to show activity and they all flicker a little bit, the fans spin down a bit, the light flickers a little more and then nothing further happens. I'm not getting an IP address, RAIDar won't see it and I'm at a bit of a loss as to what else to try as I don't think trying more USB sticks is going to do it.
Has anyone had any success with backing out this update? If not, it looks like I've gained an expensive and very heavy doorstop...
15 Replies
The only one of those that might work is a USB recovery. The rest are a waste of time, as they are just installing the (wrong) firmware from flash. For the USB recovery, are you creating one for an OS4.2.x based system (RAIDiator-4-2-USB-Recovery-Tool ) and using the proper boot procedure for your NAS (holding the reset button)?
This user Stuck-booting-ReadyNAS-NVX did find USB recovery to be the answer for the same issue on an NVX (desktop model that uses the same processor as the 2100V1). The legacy NAS can be very particular as to what USB devices work for recovery.
I have absolutely no idea what might happen if you can create a 4.2.31 volume on another NAS and mount it in the 2100. With a legacy machine, a mismatch of versions in flash and drive normally results in the flash "winning" (where with OS6, the newer wins), but I don't know what would happen in your unusual case. I certainly don't think it could make things any worse.
Okay, so I gave the suggestion of grabbing a 4.x drive from another NAS (I've got a 1500 which has escaped my idiocy, thankfully!) and that didn't work either. So I guess I'm stuck unless I can find a USB stick that actually works. I don't suppose anyone knows of one, do they?
I have two older Lexor "TwistTurn2" 2GB that work great, but most people are likely to just chuck them instead of selling them, and the smallest currently for sale seems to be 16GB. I have bought some cheap 8GB ones on Amazon that also worked the one time I tried (just to see if they would). Try to stay away from anything larger than 8GB (though some have had luck with larger, many haven't) and definitely not USB3. But I don't own a 2100, and don't know if some models are more finicky than others.
Sandshark wrote:I have absolutely no idea what might happen if you can create a 4.2.31 volume on another NAS and mount it in the 2100. With a legacy machine, a mismatch of versions in flash and drive normally results in the flash "winning" (where with OS6, the newer wins), but I don't know what would happen in your unusual case. I certainly don't think it could make things any worse.
In a firmware mismatch situation regardless of what the NAS does to attempt to resolve it, it would try booting off the internal flash and the code in the firmware to handle firmware mismatches would be used. However as the 32-bit systems can't boot 64-bit code it wouldn't even get that far with OS6 on the internal flash.
USB Boot Recovery is the only way to fix this problem.
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