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Recovering a serious firmware update failure ReadyNAS 1100
The 4.1.8 (SPARC) firmware update totally killed our ReadyNAS 1100. It said "Writing..." in the RAIDar utility, and after waiting for hours and hours, we decided it wasn't working and shut down the ReadyNAS.
It refused to boot back up. The blue power light would first flash quickly, then slowly, but it never booted into a useable state and RAIDar could never communicate with it. None of the other lights would indicate anything.
Someone else had this trouble and was able to fix it by doing a restore with a factory default. Neither that nor the TFTP or USB recovery methods worked for us. It would always say "Write failed..." in RAIDar.
Eventually, I figured it out. It turns out that the NAND memory (a 256MB USB flash drive hidden inside the unit) had become corrupt; it was software-marked as "write protected" and couldn't be erased by a Mac or Windows XP PC. This was not intentional and was the result of corruption that could only be fixed by low-level formatting of the USB drive, but I could not find a utility for that particular model of drive.
Through much trial and error, I figured out how to replace the NAND memory with another USB drive. DO THIS AT YOUR OWN PERIL. IT WILL DEFINITELY VOID ANY WARRANTY YOU HAVE LEFT AND MAY LEAVE YOU WITH AN UNUSABLE READYNAS 1100. I didn't have much choice--our ReadyNAS was out of warranty, and it was already unusable as it was.
I ended up using a Patriot Rage XT 32GB--extreme overkill for this purpose--but I'm sure any standard USB drive will work. In fact, I would recommend a drive smaller than 4GB that can be formatted in FAT16, just like the original drive, even though my Patriot Rage XT was formatted in FAT32 and still worked.
Here are the steps I took:
1) Format the new USB drive in FAT32.
2) Download the RAIDiator 4.1.7 (SPARC) image--the bare image used for local system updates, not the USB recovery image.
3) Using a Mac, I did the following:
diskutil list
Identify the disk partition device name, which in my case was /dev/disk1s1
diskutil unmountDisk disk1
to unmount the disk without ejecting it.
dd if="RAIDiator-4.1.7" of=/dev/disk1s1
to write the image to the disk. It takes a few minutes, and there is no progress bar.
diskutil eject disk1
to eject the disk.
4) Take the newly-written USB drive and replace the NAND drive hidden in the ReadyNAS 1100 (under the top cover, near the left-rear of the machine, if facing it from the front. Obviously, the ReadyNAS 1100 should be powered off at this time, with the power plug removed for safety.
5) Plug in the power cord but do not turn on the ReadyNAS 1100 yet.
6) Get a paper-clip and press and hold in the reset button in the pinhole to the left of the power button on the front of the ReadyNAS 1100. It has a 3/4 circle icon under it. The next steps are for the return to factory default and WILL DESTROY ALL THE DATA ON THE DRIVES.
7) Still holding in the reset button, turn on the ReadyNAS 1100.
8) Watch the drive lights. At 5 seconds, they will all flash once for about 2 seconds. Keep holding in the reset button. At the 30 second mark, all four drive lights will flash again for about 2 seconds--let go of the reset button after the drive lights have turned off.
9) Use RAIDar to configure the factory default setup if you like.
10) Wait until the new firmware is used to wipe the whole ReadyNAS 1100 and it is up and running again.
These are exactly the steps that worked for me. I hope they will help someone else who is stuck with an unresponsive ReadyNAS 1100 or with a write-protected NAND unit.
No other method worked. I was not able to use the OS Reinstall to non-destructively write the 4.1.7 firmware to the drives in our ReadyNAS--it seems the firmware on the drives was corrupt also.
Cheers, and best of luck to you out there who would need this tip.
It refused to boot back up. The blue power light would first flash quickly, then slowly, but it never booted into a useable state and RAIDar could never communicate with it. None of the other lights would indicate anything.
Someone else had this trouble and was able to fix it by doing a restore with a factory default. Neither that nor the TFTP or USB recovery methods worked for us. It would always say "Write failed..." in RAIDar.
Eventually, I figured it out. It turns out that the NAND memory (a 256MB USB flash drive hidden inside the unit) had become corrupt; it was software-marked as "write protected" and couldn't be erased by a Mac or Windows XP PC. This was not intentional and was the result of corruption that could only be fixed by low-level formatting of the USB drive, but I could not find a utility for that particular model of drive.
Through much trial and error, I figured out how to replace the NAND memory with another USB drive. DO THIS AT YOUR OWN PERIL. IT WILL DEFINITELY VOID ANY WARRANTY YOU HAVE LEFT AND MAY LEAVE YOU WITH AN UNUSABLE READYNAS 1100. I didn't have much choice--our ReadyNAS was out of warranty, and it was already unusable as it was.
I ended up using a Patriot Rage XT 32GB--extreme overkill for this purpose--but I'm sure any standard USB drive will work. In fact, I would recommend a drive smaller than 4GB that can be formatted in FAT16, just like the original drive, even though my Patriot Rage XT was formatted in FAT32 and still worked.
Here are the steps I took:
1) Format the new USB drive in FAT32.
2) Download the RAIDiator 4.1.7 (SPARC) image--the bare image used for local system updates, not the USB recovery image.
3) Using a Mac, I did the following:
diskutil list
Identify the disk partition device name, which in my case was /dev/disk1s1
diskutil unmountDisk disk1
to unmount the disk without ejecting it.
dd if="RAIDiator-4.1.7" of=/dev/disk1s1
to write the image to the disk. It takes a few minutes, and there is no progress bar.
diskutil eject disk1
to eject the disk.
4) Take the newly-written USB drive and replace the NAND drive hidden in the ReadyNAS 1100 (under the top cover, near the left-rear of the machine, if facing it from the front. Obviously, the ReadyNAS 1100 should be powered off at this time, with the power plug removed for safety.
5) Plug in the power cord but do not turn on the ReadyNAS 1100 yet.
6) Get a paper-clip and press and hold in the reset button in the pinhole to the left of the power button on the front of the ReadyNAS 1100. It has a 3/4 circle icon under it. The next steps are for the return to factory default and WILL DESTROY ALL THE DATA ON THE DRIVES.
7) Still holding in the reset button, turn on the ReadyNAS 1100.
8) Watch the drive lights. At 5 seconds, they will all flash once for about 2 seconds. Keep holding in the reset button. At the 30 second mark, all four drive lights will flash again for about 2 seconds--let go of the reset button after the drive lights have turned off.
9) Use RAIDar to configure the factory default setup if you like.
10) Wait until the new firmware is used to wipe the whole ReadyNAS 1100 and it is up and running again.
These are exactly the steps that worked for me. I hope they will help someone else who is stuck with an unresponsive ReadyNAS 1100 or with a write-protected NAND unit.
No other method worked. I was not able to use the OS Reinstall to non-destructively write the 4.1.7 firmware to the drives in our ReadyNAS--it seems the firmware on the drives was corrupt also.
Cheers, and best of luck to you out there who would need this tip.
6 Replies
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- Nice write-up
Hope you had a good backup.
Though in most cases a firmware update will work fine very rarely there will be problems (e.g. due to a hardware problem with the flash). - Not been on these forums for god knows how long (im using qnaps now...) - this was my old backup Nas, had exactly the problem you had, and your exact steps now has my 1100 up and formatting disks again.
many thanks! - You're very welcome, slunge!
I've just hit the same error with NAND ECC FAIL, having had a day of 'kernel panic' and tried
- OS Reinstall
- System Wipe
- USB re-image
- TFTP image
I think it's broken for good, and since it's out of warranty I don't think I have anything to lose. Data is backed up and moved to a new NAS, I guess I got off the Netgear just in time!
So, thanks for writing up such a detailed set of steps on what to try, I'll give it a shot during the week and see how it goes.
You could have to try a few USB keys before getting one that works.
Other possibilities for causing this problem would include a problem with the RAM.
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