blinking blue light options?

See here: http://home.bott.ca/webserver/?p=324 "3 – Bad contents on root partition of disks"

You can try an OS reinstall, though if it you have a backup it might be simpler to just do a factory default.

You will need to know whether you have a V1 or V2. THE LABEL IS CONFUSING. If you purchased more than a year ago, you have a V1. There is a guide here: http://www.rnasguide.com/2012/01/09/how ... -or-nv-v2/

To do an OS reinstall, you can check the following guide:
http://www.readynas.com/kb/faq/boot/how ... _boot_menu

For V1, you use the "Duo / NV / NV+ / X6/600" section, for V2 you use "Ultra 2 / Ultra 2 Plus / Pro 2 / Duo v2"

thanks a lot for the reply. any idea if the os reinstall kills my data?

An OS re-install will preserve your data, but a Factory Default will wipe the whole NAS, so be very careful how long you have the reset button pushed in for when you start up the NAS.

gibxxi wrote:
An OS re-install will preserve your data, but a Factory Default will wipe the whole NAS, so be very careful how long you have the reset button pushed in for when you start up the NAS.

Yes. Though of course your data is at risk - if the OS partition is corrupt, it is possible that there is also something wrong with the data partition.

so i did a reset and the nas came back up under raidar with no blinking patterns. the first time i tried to browse the nas from raidar it work but when i tried to open a folder it hung. now when i find the nas and hit browse, i get an error showing the ip address and "The specified network name is no longer available." Any idea what's going on now?

Open a command prompt and try to ping the IP address of the NAS. Do you get a response?

yup, getting a response. i was able to copy a 5 gig file off tonight but now it appears to have hung again. is there a straightforward way of doing a backup or trying to copy the data off the nas?

On the duo V1, frontview backup and using robocopy to copy over wired ethernet to a PC attached drive are both straightforward/reliable.

Of course your unit may have some corruption on the data partition, or a failing drive - either of which could interfere.

ok - i now want to try and os reinstall. from the link up above all i do is hold the power button down for 5 seconds until i see one blink and then let it go. this also skips the volume check. is there anything else i have to do to reinstall the os? if not, i've done this now a handful of time and i'm able to browse the nas until i hit a certain folder which seems to cause things to freeze. any thoughts on how to address this?

does the 'tech support' login via telnet offer any options?

-you have the correct procedure; you could also manually reinstall the firmware through Frontview (which does something somewhat different).

-tech support via login is what support would use if you filed a case. There's nothing there that you can run.

-Have you looked at the SMART+ stats being reported under health?

-I would backup everything I can from the other folders first, then attempt to extract anything possible from the bad folder (assuming you have no backup). Then delete the bad folder, and do a volume scan. Finally recreate it, and attempt to restore it.