Case: 17190439 - Lost disk on uppgrade to 4.18 [CLOSED]

After a long time and a many "waitings" for support to access NV+ with Telnet it resulted in that I had no Raid and have to start all over again.

I am really disappointed with Netgear, where I can not trust if the front panel and Frontview indicates that a disk is faulty and that it is pointing my to the correct disk.
My recommendation is therefore now:
If one disk fail in a 3 disk Raid, do not touch anything, do not reboot and open a support case!

This is my reply to Netgear with the whole story:


"Dear Netgear

Something went very wrong when upgrading to 4.18. Today I now that disk 2 went dead on reboot after or during update to 4.18.

Background:
NV+ (v1), 3 disc in X-Raid, firmware 4.16 and disk 1 SN:9QJ1L7Z9 in slot one, disk 2 SN:9QJ1ZTQH in slot 2 and disk 3 SN:S13PJDWS721963 now in slot 3. (Note: disk are labeled with permanent marker 1, 2 and 3. Please note that in mails from support they use “disk 2” for disk 1 and vice versa for disk 2)
Disk in slot 2 shows around 70 ATA errors and approx. 20 sectors relocated.

What was done:
Updated to 4.18 via Frontview. Received message to reboot and after many hours ended up with “Disc 1 failure” on LCD, front LED 1 flashing, 2 and 3 constant green, but I had no XRaid shares.

Remove disk 1 and rebooted, unit started OK, LED 2 and 3 constant green on both front and Frontview, same result that previous boot.
Did a OS reinstall, downgraded to 4.16, both same result: no shares due to no XRaid and LED + Frontview indicating disk1 missing, 2 and constant green.

Reinserted disk 1 and got same result than after first reboot.
(not as a Hotswap!)

Concluded that disk 1 is faulty and purchased new disk that when inserted into slot 1 that after a long time, approx 10 hours, resulted in the same that after the first reboot: LCD: Disc 1 failure, LED 1 blink and 2+3 constant green, Frontview disk 1 Yellow and 2+3 constant green.

My conclusion, this is more than a disk 1 failure, tested disk 1 on a PC and it was working.
That’s when I opened a Support Case!

From here and forward the unit was only booted up in DebugMode (Telnet)

Then after a few of rounds with support they concluded that disk 2 was faulty and was ask to remove it and insert disk 1 in slot 2. I made a remark to support by email that something was wrong, disk 2 has never indicated to be faulty (by LCD or LED or Frontview) but at the end I did as I was told to.

After more rounds of support using Telnet support concluded:
”Before disk 1(SN:9QJ1ZTQH) failed, but the customer remove the disk 2(SN:9QJ1L7Z9).
Later (In NOV 19), he added the disk 2 in box to re-sync again. The re-sync can't complete because of the failed disk 1. Two disks (disk 1&2) are useless. So we can't recover the data”
(Note: what support calls “disk 2” has always been in slot 1, labeled as 1 and vice versa with “disk 1”)

Conclusion:
I have difficulties to accept that it is a customer error and Netgear should carefully review this case to prevent that the same happens to other customer.
I have been working with computer and Raids for many years and understand how it functions, have therefore never moved any disk from one slot to another, accept when told to do so by support.

The following argument shows that something went wrong with support/NV+/Firmware:
1. Disk are labeled with slots number 1, 2 and 3. Never been move from correct slot accept when support told to do so (move 1 to 2)
2. All time has LED 1 been off/flashing, Frontview “LED” 1 off/yellow and LCD reported “”Disc 1 failure/missing” (and LED 2 + 3 constant green)
3. With supports instructions ended up with disk in this order: slot1/empty – slot2/disk 1 – slot4/disk 3 – slot4/empty and no XRaid shares

The end result is that it was disk 2 that went dead and the NV+ indicated that disk 1 was dead. When removed and thereafter reinserted (not aa a Hotswap, unit off and booted up) it resulted in a Resync of disk 1 that killed the Raid. A Resync of disk 1 happened but the question is why and to what?? (It is a 3 disk XRaid setup)

Another point, when every thing started at first reboot after update and when apparently disk 2 died: this should not kill the XRaid with still 2 working disk! (Both disk 1 and 3 are still working and Smart+ reports no ATA errors nor relocated sectors)

My question is then, next time a disk fails in XRaid, should I open a Support Case at once?

Best Regards "