Forum Discussion

Sensei - Experienced User

May 02, 2019

Driveless system auto-updated flash firmware

I have been playing around with a semi-functional RD5200 running OS6.9.5 (yes, a ReadyData configured as a ReadyNAS). The problem it has can make the drives not visible at boot. When that happened, I...

JohnCM_S

NETGEAR Employee Retired

May 03, 2019

Hi Sandshark, StephenB,

The system needs a volume to perform a firmware update so a diskless system updating itself is not normal. Also, the system will notify you if there is an update available but not just upgrade.

Regards,

StephenB

Guru - Experienced User

May 03, 2019

JohnCM_S wrote:

Hi Sandshark, StephenB

The system needs a volume to perform a firmware update so a diskless system updating itself is not normal. Also, the system will notify you if there is an update available but not just upgrade.

Any explanation for what Sandshark is seeing?

JohnCM_S
NETGEAR Employee Retired
May 03, 2019
Hi StephenB,

I am not sure what caused his RD5200 to just update without any disks. I checked this with L3 and said that it is really not normal and they cannot really explain how that happened. They said that the RD5200 with an OS6 firmware is a hack and unsupported. They do not know if the hack allowed the system to "see" a volume and update the firmware without any drives installed.

Regards,
- Sandshark
  Sensei - Experienced User
  May 04, 2019
  It's definately not accessing any disk when it does this. But, there is a unused section of the USB that it might be doing something with. I cloned the 256M USB boot drive from a RN4200V2 to the 512MB one from the RD5200. But it still comes up not showing any drives when the problem occurs, which makes me think that's not it.
  - Sandshark
    Sensei - Experienced User
    Jul 16, 2019
    FYI, it did the same thing on an RN4200V2. I can only guess it's due to the flash drive being a USB device, and thus a "disk".
    
    I was testing the bays, and one row didn't work -- had a loose cable. So, it booted as a diskless system. After I fixed it and re-booted, it updated the volume to 6.10.1, though I had installed 6.9.5.