Having a hiccup with my NV+

What hiccup are you experiencing?

It's multi-tiered.

My NV+ has been serving my apartment like a dream for over 3 years.
I use it for media, computer backups (via Time Machine), and work storage.
4x2TB drives.
Firmware is a little older to accommodate Time Machine for Snow Leopard.
I'd grab you the exact version, but my NAS is currently unresponsive :S

3 days ago, Time Machine on my main machine notified me that it needs to setup a new image (or something to that effect).
This has happened in the past - the Time Machine process usually does it's thing, creates a new image and copies over an entirely new backup (~150GB), and we're good to go.
Unfortunately, this time around, it doesn't get too far in the copying over process (less than 3GB).
The backup process stopped and I'm left with an unresponsive NAS (couldn't power down with the power button, couldn't access the control panel).

So I pulled the power cable (I realize now so many of my problems may stem from this - but it had been unresponsive for a long time).

The NAS fires up again, does a quota check, passes.

400GB of space has been freed up.... gulp. (went from 1.62TB/5.5TB free to 2.02TB free)
It would appear that an NFS volume has been corrupted.

Through the control panel, I check the logs.
Nothing out of the ordinary, asides from improper shut downs and scans starting.

I restart the device with a file system check.
The file system check reaches 68% (which happens to be the approximate used capacity of the NAS) and doesn't make it any further than that.
The scan began around 9:00AM, was at 68% by 10:30AM, and was still stuck there in the early afternoon (2:30PM), so I feel confident I'd given it enough time if it was a time intensive process.

Wind up pulling the cable again.

After the next startup/quota check, I find that the volumes are re-syncing themselves through the control panel.
This process take the better part of a day, but it went smoothly/successfully.

I fire up RAIDar to see if it can tell me anything else.
Everything appears to be best case: drives are full health, FS check is 100% - nothing out of place.

Wondering if the issues have been resolved via volume re-sync (aside from the corrupted volume), I try my Time Machine backup again.
Same issue. Backup ends early on - NAS becomes unresponsive.

I've only spent an hour or two googling around looking for answers on this, but I'm hoping the wise wise forum members might be able to point me in the right direction on this.

My immediate interests are:
- Guidance on proper diagnosis (could this be a bad sector?)
- Possible solutions on why the Time Machine writes are failing (I've seen forcing a rebuild offered as an idea on here)
- I realize it's a super long shot - but I'll lob out the confirmation question of "Is there such a thing as (inexpensively) recovering a corrupted NFS volume"?

Thanks so much in advance,
-Berger

What firmware?
Have you removed and tested all the disks using vendor tools? You'll need to power down before removing and labelling ten and reinsert all with the Nas off.
Do you have ssh enabled?

Firmware: RAIDiator 4.1.8 [1.00a043]

I have not removed or tested the disks.
What vendor tools will I need? (Western Digital, Caviar Green)

I believe SSH is enabled.

http://support.wdc.com/product/download ... =3&lang=en

Green drives are not recommended, although they may be on the HCL.

That's pretty old firmware, when last did you do a factory reset, was it before 4.1.7?

If you can ssh in you can do

df -i
df -h

which will provide info about the OS partition, although it doesn't sound like that is the issue.

If you don't have a backup of data on the nas then now is the time to make one.

Yeah, I had tried upgrading to 4.1.9, but it broke my Time Machine backups, so I rolled back and have stuck with it.
I don't recall having done any factory resets since initial setup.

df -i result:
Filesystem Inodes IUsed IFree IUse% Mounted on
/dev/hdc1 128000 12453 115547 10% /
tmpfs 7070 1 7069 1% /USB
/dev/c/c 182812672 499900 182312772 1% /c

df -h result:
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hdc1 1.9G 644M 1.3G 33% /
tmpfs 16k 0 16k 0% /USB
/dev/c/c 5.4T 3.6T 1.8T 67% /c

I will go pick up a hard drive dock this afternoon and start testing drives.
I was of the impression the NAS would have reliable disk error checking built in.
I'm guessing I was mistaken? Or is this a fringe case?

If the smart data is perfect then the drives are probably ok, it's always worth checking in situations like this where writes and filesystem checks are failing.

The reason I asked about the last factory default is explained here:

viewtopic.php?f=65&t=56531

So, my quota checks on startup are starting to choke (The NAS appears to be inaccessible).
Once at 80.8% and currently at 87.8%.

Given that there's a decent number of files I'm hoping to copy - am I playing with fire with the 'pull the plug to restart the cycle'?
Is there any point to waiting out a stuck quota check?

I ran an extended test on one drive (to the tune of 7 hours) and quick tests on the rest.
Everything has passed so far.

I think this is good news (though the idea of just swapping in a new drive for a defective one seems appealing at this point).

Do all the drives require extended tests?

Yes do extended tests on them all.