Hope is not a plan... #19636384 [CLOSED]

sucks :(

So to finish up the tale of what happened on October 11th and bring us up to this morning.... I spoke with another Level 2 Tech, Rein, who sincerely apologized and promised to send out my shipment the following day, as the current days' shipping cutoff had been missed. In essence, the box would ship on Friday and I would receive the replacement unit on Monday.

On Sunday I received a phone call from Rein (didn't know that support was open on Sunday's, my hats off to them), who informed me that my replacement had not been processed on Friday (oooppsss). Again, promising me that the shipment would be processed on Monday and received Tuesday. But this time, he said, 'We need your credit card number to process the order, so that we can ensure you will ship the original NAS back to us within 10 days.'

I'm sure you all can imagine my dismay as I politely told Rein two things - 1) on October the 2nd, ReadyNAS charged my card for $19.90 for what was supposed to be 5-7 business day shipping - we are now at October 15th and I don't have a refurb, working NAS in my possession - well more than 5-7 business days have passed.

and 2) You suddenly don't trust me to send back one of the units?? Who has broken trust here? First promise: You'll have a unit in 5-7 business days, Second promise: We messed up, forgot to send it out on Friday, so you'd receive it Monday, Third promise: We'll ship it Monday, you'll get it Tuesday.

Really? Which one of us should have a trust issue?

Hate to sound like the Twelve Days of Christmas here...

But here goes...

On the 10th day of Business, NETGEAR sent to me, one refurb unit, that I must say is in pretty great shape.

I was so thrilled to get it out of the box and put my discs in original order into the unit (the working ones, anyway) - so in goes Bay 1/Bay3 and Bay4. The system is 'UP' woo hoo, I throw the brand new disc into Bay 2...... you'll never believe what happens next.... Syncing.... stops at 42% - 2 hrs 24 mins. RAIDar freezes disconnects itself from Fronview.

I drive to my nearest Micro Center and pick up a brand new Red 1TB Western Digital and plunk it in the unit around 7:30 last night. Watch the Presidential debate while the unit is syncing this new drive. Nothing can go wrong, right? Just when I was watching the post debate political wrap up, you'll never guess what happened, but if you do, I've got a NAS unit you can have :) stop... 42%, this time only 2hrs 21 mins left.

So this morning I will call NETGEAR, to say 'REALLY?' Is there an issue with the firmware, because after flipping through the forum last night, I see that there are a few others with the same problem. Have a wonderful day all, I'm sure mine will be interesting - :)

The case has been elevated to a Level 3 Tech who will remotely look at the unit in the next 24 - 48 hours.

keep us posted!

Good afternoon all,

As I wrote earlier, the Level 2 Tech I spoke to this morning stated that a Level 3 Tech would remotely look at the unit in the next 24-48 hours. Since about an hour after the Tech and I spoke, the display on the front of the ReadyNAS unit has shown 'DebugMode [64647]'.

In order for the Tech to do his/her work, do I have to leave my computer on/awake for the next 24-48 hours? I understand that the TeamViewer session needs to be open, but do I have to change my computer's settings to not go into 'sleep mode'?

I ab/fab love that technology makes all this remote-ing possible, but it seems that the procedure could be started a little faster time-frame wise ie. an appointment time, rather than waiting and wondering. And, I'd love to know specifically what is being done, I don't want to try accessing the unit via RAIDar and Frontview for fear of messing up the process.

Thanks for your input.

They shouldn't need to go in via TeamViewer if the tunnel connection between your NAS and NetGear is working. Given that 5-digit ID they should be able to connect directly to your NAS, not via your PC/Mac.

Debug mode is a low-level diagnostics mode. In this mode the bare minimum of services necessary for remote diagnostics are started. You can't access Frontview and while you can see the unit in RAIDar you can't connect to it via that either. No harm in opening RAIDar though. You'd see the 5 digit ID in the far right (Info) column.

As always mdgm, thank you for your input. I'm afraid I've become a plug-and-play end user. And I've certainly become used to Apple's 'appointment windows'. Thanks for answering my question. Glad to know I can let the computer go to sleep tonight. Have a great evening.

I've been working with a Level 3 Tech over the past two days to get the NAS up. We've run through numerous scenarios.. at one point in time the RMA unit displayed 'bad firmware','dead c drive', this is not making me overly confident in the process. We switched channel 1 for 4, inserted a disc into channel 2, channel 3 failed a blue WD 1TB added to the array in July, removed it, swapped in a new disc a red WD 1TB... O/S reinstall, left the firmware at 4.1.7, the way the new chassis came...

Anyhow, this afternoon, we got it up to the point where it started to sync the fourth channel. And to say the least, I'm leaving a lot of weird error messages, syncing, boot cycling issues out of this post. One of the error messages we received while working together had to do with a USB Mount Failing. I've never, in the life of my NAS tried a USB sync, and at this point have no desire or knowledge to. I emailed the Tech with a pic of the NAS surpassing the 42% sync mark (that in itself is huge progess). Woo Hoo!! However since that email to him, oddly enough I've received at least 100 alerts saying the same thing - a YELLOW error "The default backup button job copies the contents of the [backup] share to the USB hard drive directly attached to the front of the NAS. Please attach a USB hard drive directly to the front USB port before pressing the backup button" or - a GREEN error "The device attached to the front USB port could not be properly mounted. Please try again." When I got home from dinner this evening, the sync had (?!?!- see below) finished, but with 100's of alerts in the logs and now I've got this really weird screen going on Frontview, but I can't seem to upload the screen captures here. It is the weekend, and my Tech should be taking his well-deserved break, so he and I won't speak again 'til Monday. In the interim, has anyone had this experience with USB Mounting issues?

And, the NAS is currently in another sync phase, 11% complete 5 hrs to go...

I have never seen them with my NV+

If no one is connecting anything to the front USB port, that the GREEN error sounds like flakey hardware.

The YELLOW error could be a bad backup switch - unless someone is pressing it with no USB connected. If you set up a dummy backup job (that copies a dummy (empty) share to another dummy on the same NAS, you can then configure the backup button to trigger that dummy job instead. A bit of a nuisance though.

Is the unit still under warranty? If so you might contact Netgear support (on-line would still be free).

Good morning all,

StephenB - thanks for your response, I'll address the errors with the Tech on Monday morning. Does your NV+'s backup button have an LED light in the center of it? Mine looks like it should, with a little blank rectangle, but there is nothing ...

On another note, I woke up this morning to find a new log ready to view in Frontview, and switched over to Volume Settings tab. X-Raid 4 Disks Redundant - EXCELLENT NEWS!!!

My new question is this - There is no data on the NAS with the exception of the OS. I have 4 1TB disks installed. Each disk has 927 GB allocated. The display on the front of the NAS unit shows 2.6/2.6 TB available. Should it not read 3.7/3.7 TB available? I think I'm doing my math correctly.

Happy Saturday all!