Need help recovering ReadyNAS Ultra6 (RNDU6000)

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mdgm wrote:

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chris_bfd wrote:

I attempted to upgrade my Ultra6 to OS6 and bricked it in the process.  After several hours of "updating FW" in the display, I power cycled it. Now when I power it up again it displays the ReadyNAS logo with a scrolling progress bar, but no other activity.

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That's odd. Does it come up like that whehter disks are installed or not? Did you install the Prep add-on so that a factory reset would be triggered at the appropriate time? Have you tried doing a factory reset using the boot menu (https://kb.netgear.com/21107/How-do-I-access-the-boot-menu-on-my-ReadyNAS-Ultra-6-Ultra-6-Plus-Pro-6-Pro-Pioneer-or-Pro-Business-Edition)? Note this wipes all data, settings, everything (and disks need to be installed obviously so that the disks are wiped), but you would have backed up your data before attempting to update to OS6, as the instructions advise to do so.

 

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I followed those instructions.  Yes, I do have a backup.

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mdgm wrote:

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chris_bfd wrote:

I have decided that booting from a USB recovery medium is the most likely way to fix this.  I downloaded the recovery tool and the firmware image, but when trying to prepare the USB stick, the tool only offers me the .html release notes to transfer, not the actual firmware image.

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The instructions for USB Boot Recovery could be written a lot better. Delete the .html release notes (that .html is only useful for reading the release notes offline if you wish to do that - it serves no other purpose) and it should then present the firmware image when you next open usbrecovery.exe. Also make sure that you are running the tool as an Administrator. If you want to put OS6 on instead of RAIDiator-x86-4.2.31 you'll need to rename the OS6 x86_64 firmware image to something starting with RAIDiator-x86-

 

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Removing the html file does allow me to select the proper firmware file.  However, I still cannot boot from the stick.  When holding the backup key during power on, I see some activity on the USB stick briefly, and then the unit just sits there with "ReadyNAS" in the display and no other activity.  It is also not attempting to boot from disk, there is no progress bar.

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mdgm wrote:

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chris_bfd wrote:

I copied the image to the USB stick manually and tried to boot from it, but it does not work.

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That is not going to work. You need a syslinux bootable USB key. In addition to the bootloader you need the initrd.gz, kernel, syslinux.cfg and firmware image. Simply copying the firmware image onto the USB key won't achieve that. There are alternative ways to create syslinux bootable USB keys e.g. using Rufus.

Also note that not all USB keys are compatible with USB Boot Recovery so more than one could need to be tried.

 

USB Boot Recovery can also have the side effect of corrupting the EEPROM. If this happens RAIDar will not detect the NAS model name etc.

I would try and access the boot menu with disks installed and do a factory reset and then only if that doesn't work consider other options.

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I did attempt a factory reset as well.  When I enter the boot menu and select Factory default and push the reset button again, the display changes to "Factory default", but nothing happens.  That is what got me thinking I need to boot from USB since the flash image is probably corrupt.

As for other options:  I do have a second unit, which has been upgraded to OS6 a long time ago.  I tried removing all of the disks from it and moved one disk over.  It booted up and completed a factory reset on the disk (so it seems the process was started, but never completed on the broken unit).  I then moved the disk back, but the device did not boot from that disk either.