Hi all. I took delivery of a readynas4 ultra today, from a friend where I know it was working.I've spent a good number of hours today trying to get this thing working with little to no luck. Here's a rundown:1) Plugged in, powered on. Screen sits at "Booting..." for ever and a day. 2) Moved drives around, still sits at "Booting...".3) Raidar finds the device most of the time and will show it as 'booting'. I've left it in this state for up to 45 minutes to no avail.4) Factory Reset - sits at "Testing Disks for ages" and Raidar shows the devices in status "Testing Disks" and the 4 green LED's are flashing under the drives in Raider. Prior to this, the screen on the NAS did show testing percentage right up to 100% then sat back at "Testing Disks..."I'm at a complete loss... and I've been sitting with this on testing disks for the best part of an hour now. Any help or advice is greatly appreciated!Martin

Maybe one of the disks has failed.Can you power down, remove the disks (label order), connect them to an internal SATA port in your PC and check them (e.g. Using SeaTools for SeaGate disks)?Or failing that try a factory default with one disk removed. If that doesn't work, put the disk back in and try removing another one then doing a factory default...You may also wish to check that the memory is properly seated. It can come loose in shipment. You may wish to run the memory test.

Thanks for your reply :)I have a spare 250GB disk that I can place in the NAS and run the factory reset however my question would then be, if that works, how would I go about adding the rest of the drive and eventually replacing this 250GB one? I have 4 1TB drives that need to go in eventually. I'm not so clued up on these NAS systems and although I'm a linux admin myself, I'm more used to running things manually with standard raid setups, not via some funky software! :)

If a factory default with just your spare disk installed works that suggests you may have a problem disk.If the factory default with a spare disk works check what firmware version is running on the NAS and update it if it is an old version.What brand and model disks are you using?

Hi.The TB drives are WD Caviar Green's.

I should probably add, the guy I bought it off, he ran dban on the drives before sending it to ensure there was no data left on them. He had those drives in the NAS working up to the moment when it was pulled out of use. This new attempt with the 250gb drive has worked and I have managed to get it to setup via radar, it's installing now. I guess it'll be trial and error with the other drives to see what happens!

Newbie - ReadyNas Ultra 4 Boot Problems - case #21158089

24 Replies

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mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
May 16, 2013
Maybe one of the disks has failed.

Can you power down, remove the disks (label order), connect them to an internal SATA port in your PC and check them (e.g. Using SeaTools for SeaGate disks)?

Or failing that try a factory default with one disk removed. If that doesn't work, put the disk back in and try removing another one then doing a factory default...

You may also wish to check that the memory is properly seated. It can come loose in shipment. You may wish to run the memory test.
MartinD1
Aspirant
May 16, 2013
Thanks for your reply :)

I have a spare 250GB disk that I can place in the NAS and run the factory reset however my question would then be, if that works, how would I go about adding the rest of the drive and eventually replacing this 250GB one? I have 4 1TB drives that need to go in eventually.

I'm not so clued up on these NAS systems and although I'm a linux admin myself, I'm more used to running things manually with standard raid setups, not via some funky software! :)
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
May 16, 2013
If a factory default with just your spare disk installed works that suggests you may have a problem disk.

If the factory default with a spare disk works check what firmware version is running on the NAS and update it if it is an old version.

What brand and model disks are you using?
MartinD1
Aspirant
May 16, 2013
Hi.

The TB drives are WD Caviar Green's.
MartinD1
Aspirant
May 16, 2013
I should probably add, the guy I bought it off, he ran dban on the drives before sending it to ensure there was no data left on them. He had those drives in the NAS working up to the moment when it was pulled out of use.

This new attempt with the 250gb drive has worked and I have managed to get it to setup via radar, it's installing now. I guess it'll be trial and error with the other drives to see what happens!
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
May 16, 2013
Caviar Greens are no longer on the compatibility list for the Ultra 4. WD Red drives are a better choice.

You may well find that your WD Green disks have very high Load Cycle Counts.
MartinD1
Aspirant
May 16, 2013
Alright, I'll get some of them ordered up.

In the meantime, once the 'setup' has completed and the NAS reboots itself.. how long should it be sitting at "Booting..." with nothing coming up in raidar?
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
May 16, 2013
Not long. It should show up in RAIDar fairly quickly though it may drop off/on RAIDar a bit as things are setup. You should have seen it in RAIDar at some point since you made your post
MartinD1
Aspirant
May 16, 2013
Nothing's coming up in raidar and it's still showing "Booting..." on the NAS screen :(
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
May 16, 2013
What happens if you try a factory default with just one disk installed, but a different disk?

Can you check to make sure the RAM module is properly seated?