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Forum Discussion
nv+ 4.1.8 usb boot for a faulty drive
i have rnv-s2-0000 nv+ v1 (sparc) x-raid
currently it gets stuck in the "booting..." sequence (with 4 drivers)
i am trying drives one by one in slot 1, and so far only 1 hdd (previously in slot 3) is fine and booting (in slot 1, as a single drive). i get to the web ui
the other hdd shows "err bad firmware" when booting by itself in slot 1 (previously in slot 4)
i am trying to flash the redynas firmware on that drive, but i am struggling to find the proper boot image (i either get "os index error" or "bios info, usb init" messages on readiness)
could someone point me at the correct image for the usb flashing of the possibly corrupt firmware image on the drive for 4.1.8 nv+ v1, please? then i can write it onto a bootable fat32 usb stick and go from there (tftp would also be fine, if someone has the image)
and of course, i have other 2 disks to deal with (i suspect - corrupt), but i figured i can at least get this one going first
thank you!
7 Replies
thank you - i understand. so i could also copy the working OS partition from working disk 3 onto disk 4, right?
The OS partition is set up as a RAID-1 LVM volume (mirrored on all disks), so you can't just copy stuff - it's more complicated than that.
If this only about the OS partition, It'd be sufficient to put disk 3 in slot one, as the system normally boots from slot one. Then put the other disks in the remaining slots. But I don't think it is likely to be just the OS partition.
Note the data volume is normally RAID-4 (though Netgear called it RAID-5). The NV+ v1 used hardware acceleration to compute the parity, and all the parity blocks are on one disk. Usually that is disk 4, though the disks might have been shuffled somewhere along the way. The partity disk is partitioned differently from the others (though the OS partition is the same). R-Studio can recover the data, but I don't know for sure whether it can use the parity disk or not. R-Studio support might be able to tell you.
How important is this data? Using a paid recovery service is another option.
thank you for the details. it makes sense. the data has some old photos and documents, probably worth a few hours of my time, and a few hours more to learn how this works. but there are no crypto wallets worth billions on it though.
it seems like i could pay for r-studio, copy the drivers over to local images and then try to recreate the software raid volume, but it is unclear whether the hardware-accelerated parity will be an issue. please correct me if i misunderstood your comment.
it seems like i could pay for r-studio, copy the drivers over to local images and then try to recreate the software raid volume,
R-Studio would let you off-load data. It wouldn't repair the volume (or change anything on the disks).
I believe you can download it first, and see if it finds your files. Then you could decide to purchase.
but it is unclear whether the hardware-accelerated parity will be an issue. please correct me if i misunderstood your comment.
Correct.
thank you for responding.
the unit has not been used since 2011 i think. so all drives should be consistent.
when testing drives one at a time in slot 1, i was able to boot with drive 3 successfully (hence the screenshot, confirming 4.1.8), but drive 4 presented "err bad firmware" which led me to believe that its copy of readynas firmware was corrupt, and i could write a good copy one on top of it. please correct me if my approach is wrong.
i will test the drives individually once i get the enclosure.
could you advise on the raid recovery approach?
the unit has not been used since 2011 i think.
So really old drives.
but drive 4 presented "err bad firmware" which led me to believe that its copy of readynas firmware was corrupt
The OS is stored on the disk, and the message does mean that the NAS is seeing issues with the OS partition.
But USB recovery doesn't fix that. It replaces the firmware copy in the NAS flash, and there is no evidence there is a problem with that flash. And the process does have some risk, so I don't recommend doing that.
i will test the drives individually once i get the enclosure.
could you advise on the raid recovery approach?Recovery would require at least three readable disks. Given their age, you might want to image them using software that does a sector-by-sector copy. Then you can recover useing the images.
R-Studio is one of several RAID recovery packages that has been used by other posters with some success:
- https://www.r-studio.com/
Note I haven't needed to use RAID recovery on my own systems, so I don't have personal experience with this software.
thank you - i understand. so i could also copy the working OS partition from working disk 3 onto disk 4, right?
but i understand that the usb restore won't restore the OS partition on the individual disk
i also understand that one needs 3 disks for the recovery to work
so far only 1 hdd (previously in slot 3) is fine and booting (in slot 1, as a single drive)
This means that you do not need USB recovery.
You will need to do a factory default with working drives. So start by testing them with vendor tools in a Windows PC. If you haven't labeled the drives by slot number, it would be useful to do that.
You could then maybe move on to RAID recovery if you don't have a backup.
4.1.8 nv+
Are you just looking at the label? Doe the original drive 3 also show that you are running 4.1.8?
4.1.8 was released back in 2011. Final firmware was 4.1.16.
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