NV+ boot problems after replacing bad disk (ref #18488016)

Open an online tech support case: http://www.ReadyNAS.com/support

Please edit the thread title (that is the subject of the first post in the thread) to include your case number

mchinand wrote:
After replacing a bad disk (disk 2 in a 4 disk x-raid configuration), my system rebuilt to 85% and stopped. It now won't boot; screen stuck on "Booting..." with solid power button lit. I took disk 1 out and connected it to a PC to run SeaTools on it and it is reporting errors. What are my next best steps to get this running and recovering data?

Anyone have a recommendation for my situation? Netgear Support won't help since the support warranty has expired on the NAS. The hardware itself seems OK; if I put a single disk into it that was not part of the raid configuration, it will boot fine. Thanks.

It sounds like disk 1 failed while the raid array was rebuilding from the disk 2 replacement. Not sure you can recover the data - you might need to look into recovery services or third party tools.

Thanks StephenB. I think you're correct, unfortunately. Does anyone have any recommended recovery procedures/services? Are drives that were in an X-Raid configuration readable in Linux at all? Most everything is backed up (this was a remote backup destination for another ReadyNAS) but there was data on another share that wasn't fully backed up.

One thing you could try is cloning disk 1 onto a new disk using dd_rescue. Not guaranteed to work but definitely worth a try.

readysecure1985 wrote:

you could always use knoppix to clone the drive to a known good drive, and then place it back in the device. Keep in mind that the known good drive should be on the HCL. After successfully cloning with knoppix, you can then place the good drive in the NAS and power on. If all goes well, it will be as though the drive did not have any issues. Here is a simple guide to quickly recover a failed drive using dd_rescue. I often have to deal with pesky failed drives, so here is a quick simple guide how to achieve this with a free Linux Live CD and a PC with two SATA connections. I will be using a Knoppix 6.2 Live CD for this guide. Can be found at http://www.knoppix.net Using dd_rescue command allows you to copy data from one drive to another block for block. This is especially useful for recovering a failed drive. Often when a drive fails, the drive is still accessible, it has just surpassed the S.M.A.R.T. error threshold. dd_rescue allows you to ignore the bad sectors and continue cloning the bad drive to a new healthy drive. 1) Connect your old drive and new drive to your PC 2) Boot up using your Linux live CD 3) Launch a terminal window. 4) Run fdisk -l to make sure the system sees both of the hard drives. 5) Run hdparm -i /dev/sdx on both of the drives to find which drive is your source drive and which drive is your destination drive 6) Once you know which drive is which you can start the clone process. dd_rescue /dev/sdx(source disk) /dev/sdx(destination drive) 7) You will see the process start, just keep an eye on it, it might take a few hours for the clone job to finish, depending on the size of the drive. Once the process is complete, there will be no notification, the transfer will just stop and you will see the terminal prompt again. If you see a lot of errors or see that there is no more data being shown as succxfer: it means the drive got marked faulty by the kernel. At this point reboot the system and make sure you know which drive is which again, as it is possible they lettering might switch. Run the dd-rescue command again but this time with -r option. This will start the cloning again but this time will start from the back of the drive and will make sure to get the data that has not been cloned yet. There is no guarantee this will recover your data, but there is a very high chance this will work and its free…

If you haven't already I would also suggest testing the other disks using manufacturer's diagnostic tools as well (be sure to label the order of the disks so you put them back in the correct slots).


So did you purchase the NAS new before August 21, 2007? If not when did you purchase it?

mdgm wrote:

One thing you could try is cloning disk 1 onto a new disk using dd_rescue. Not guaranteed to work but definitely worth a try. If you haven't already I would also suggest testing the other disks using manufacturer's diagnostic tools as well (be sure to label the order of the disks so you put them back in the correct slots). So did you purchase the NAS new before August 21, 2007? If not when did you purchase it?

Thanks for the info, I will look into trying this. I've used Seagate's SeaTools on one of the disks and will run it on the other one.

This NAS was bought new in March of 2008. What's the signficance of August 21, 2007? Is that when Infrant was bought by Netgear? This NAS has a Netgear badge on the front.

On August 21, 2007 the warranty support for ReadyNAS NV+ was increased to 5 years up from 1 year. http://www.readynas.com/?page_id=281

Did you call NetGear (free for first 90 days after purchase) or open an online case (free regardless of when NAS was purchased though if a NetGear tech needs to remotely login to your unit there may be a fee associated with this). readysecure1985 is correct. Based on the period when you bought your NV+ it would have a 5 year warranty and thus would still currently be under warranty.