NV+ SODIMM failed after RAIDiator 4.1.13 [SOLVED]

jsoto wrote:

Thanks for this thread. It saved me a lot of time and applied to me as well.... Situation / Status: I had my original ReadyNAS NV+ no longer boot after a power failure (my UPS went bad) with the same symptoms -- flashing blue LED in the power button followed by disk LEDs 1 and 3 steady and unable to turn off the unit using the power button. It was not clear what to do next as there were two paths -- the more likely one given the LED indication and based on the various web resources was to boot from a USB drive and restore the OS. However, like scootie -- my issue was resolved by replacing the DIMM which I assume failed. This unit came from Infrant with the 1GB upgrade installed and, other than the bad power supply early on and the sticky drive trays, has provided excellent service for nearly 10 years. Luckily I found the original 256MB DIMM from my second ReadyNAS that I had upgraded to 1GB years earlier and was able to reboot the older NAS using the old DIMM. To my relief, the unit did an FS check and resynch and seems to be working fine. I have since ordered a new 1GB DIMM which I will swap in when it arrives as I expect to keep using this NAS for many more years. The whole thing seems a bit suspicious to me as I too am running 4.1.13. However, as mentioned, this happened with an Infrant (Netgear) installed 1GB DIMM and my other unit with an aftermarket Corsair has not (yet) exhibited the same problem. I sure hope it does not when I next reboot it. Incidentally, I convinced myself having two ReadyNAS NV+ units provides me some additional redundancy in the event of a system failure. Presumably I can just move my drives (preserving their order) from one unit to the other to recover my data.

The only failure I have ever experienced with my NV+ involved a firmware upgrade [attempt] with a 1GB DIMM installed. The ugly problem that resulted required I exchange my chassis with Netgear. I restored the "refurb" replacement from Netgear with the original 256 DIMM, bought a 2nd chassis for backup, and have no need or interest to ever use that 1GB DIMM again.

It was silly of me to bother with a 1GB DIMM since I don't use my NV+ for anything but storage of PC backups which happen every day, but IMO unless there's a specific issue one is having with one's NV+ that is certain to be solved with 1GB RAM, I don't think it's worth attempting. My suspicion is that something about the chassis firmware or Linux software doesn't like a gig of memory. And yes my sig is correct--I haven't updated FW in my unit for years--gunshy now for sure.