NVX expansion considered harmful

rockdj wrote:

Glad you could mount your fs read-only. Once you've safely retrieved your data, you could try unmounting and running fsck manually and see what happens. If you're in the same situation as I was, expect to see thousands of errors and the fsck process to be incredibly slow. In my case, the fsck wouldn't complete due to out of memory errors (the filesystem was too large for the 32-bit address space, IIRC). At any rate, the quantity and severity of the errors implied that it wouldn't/couldn't be fixed - so I retrieved my data, and factory reset the system. Things are better now - no issues since then, but then again I won't be trying to expand my volume (ever) again.

Yeah, I just learned the hard way here.... I've had a few problems with this device before and this last one has left me pretty salty. I surely will be opening a pretty pissed off support case about it.

I'm going to keep plugging away and see what can be done. Do you have a suggestion on any options to run fsck, or is just a simple "fsck /dev/c/c" good enough?

mgdm wrote:

Hopefully your data is O.K. I have been informed that NetGear is looking into this issue at the moment. Any solution though would be if possible to prevent users who have yet to run into this issue (i.e. have not yet expanded their volume on affected firmware) from running into this issue. It is a good precaution to backup your data regularly, and particularly before doing things like expanding your data volume. Keep an eye on the 4.2.23 beta thread: http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=70385 NetGear has already resolved a number of other issues with 4.2.22 in the 4.2.23 beta builds available so far.

I'm glad they're making progress.... but this really kinda screwing up my day! hahaha Thankfully I've had problems in the past and started to basically only use my NVX for backups already anyway. Most of my primary data is already on a Nexenta box and is MUCH safer. The real issue for me is that I've got some "add-ons"... sickbeard, couchpotato, sabnzbd, etc... with some pretty customized scripts that point to particular directories, NFS mounts and things like that. To re-create and edit all of that is really a time consuming process.

I've got my fingers crossed that a manual fsck can fix some of it, but with 80% of the drive files (4 x 1.5TB drives) I'm afraid I may also run into out of memory errors. Maybe that's something support can help overcome.

Once my basic file copies are done I will run around fsck and see where it leaves me.... and yes, I will NEVER be expanding an volume again either.