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Forum Discussion
Please remove inactive volumes in order to use the disk. Disk #1,2 - #25684491
Hello all,
We ran into an issue with our ReadyNAS 316 running firmware 6.2.4 . We started accessing files this morning when the iSCSI drives stopped responding and disappeared from our servers (we have/had three iSCSI LUNs and targets for three of our Windows servers. I went to the web portal and found we could log in and the basic pages would come up, but they wouldn't populate. With the inability to do anything else through the interface we ultimately powered it off manually using the power button and restarted.
Upon restarting, the NAS is telling us to "Please remove inactive volumes in order to use the disk. Disk #1,2." It has 2 3TB WD Red drives in it in RAID1 (X-RAID), with a single volume and was hosting 3 iSCSI targets. If I go to Volumes, it shows the volume, with a red dot in the top left corner, and says Data and Free are both 0. Going to the iSCSI page says "No volume exists. It is recommended to create a volume before configuring others." However, all my iSCSI targets and LUNs still show up on that page, and my systems are reconnecting to it - just not finding any drives.
I've given it another reboot from the web page (which did reboot this time), but still get the same issues. Is it possible to get things back online without loosing all our files?
This looks to be the same problem as described in issue number 23904523. Unfortunately that discussion didn't provide a resolution.
Thanks in advance.
John
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Log files have been uploaded. Please let when we can expect a call back on this issue.
Thanks - John.
Do you have a backup?
Are there only iSCSI LUNs on this NAS or other data as well?It appears that there is some filesystem corruption on your system. Even if the filesystem can be made to mount I'm not sure whether the data inside the LUNs would be recoverable.
Data recovery contracts can be purchased to look into problems like this, but inherently the data recovery may be unsuccessful.We can certainly provide some advice on how best to configure things going forward.
The important data can be recovered.
There are three iSCSI LUNs on the NAS server, plus the default shares. The shares are rarely used.
Is there a filesystem check available from the web interface or possibly via ssh?
It will be very disappointing if the volume is lost. Not because of some data loss, but because the redundant drives do no good if the unit itself damages the filesystem itself
It would be fine to have you review the configuration. Other than adding the iSCSI LUNS the configuration is pretty basic.
Thanks - John.
My ReadyNAS 104 that has begun to do the same thing. I started receiving errors the other day and then it went "offline". I replaced the drive that the logs were indicating was becoming faulty and that allowed me to get back in to the web interface to try and see what my options are. I tried every recommendation that I found online but nothing seems to work. I put in a brand new (no partitions or formatting) drive but the RAID array will not rebuild/resync.
The last suggestion I tried was to update the firmware to 6.2.5 (which updated successfully). I now have a couple more options (like being able to format the individual drives which I tried doing on the new blank one to be sure) but removing the drive and replacing it does not cause a resync/rebuild to happen.
I can see the shares but I cannot access them and the only message displayed is to "remove the inactive volumes in order to use the disk".
I have SSH enabled and the drive I used to replace the faulty one is the same make and model.
Whats the purpose of having a RAID if a drive is replaced and it wont rebuild properly?!
PLEASE HELP!
Updating the firmware when you have problems is unlikely to help unless you have a problem that you know a firmware update will resolve even if you've already run into it.
Yes RAID protects against a single disk failure, but that's not a replacement for backing up your data. There are things that can go wrong such as multiple disk failures, fire, flood, theft etc.
If you don't have a backup and need a data recovery attempt you should open a support case. Support can explain the costs involved. Please let us know your case number.
We worked with Netgear support and they were able to get the volumn back online. So far all is working well, our three iSCSI drives are back and filesystem checks ran successfully.
The file systems on these unit are journaled and being we had to power off the unit (it wouldn't do a normal shutdown) one of these files was corrupted. Our understanding is the support technician removed the corrupt journal and the filesystem was able to be mounted again.
They felt running the unit tight on space may have had something to do with it and suggested configuring Balance and Defrag to be run on a regular basis. We configured them for once a month. Under the System/Settings/Volume Schedule.
I've had a 204 for about a week from new, bought discless, and I filled it with four 3TB WD Green drives and updated to the latest firmware (6.4.0). Two drives (1 and 2) are a few months old and two (3 and 4) were brand new; the used ones had their partitions deleted and all were formatted in the 204. I set up a RAID5 array across all drives and populated it with six shares, all accessed via a single user account. I back up my two home PCs and one work PC, all via FTP, a total of about 1TB of data out of an available 9TB nominal. Today I had a problem with the sync program at work not running, so I accessed the box via FTP, to find that all the shares were there but most were empty. Accessing the admin page just got stuck - it showed the initial screen after logging in and kept refreshing. When I got home I found the LCD panel showing DEGRADED, and accessing the 204 via the local network showed the capacity of the entire array to be zero, and all the drives shown in red. The log shows disc 4 and disc 2 failed within one second of each other. I restarted the box and nothing changed, so I've destroyed the RAID array and set it up again from scratch. I can't believe this is a double disc problem, as the chances are tiny. Fortunately, the data is still on the source computers, but I am concerned this has failed so drastically after so little time. The whole purpose of a backup drive, that I've invested hundreds of pounds in, is to provide security for my important data. If anyone can shed light on this I'd appreciate it, as if it happens again I will need to find another backup system.
Double disk failures perhaps happen more often than you think. There are certainly posters here who have lost arrays due to double failures. Even with RAID you do need some form of backup.
That said, I suggest you use your 90-day phone support, and open a case. Netgear should be able to do a deeper dive into your logs, and may be able to sort out what happened.
With the failure rates of modern discs, to have two genuine failures out of four discs one second apart is so unlikely the odds against it are astronomical. There's clearly a common cause, especially since both drives now appear to be working fine again. As this system IS my backup I am not going to back up my backup - this is just my insurance against something happening to the original data.
I've set up a new array now and I waited until it had finished syncing before re-creating the shares. Now I'm copying the data back again, and will watch it carefully. If the wheels fall off again I'll return the box as faulty and buy another brand, as a backup system I can't trust is no use to me.
My procedure for fixing:
1. Remove both RAID1 drives.
2. Install drive 1 in up-to-date Linux system (with btrfs 4.0), login as root.
3. "cat /proc/mdstat". Observe device of main volume, /dev/mdXXX (eg. /dev/md127)
4. "btrfs check --repair /dev/mdXXX" (where XXX is according to previous step). May take an hour or more.
5. "mount /dev/mdXXX /mnt"
6. Deleted excess stuff from drive ("cd /mnt", "rm -rf JUNK").
7. "umount /mnt"
8. Reinstall drive 1 into NAS. Turn on. Should now show up as ok but "Degraded" (since only one drive).
9. Shutdown. Reinstall drive 2 into NAS. Turn on. Should now show "Resyncing".
10. Wait. Done!
For the Linux system, I used VirtualBox and an Ubuntu ISO (actually Lubuntu but then had to install btrfs and mdadm), and did the whole thing on Windows with the drive installed an external USB caddy (you'll need to turn on USB3 support in the virtual machine's settings).
Possibly you could do this by SSHing into the device, but the NAS I was working on was a 2-disk and refused to turn SSH on with no available volumes.
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