Hi all, I have a RN104 which up until tonight I had been running without issue with 2x4Tb drives installed (Seagate NAS 4TB ST4000VN000), running a RAID5 configuration. As these drives were starting to fill up I had made the decision to purchase 2 additional drives to add in (same drives as before). Prior to making any changes I made sure I was running the latest firmware, 6.4.1 On adding the new drives to the bays I formatted them. I then refreshed the view in the admin console and have been met with an error message of 'Please remove inactive volumes in order to use the disk, Disks 1,2'. These were the original drives installed which up until today were working without incident. These drives are red and the new drives are grey in the admin console view. I removed the two new drives, still getting the same message. Have restarted numerous times, including unplugging at the wall, all to no avail. I am freaking out a bit as a result - had digitised all my photos, CD's and DVD's to this system which was a monumental task, the whole point of it being a (within reason) safe place to back up my content. I've called Netgear support and was directed to call 650 385 3252 - this line seems to be no longer in service, am happy to pay for support as required as this is very important to me to resolve (with the data intact). I have copies of the log files and am happy to send them through. Really appreciate any help anyone can offer me. Cheers, Mark

This website is littered with lots of people experiencing the same loss of data after upgrading to 6.4.0. I find it untenable that all of us, by chance, had multiple disk failures that happened to coincide with a firmware upgrade.

mdgm wrote: The support involved with investigating problems like this (whether or not it turns into a data recovery case) requires a high level of support and we do need to charge for that and for the work performed our charges are very reasonable. I do agree that support costs money, and that one way or another the customer has to pay for it. Where it gets frustrating is when there are common issues (bugs or firmware upgrade related) that require support to fix. Users then feel exploited - paying to fix problems they have reason to think Netgear caused. Quite a few people are reporting "please remove inactive volumes", which no obvious explanation on how that happened. Of course some might have done something ill-advised, but from the posts I'm seeing I suspect many did not. But trying to target courtesy support to cover resolving such bugs seems unworkable, since most symptoms have multiple causes, and even Netgear can't always figure out what caused the problem to occur. Of course if users have a backup (as the OP does), they have more options - trading the time/cost of the factory reset against the price of paid support.

Support i find it very odd that I have installed 2 new drives in my 104 and am getting the same error message. What do you think stastically speaking that when you add drives that all the sudden you get errors. I am pretty sure it has something to do with the NAS and not the drives.

Thank you for your reply. £60 here, and that's to "endorse your case to our higher tier to check if the volume can be mounted without doing data recovery". I don't know that they can fix the problem so I'm not paying. That's the last NetGear product I buy (sadly). Thanks again for the advice nonetheless.

Not sure, but I think the per-incident charge would have included actually mounting the volume if that were possible. Data recovery is of course difficult, and would have been a lot more expensive. userxyz wrote: I don't know that they can fix the problem so I'm not paying. That's the last NetGear product I buy (sadly). The support policy is very frustrating. I think the challenge from Netgear's perspective is that people buy RN100 class products largely on price, and that Netgear can't cover the cost of lifetime support at the price point they need to hit. But certainly it is not working well for customers. Perhaps a one-time charge for lifetime chat support would be one option (sold at support.netgear.com, not through resellers). Note that RN300 and above do include lifetime chat support.

Please remove inactive volumes in order to use the disk. RN104 #26317164

22 Replies

Replies have been turned off for this discussion

cpu8088
Virtuoso
Jan 13, 2016
how u can run raid 5 with 2 hard drives?

if u are using x-raid keep your original disks in respective bay 1 and 2 then hot insert new drives to bay 3 and 4. if those new drives have been formatted by say pc or mac then you need to destroy those volumes and then select all 4 drives and then enable expansion
- JennC
  NETGEAR Employee Retired
  Jan 13, 2016
  Hello markrobbo78,
  
  Welcome to the community!
  
  If you have no full backup, do not insert the new disks yet. Since you are willing to pay for support, let them handle this for you.
  
  Regards,
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
Jan 13, 2016
That's not the number to ring. Phone numbers to ring would be available through the support portal if still under support warranty or if you have the necessary support contract is in place.

When you added those disks your data volume array became a 4 disk RAID-5 array so we would need 3 out of 4 disks to be working to get at the data. Currently there are 2 out of 4 disks in the array.

So it depends on what you've tried and how far things have gone whether anything could be recovered. If the volume can't be mounted it's best to ask for help as the next step as the more you try the harder it may become to attempt to get your data back if it even remains possible.

Support would need to examine the disks and see whether there's any way of getting one of the disks that has dropped out back in assuming that is still possible.

Now whilst you could re-digitise your photos, CD's and DVD's due to the time involved this doesn't sound all that practical. Therefore you could consider the data on the NAS to effectively be as if they were the primary copy of your data.

RAID is great, but there are problems it cannot protect against including user error. See e.g. Preventing Catastrophic Data Loss

You shouldn't store important data on just the one device, and we recommend updating your backup regularly, especially before doing things like expanding your volume.
- gnubee
  Guide
  Feb 07, 2016
  This website is littered with lots of people experiencing the same loss of data after upgrading to 6.4.0. I find it untenable that all of us, by chance, had multiple disk failures that happened to coincide with a firmware upgrade.
  - BrianL2
    NETGEAR Employee Retired
    Feb 08, 2016
    Hi gnubee,
    
    Firmware upgrades do not cause hard drives to fail or get kicked out of the array. It is likely that these drives have uncorrectable errors in them and replacement is needed. NETGEAR offers assistance in trying to recover the data that's been lost in the volume that is no longer accessible. Again, the said service is fee-based and we do not guarantee the success of recovering all the data that's been lost.
    
    Let me know if you have further questions.
    
    Kind regards,
    
    BrianL
    NETGEAR Community Team
Cprice83
Aspirant
Apr 30, 2016
Hi BrianL

I think it was on 6.4.1 then when updated to 6.4.2 I encountered the issues.
njpryan
Aspirant
May 07, 2016
Hi there,

I came across this issue as I have the same problem. For me, I have a RN104 NAS with 4 bays and bays 1,2 & 3 all have a WD RED 4TB HDD in each. All working fine and happy days. Yesterday I received my fourth WD RED 4TB HDD that I ordered.
I powered down the NAS and inserted the drive and then powered back up.

The NAS booted ok and continued recogising the fourth HDD and was I presume re-configuring the system to accpet the drive and increase the capacity as expected and intended.

Yesterday after some time I saw the number 3 on the top of the NAS flashing and at the bottom I saw the following message:
"Volume: Volume data health changed from Redundant to Degraded."

Then within or less than 1 min later : "Disk: Disk in channel 3 (Internal) changed state from ONLINE to FAILED."

Upon looking at the Admin Page which I was able to access the following day (today) I see that at the top the message:
"Remove inactive volumes in order to use the disk. Disk #3."

Now why would this disk have problems especially when it is the most recent disk prior to the new one yesterday to be installed.!!
This disk was installed approx. Jul/Aug 2015 - so its not that old.

Why would installing another drive effect it in this way ?

How do I resolve it without losing data ?

Its a strange technological world we are living in for sure !

Any ideas guys please would be grateful.
- BrianL2
  NETGEAR Employee Retired
  May 11, 2016
  Hi njpryan,
  
  It is possible that Disk 3 has been acting up for some time and possible another disk but we can't really tell without checking the system device logs. For the meantime, it would be best if you can open a ticket with our support team that will be forwarded or escalated to our L3 Engineers. Take note that fee might be needed in case the data needs to be recovered.
  
  Kind regards,
  
  BrianL
  NETGEAR Community Team
- BrianL2
  NETGEAR Employee Retired
  May 15, 2016
  Hi njpryan,
  
  Would like to know if you have contacted again our support team to get help about your volume problem.
  
  Kind regards,
  
  BrianL
  NETGEAR Community Team
  - userxyz
    Tutor
    May 19, 2016
    Another user with an RN104, 4 drives, firmware version 6.4.0. My NAS had been powered off for 2.5 months and left insitu. I powered it on yesterday and was told it was degraded from the LED panel. Disk 2 didn't look to have spun up correctly. I ejected it, plugged it back in, and it began to sync. Today I noticed that the disk 2 light was solid, but 1 was flashing with a degraded message, and then went out completely. I tried to visit the web interface and list the volumes but it timed out. The only way I could turn the NAS off, was to pull the power. I put the power back in and it booted up.
    
    The web interface now says: Remove inactive volumes to use the disk. Disk #1,2,3,4.
    
    The logs show that resync finished and then at the exact same second, disk 1 failed, and disk 2 came online. Logs in reverse order as that's what the GUI shows:
    Thu May 19 2016 17:11:53
    System: ReadyNASOS background service started.
    Thu May 19 2016 17:09:29
    System: The system is rebooting.
    Thu May 19 2016 17:08:09
    System: ReadyNASOS background service started.
    Thu May 19 2016 17:08:04
    System: ReadyNASOS service or process (readynasd) was restarted.
    Thu May 19 2016 17:03:39
    System: ReadyNASOS background service started.
    Thu May 19 2016 17:03:36
    System: ReadyNASOS service or process was restarted.
    Thu May 19 2016 14:35:24
    Disk: Disk in channel 2 (Internal) changed state from RESYNC to ONLINE.
    Thu May 19 2016 14:35:24
    Disk: Disk in channel 1 (Internal) changed state from ONLINE to FAILED.
    Thu May 19 2016 14:35:24
    Volume: The resync operation finished on volume dataVolume. However, the volume is still degraded.
    Thu May 19 2016 1:00:29
    Volume: Volume dataVolume is Degraded.
    Wed May 18 2016 9:19:22
    Volume: Resyncing started for Volume dataVolume.
    Wed May 18 2016 9:18:43
    Disk: Disk Model:SAMSUNG HD203WI Serial:S2GMJ1CZ700803 was added to Channel 2 of the head unit.
    Wed May 18 2016 9:14:59
    Volume: Volume dataVolume is Degraded.