Readynas 1100 unresponsive - quota check?

Just to update - I did open an incident support ticket (26030158) and it has been escalated to L3.  I'm waiting for tier 3 support personnel to contact me.  The tier 2 person I spoke with indicated that they would priorize my ticket since it is for a business.  Just don't know what that means for time frame.   I'll update again when I hear more.  

Just to update.  I've responded to 2 rounds of questions from the L3 support people but 4 days later have not had a call from them and things are still in the same place they were 4 days ago.  I'm a bit discouraged.  If this is a priority response, I'm sure I don't want to be on the regular list.  Will update this thread futher when I hear more.  .

Hello hezner,

I checked your case and found that it has been waiting for response from the support people since Nov 14. I've pinged the support about it.

Regards,

Thank you, Jenn.  I got a response from support this morning just after you pinged them for me.  I'll reply again after I've done the additional things that they asked.  Hopefully they will be able to remote in and resolve the issue. 

Hello hezner,

Glad to hear they went back to you.

Regards,

Jenn,

Perhaps you know the answer to the question that I just asked the tech support person.  They had asked that I reboot the unit into Tech Support mode to see if the 5 digit code would show up this time.  In doing so one of the disks in the orignal group of 4 failed (really bad clicking).  By getting really close I was able to hear which disk was making the sound and pulled it.   Then the unit rebooted properly and both Raidar and Frontview show a degraded array. 

During troubleshooting with the first L1 tech I had pulled all the original drives and used my spare disk to boot into a new volume.  My question is do I have to do a reformat somehow on that spare disk before putting into the degraded array?  Or can I just put in in like I normally would and let the rebuild process over write the information that is currently on there?  Thanks for your help with this. 

Pat

Hello hezner,

This could mean that more than just 1 disk is faulty.

Inserting a scratch/spare disk the formatting it with the NAS won't help as the NAS will just create a new volume for the spare disk. The data and OS are installed to the disks. If you can live with the backup you have and somehow retrieve files from Monday's work that will be better because support will require you to avail the per incident contract and also data recovery service. It is still up to you through if you are willing to pay the service. 

You might want to read ReadyNAS Data Recovery Diagnostics - Scope of Service article.

Regards,

I did not ask the question clearly.  If I insert a disk with some information on it into the slot where where I pulled the bad disk will the unit over write the information currently on the disk I inserted and use that disk to rebuild the array?   That is what I want to happen but have always put a blank disk in before. 

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hezner wrote:

I did not ask the question clearly.  If I insert a disk with some information on it into the slot where where I pulled the bad disk will the unit over write the information currently on the disk I inserted and use that disk to rebuild the array?   That is what I want to happen but have always put a blank disk in before. 

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No.  It can't import the information on the disk.  It needs to reformat before it adds the replacement to the array.

OK  I'll reformat the drive before I insert it.  Thanks

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hezner wrote:

OK  I'll reformat the drive before I insert it.  Thanks

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Best to unformat it actually.

In windows disk manager, you'd right click on every volume (which amounts to a partition) and delete it.  Vendor diags have an advanced test to zero the drives (one at least has a "quick zero" option that also unformats).

I have the disk plugged in as a USB.  My Win7 Computer management the disk management sees it as disk 2 (that is correct as I have 2 internal drives) but does not know what size it is or the manufacturer.  It shows as unknown and not initialized.  The drive does not show in Explorer.  When I tried to initialize it failed saying the disk was not ready.  I tried scanning for it in Seagate tools but it did not show there either.  Another suggestions or tools to get it in a state where I can unformat it?  

I move the disk over and plugged it into an old XP desktop and was able to see the drive partions in disk manager and able to delete the partitions OK.  It does recognize the correct model and capacity of the drive and now shows it all as one unallocated space.  I did not go to the drive manufacturer tools and to the advanced test to zero the dirves 

So, is it OK to plug that into the degraded array now without doing the advanced test?   Thanks so much for your quick response and all your help. 

Pat

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hezner wrote:

So, is it OK to plug that into the degraded array now without doing the advanced test?  

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If I have time (or am unsure about the drive) I will run vendor diags on them first.  But you can certainly just hot-insert it into the array. 

I ran back ups of everything new from a week ago Monday that had not been previously backed up then inserted the blanked disk.  The array is rebuilding now - currently at 2% done.  Will check everything over throughly in the morning when the rebuild is done and will be praying that this issue is resolved.  Have already purchase a new NAS but this will at least give me a bit of leaway in getting it set up and content moved to it.   

The volume resynced without errors and we have been using the unit all day without any problems.   Evidently my email alerts stopped working.  I tried to redo them but nothing was accepted.  I'll start a separate discussion about if I don't find any answers in my searching.  Thanks to both of you for your help.  I really appreciate it. 

BTW - Stephen, I would like to have marked your response as the solutions also but the site did not let me.  Jenn helped with the original question but you helped with the secondary question.   Sorry that I could not have marked your contribution as a solution also.