ReadyNas 6.2 (NAS locks up entirely)

Not installing any firmware updates would be bad as you could run into issues fixed by firmware updates you decided not to install. Most of the time you can downgrade if you don't like a new firmware. We do warn in the Release Notes where this is not possible. In any case if your data is important to you, no matter where you store it, store it on multiple devices.

As I mentioned earlier though we have the 90 day support warranty we have still decided to work with a few users from this thread on diagnosing the problem obtaining crash dumps. We are do everything we can to resolve this problem as soon as possible.

At least it is the number one thread with significantly higher activity than any of the others. I am hoping they are at least aware that there is a real problem affecting most users. How many less tech-savvy business owners have just given up and purchased a competitors product assuming the readyNAS just got old and died? Th 8200 people who have viewed this already are just a small population of the consumers affected. This is a real problem Netgear; don't bury your head in the sand! Your NAS market reputation is being destroyed day-by-day. Maybe this is a statement of your/their business intentions and consumer response forthcoming.

We know it is a real problem and this problem is getting attention from the highest levels of our team. We want to resolve this as soon as possible but as discussed the difficulty in reproducing the problem has meant this issue has remained open for much longer than all of us would like.

Note that each time I view the thread for example it increments that counter of the views. I reckon at least 100 (maybe a lot more) of the views are probably from me alone. So a high view count indicates a mixture of repeat viewing of threads and a number of users viewing it.

At this stage I would consider this issue is affecting many users but not most (if it was affecting most it would be easily reproducible), but what is important and what I think we all agree on is that this problem needs to be solved as soon as possible.

I am an owner of a fledging Readynas Duo V2, several years old now. This is reminiscant of the many months of threads containing user frustrations in regards to latency / MTU issues with Windows OS's. An adequate solution was never forthcoming.

My Readynas Duo is now on its last legs, locking up and dropping off the Network for no apparant reason, however from my investigations I suspect it is also Kernal panic introduced by one of the later firmware upgrades. Third to last release, to be exact (at work at the moment, dont recall the Version).

I love the readynas hardware and the user interface, but unfortunately it is let down yet again by buggy firmware.

I was ready to go out and purchase a new RN31200, but have to say this current situation scares me off no end.

The users in this thread mainly have 100 series units.

This issue does not affect the x86_64 models such as the 312.

andysa wrote:
My Readynas Duo is now on its last legs, locking up and dropping off the Network for no apparant reason, however from my investigations I suspect it is also Kernal panic introduced by one of the later firmware upgrades. Third to last release, to be exact (at work at the moment, dont recall the Version).

It sounds more like a filling OS partition to me - which is easily fixed.

Open a new thread on your problem, and we can respond there (rather than hijacking this one). Please do report the firmware version.

Ok so after downgrading from 6.2.3-T1696 to 6.2.0 again the unit took a while to come back online and the screen is stuck on "Booting Upgrading Firmware"
But while it's in this state I can access it over the network and all my backups are successfully backing up to it. It has stayed up for 2.5 days now woohoo.
When I log into the unit it says device not ready and I don't get any info on the dashboard but I don't care at the moment as long as the unit stays on working.

There was a fix for downgrading in 6.2.3 Beta 5.

I don't think running a system with readynasd crashed is a good idea.

Some notes to help you guys at Netgear figure this out. maybe these are coincidences, maybe not. maybe worth a try? apparently you have no other ideas how to recreate the problem.

1. I turned off readycloud and it started locking up after less than 2 hours. turned it back on. lasts at least 5 or 6.
2. I turned time machine on. It allowed me to back up my machine almost all the way before the NAS crashed. after I rebooted it from the crash it had to "rebuilding volume"
3. This morning, only the music share was dead. I was able to access the others for a minute or so, and then they all crashed...

were there instructions posted somewhere for how to downgrade back to 6.1.9 when the unit was able to perform the function for which it was designed?

Would you offer a replacement NAS that is not having this problem to exercise good customer service in exchange for sending in the failing unit for diagnostics/forensics? If, as you say, this is not affecting most users, this would not be a financial hardship for NetGear which takes in around 1.2 billion dollars a year. It would also allow you to evaluate these systems that you have mistakenly destroyed and learn from your mistakes so that this doesn't happen in the future. It would be the responsible thing to do. ReadyNAS marketing is directed at businesses; "ReadyNAS lets you do more with your business data than you ever thought you could afford." these failures are causing companies all over the world money every day in IT service calls and lost productivity.

We have a strong focus on resolving this issue and that due to its intermittent occurrence it has been hard for us to identify.

As explained earlier in our experience if we took the systems out of their environment we would likely find they ran fine with no lockups.