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Forum Discussion
ReadyNAS NV (original) exhibits strange booting behavior
I have a 7 years old NV box made by Infrant with two 250GB Seagate Barracuda drives. I hadn't used it for a while, but felt suddenly motivated to build a personal cloud. So, last weekend, I fired it up - it booted fine with two disk lights showing up. But, I could not access it using the latest Raidar software so I decided to do a factory reset. I had no data on the drives as it is.
After the factory reset, I started getting a corrupt root message and I could not shut down the box gracefully. After reading through the forum, I then tried to reinstall the OS a couple of times, but to no avail. I pulled out the drives and got them tested - both checked out fine. After reinserting the drives, the corrupt root problem persisted.
In order to figure out if the drives were bad, I pulled out a disk and inserted the other disk in a different tray for every separate boot attempt. One of the disks continually showed corrupt root, so I thought may be that disk is bad. With the second disk, I was making progress or so I thought because instead of corrupt root, I started seeing bad disk detected.
But interestingly, Raidar always showed a bad disk light in an empty tray! And, depending on which try the drive was inserted in, the booting would get stuck at different points and while the disk present light would glow, but not the right one. After much reading, I tried to do a USB boot recovery using the latest firmware. The drive flashed a couple of times and then nothing happened for hours except the power light flashing softly - it never shut down as it should have. I finally yanked the power cable and rebooted the device and tried to install the OS again. The box then would get stuck while Installing - the power light would continue to flash softly. The activity light and the disk lights were off.
Today, I started the process again and changed the drive bays. Now, I am getting corrupt root with this drive too. Completely flummoxed at this point. So, my questions are:
1. Is this box dead or is there some hope? I am willing to spend some more time if there is any hope at all. I don't think the box is bricked, because something is happening. I can also hear the drives turning for some time before everything but the fan goes silent.
2. I can go out and buy new drives, but don't want to do it unless there's a chance of making this box usable.
Any help or pointers from anyone would be much appreciated. I am willing to pay NetGear tech support if they can take a look at this.
Thanks!
After the factory reset, I started getting a corrupt root message and I could not shut down the box gracefully. After reading through the forum, I then tried to reinstall the OS a couple of times, but to no avail. I pulled out the drives and got them tested - both checked out fine. After reinserting the drives, the corrupt root problem persisted.
In order to figure out if the drives were bad, I pulled out a disk and inserted the other disk in a different tray for every separate boot attempt. One of the disks continually showed corrupt root, so I thought may be that disk is bad. With the second disk, I was making progress or so I thought because instead of corrupt root, I started seeing bad disk detected.
But interestingly, Raidar always showed a bad disk light in an empty tray! And, depending on which try the drive was inserted in, the booting would get stuck at different points and while the disk present light would glow, but not the right one. After much reading, I tried to do a USB boot recovery using the latest firmware. The drive flashed a couple of times and then nothing happened for hours except the power light flashing softly - it never shut down as it should have. I finally yanked the power cable and rebooted the device and tried to install the OS again. The box then would get stuck while Installing - the power light would continue to flash softly. The activity light and the disk lights were off.
Today, I started the process again and changed the drive bays. Now, I am getting corrupt root with this drive too. Completely flummoxed at this point. So, my questions are:
1. Is this box dead or is there some hope? I am willing to spend some more time if there is any hope at all. I don't think the box is bricked, because something is happening. I can also hear the drives turning for some time before everything but the fan goes silent.
2. I can go out and buy new drives, but don't want to do it unless there's a chance of making this box usable.
Any help or pointers from anyone would be much appreciated. I am willing to pay NetGear tech support if they can take a look at this.
Thanks!
32 Replies
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- Try running the memory test. You might have a bad memory module.
Also connect the SeaGate disks up to your PC and run SeaTools. - If the drives check out, try deleting the partitions on the drives on a PC (with windows, right-click on computer, select manage, and then delete the volume in the disk manager section). Or use the write test in seatools, which also effectively deletes the partitions.
- Thanks! Will try running the memory tests first.
I have also filed a trouble ticket. Case # 22870000. - It looks like I can't even get to the memory test. The LEDs only flash four times by my calculation. I am assuming that I should ignore the first couple of really super brief flashes and count from the first slow flash. Am I doing something wrong?
- I have tried this a multiple times. Also reseated the memory module, but still no luck. I can't get to the memory test mode at all. Should I try and replace it and see if that works? Any pointers as to which memory works best as Netgear doesn't have a verified memory module anymore.
This part here seems to be the correct one: http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODULE=CT3264X335, but it has four chips, while the original memory has 8. I remember reading a discussion on the forum where it was also said that the module with four chips won't work. Is that still the right approach?
Crucial does say this:
"The number of black components on a 200-pin SODIMM can vary, but it always has 100 pins on the front and 100 pins on the back, for a total of 200. 200-pin SODIMMs are approximately 2.625 inches long and 1.25 inches high, though the heights can vary. Like 144-pin SODIMMs, 200-pin SODIMMs have one small notch within the row of pins; however, the notch on the 200-pin SODIMMs is closer to the left side of the module."
I am running out of ideas so all help I can get is appreciated.
On a separate note, Netgear has basically told me that the box is out of warranty and they can't do much, but are still continuing to be in touch. That's awfully nice of them. - I replaced the original memory module with another 256MB DDR PC2700 module and tried running the memory test. It seems I can not run the test at all - even after holding the power switch for over 25 seconds, the LEDs did not flash more than 4 times. At about 45 seconds, the LEDs flashed and now I have solid LEDs indicating drives bays 2 and 4 are populated (which actually is not true) and the power LED is flashing rapidly.
Is my unit busted for good? I would like some pointers/help from ReadyNAS gods on this forum. It the unit is bad, I am ready to toss it and move on, but would like to salvage it if someone can help. Netgear can't help.
Strangely, the one that came with the unit is actually a PC3200, when the spec says PC2700. - Of course we don't know that the original memory was at fault. Since the new memory doesn't seem to work at all, basically we still don't know. You might as well put the original memory back.
Did the drives check out? Do you have a spare drive you could use to test the NAS? - I don't have anything to test the drives with. But, I did remove them had them tested by a laptop repair shop. The guy said, they checked out fine and he said he put them back into basically what you get from the factory condition.
- Meaning that he unformatted them, and destroyed all the data on them? Hopefully he asked first.
If so, try putting one drive back into the NAS and start it up.
Also, did he give you a printout of the SMART stats? People have different ideas on what "fine'" means for disk drives - they often degrade without completely failing. - I didn't have much data so it was OK to get reformatted :-) He did not give me SMART stats.
I have tried one drive, both drives, various combinations and various slots. The end result is always corrupt root.
I have also figured out that my unit has the original bootloader. I was able to put it into the TFTP mode, by looking at the lights guide. The LEDs on top of disks 1 & 4 are solid green while the blue power LED flashes. The unit is certainly expecting data from a TFTP server. Another thing - when I do a factory reset with no drives inserted in the device, obviously, it does not complete booting completely, but I am able to shut it down using the power button.
This behavior leads me to believe that while the drives may be checking out as far the repair shop goes, they may be degraded enough for the NAS to do anything with. I also think that my unit is basically fine - it's just that the bootloader and the software are fairly old and I shouldn't bother playing with it till I change the drive.
I was just thinking of ordering a RE3 WD1002FBYS and testing it out. If that still doesn't work, I can always put it in an enclosure and use as a backup disk.
Thoughts?
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