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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!
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- Ah! OK. I will insert the drive and retry this process and send an update.
Stephen and mgdm, I really really want to thank you guys for your help. - OK - here's an update: The system boots only after I do a factory reset. However, once I click on setup, volume creation fails and the status goes to corrupt root. The system cannot boot in the tech support mode or the factory boot mode, whatever you want to call it. Although, funnily enough, it shows disks as being present in the first and second bays before going corrupt root. In any case, I am unable to access the system using Firefox or Putty. However, Ping works.
Just for the heck of it, I did another factory reset and found something interesting - I clicked on locate after the system booted and all disk lights flashed. I clicked on the dialog box and the system vanished from Raidar only to reappear a bit later. Now, the light on top of the 4th disk bay is lit, activity light is flashing fast and power LED is flashing slow. Per the light pattern guide, this shows volume expansion, but I am doing no such thing.
The volume creation process started automatically after this with the same result :-( - Did you try a reset with only one drive installed?
- Yes I did. I get to the screen where Raidar shows setup and format buttons highlighted.
- So set it up with the one drive. Then try adding the others in turn (waiting for each to sync) and see where you get into trouble.
- But, the setup itself does not work with a single drive - it ends in corrupt root during volume creation. This is a brand new drive. Should I still add more drives?
- How big is the new drive? Also what firmware is running on the NV?
When it first came out, the NV worked with drives less than 2 TB (which was all that existed back then). 2TB drives support was added in 4.1.7 firmware, but won't work with firmware older than that. Drives > 2 TB can't be used, as the firmware doesn't support GPT formatting.
If the new drive is less than 2 TB, then perhaps try another one - since sometimes they are defective out of the box. You could also try running the manufacturer diags on the one that failed.
Though it could be other components that are failing - a bad SATA backplane or system board for example. - I'd give it a go. After all the next step is the skip :)
StephenB wrote: How big is the new drive? Also what firmware is running on the NV?
When it first came out, the NV worked with drives less than 2 TB (which was all that existed back then). 2TB drives support was added in 4.1.7 firmware, but won't work with firmware older than that. Drives > 2 TB can't be used, as the firmware doesn't support GPT formatting.
If the new drive is less than 2 TB, then perhaps try another one - since sometimes they are defective out of the box. You could also try running the manufacturer diags on the one that failed.
Though it could be other components that are failing - a bad SATA backplane or system board for example.
The new drive is 1TB and the firmware is the original one, v2.x. I will try manufacture diagnostics. I am actually suspecting either the SATA backplane or the processor bootup flash - some sectors might have corrupted causing this issue.tony359 wrote: I'd give it a go. After all the next step is the skip :)
I suppose so. A huge paperweight :shock:
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