ReadyNAS NV+ RND4000 ERR:BAD FIRMWARE

It sounds like the flash may corrupted. See this thread: viewtopic.php?f=64&t=65503#p363972

Thanks for the replies and the help thus far to all of you.

Situation is now this, as suggested I got my hands on another Netgrear NV+ RND 4000 with 4 x 2Tb drives (from a very generous mate), we ran a full OS re-install on his and let it rebuild the volume, then I put his drives in my unit and did a full OS re-install on mine. It reset my unit fine and worked A1, then i put my drives back in my unit but on boot still got ERR:BAD FIRMWARE.

So does this mean one of my drives has bad firmware? my unit is a V3 his is not (at least it does not say V3 on the back of it). Should I out my drives in his unit and see what happens? Again remembering I am trying to recover the data...

Or should I try and swap one drive at a time in my unit with one of his good drives and let it rebuild the raid (I am running RAIDX)? Bearing in mind they are different model and make drives but still 2 Tb each. I can not find out which drive is faulty in mine assuming that is the problem as I can not log onto it.

Your further assistance is ever so invaluable.

Cheers guys!

I am a bit confused on whether you put your drives in his unit??? That was the obvious thing to do for data recovery. So try that next.

The hardware version of the two units is not the issue.

jeffo-8 wrote:
Or should I try and swap one drive at a time in my unit with one of his good drives and let it rebuild the raid (I am running RAIDX)? Bearing in mind they are different model and make drives but still 2 Tb each. I can not find out which drive is faulty in mine assuming that is the problem as I can not log onto it.!

That puts both of your data at risk (losing redundancy for him). I definitely wouldn't do that.

You can try booting up yours with one disk removed (starting with disk 1, then disk 2, etc).

Hi All,

Again thank you for all your help.

Good news, I did as suggested and booted my unit with my drives in it, but with one removed. I started with drive 4 out, it booted fine but reported the volume as 0GB available of 0GB, so of no use to me (giving me heart palpitations in the process). So I reinserted drive 4 and removed drive 3. This time after a long delay it booted fine reading 4.0 of 5.4GB available and my data was again readable!! YEH!!!

So it appears obvious that the ERR:BAD FIRMWARE was coming from one of the drives, namely drive 3. I have since been able to back up the important data and although the unit appears to be running slower than usual it has been stable now for 3 days with drive 3 removed.

So my immediate problems are solved and all is happy again in my household. I hope this helps someone else out there.

I suggest steps to follow if you ger ERR:BAD FIRMWARE are;

1: reset firmware by hold down the reset button on the back of the unit for 5 secs (no longer or it goes to OS re-install jeopardizing your data)
2: if that does not work, boot the unit with one drive removed starting at one end and working to the other 1 to 4 or 4 to 1.
3: if you still have issues, get 4 other drives of same capacity each and test the unit with those to confirm the source of the problem.


Hope it helps and again thank you to all for the guidance and knowledge.

It would be a good time to make a backup - you have no redundancy at the moment.

Also, I would suggest running vendor diagnostics on drive 3.