ReadyNAS NV+ v3 PSU Failure

Hello StephenB,

Sorry for the delayed reply, it has taken several days to get my system up and running again (all OK now), as I'll now explain.

I decided to go for the ultra conservative approach with regards to sorting my system out, in that I used the 'I cannot afford to loose any of my data at any cost' approach.

This entailed several steps in the data backup, new NAS drive setup, and disk migration.

I followed the steps you outlined in most cases, with a few additions.

The steps are below:

Preparation:

- Purcahse 2 new scratch disks (2TB Segate IronWolf)

- Purchase a Dual SATA HDD Docking Station (with one button cloning feature)

Steps:

1. I downloaded RAIDar Version 4.3.8 for Windows, and installed it on a Windows 7 Pro 64-bit machine.

2. I then downloaded and saved the lastest firmware (RAIDiator) 4.1.16.

3. I then loaded a scratch disk (2TB to match the capacity of the original disks) into the new NAS drive, in the Disk 1 slot / position.

4. I then powered up the new NAS drive and let the NAS drive format the disk.This took about 30 minutes to complete. The firmware was showing up as 4.1.10.

5. I then updated the firmware to version 4.1.16.

6. I then rebooted the NAS drive and it came up (on RAIDar) showing firmware version 4.1.16. All good.

7. While the new NAS drive was formatting the scratch disk I removed one of the exiting NAS drive disks (I chose Disk 2) and made a clone of it using the remaining (2nd) scratch disk and using the Dual STA HDD Docking Station 'one button clone' feature. By the way this took about 5 1/2 hours to complete !

8. I then shutdown the new NAS drive, and removed the newly formated scratch disk, and placed it aside for safe keeping. 

9. After the cloning was completed, I migrated the original Disk 1, and the cloned Disk 2, to the new NAS drive, and powered-up the new NAS drive.

10. The new NAS drive powered up OK, and ran several checks including FS (File System), and re-syncing (Mirroring). To my surprise this process took almost 24 hours to complete !!

11. At the completion of all this the NAS drive is functioning perfectly, and it seems no data has been lost. The NAS Drive is showing 'RAID level X, Redundant', with all green indicators.

12. I checked the version of the new NAS drive on RAIDar and it is showing 4.1.10 ?!

A couple of questions;

- Any reason why the version showing up on RAIDar is showing 4.1.10 and not 4.1.16 ?

- Did I miss any steps in the process ?

- I plan to swap out the old Disk 1 for the formated scratch disk in the next week or two, so that I have two new disks in the new NAS drive. Is there any special process for doing this (or is it just a simple hot-swap, and let the NAS drive re-sync the disks) ?

Thanks again for your assistance and knowledge in how to recover from a NAS Drive unit failure.

By the way I have commenced a full back-up of the NAS drive to a portable HDD, now that the new unit is running, just to make sure :-)

Regards,

GR.