ReadyNAS NV+

We are having an issue with our ReadyNAS. It has "Booting...Checking FS" for over 12 hours with no indication of percentage of completion. All 4 drive lights are on, which I can only assume means the drives check out OK. I have read that these lights aren't necessarily accurate and that other software can be used to test each drive individually using an external drive enclosure.

Another issue is that we have what was supposed to be an external backup drive directly connected to the ReadyNAS system and we can't access that drive via its IP address or by simply hooking it up to another PC or Mac.

Is there ANYTHING that can be done with the external backup drive to access the files? I read on another forum that it uses a Linux file structure (which we don't have a machine running Linux). I wasn't the one that set this so-called "backup system"...so not sure why it has to have the ReadyNAS active and accessible to get to it.

Thanks for any help you can offer...and yes, we have contacted support and they aren't exactly "supportive".