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Remove inactive volumes to use the disk. Disk #1,2 - RN104
Setup up as 2 2-Disk Volumes - RAID1 - Firmware:6.10.2
I had just bought new drives Western Digital 6TB Red Drives (WD60EFAX), installed them and went through the one week plus initial sync. I then destroyed that original 4 disk volume and setup two volumes of two disks each. I then proceed to move files to the first volume (P-2023-Data). I was just about finished the process of moving these files when I lost connection to the RN104 (PQ-Showcase). I checked the NAS and there was a strange error message (something about inline..) on the LED display on the front of the NAS. I couldn't find anything online about the message other than if I couldn't perform a soft shutdown, I need to unplug it, so I did. It restarted fine, so I continued moving files. Same thing happened again, I lost connection, this time the message read "lookup_inline_extent_backref+4c". I had to unplug again. This time when I logged in the admin page, I received the "Remove inactive volumes to use the disk. Disk #1,2. message.
I have read so many posts about this issue that I am getting dizzy but virtually all say talk to Netgear support. I would be happy to pay them but Netgear no longer provides support even for my RN214 that I just purchased new in February. So you are my only hope (Obi-Wan)!
Some say swap out the disks, one referred to a SSH command "mount -o recovery /dev/md127 /data" md127 was his volume name - Netgear warns if you enable root SSH you may be denied support (sounds like that is a moot point). I have used SSH with my Raspberry Pis and I am old enough to have "enjoyed" working in the DOS world where everything was so much simpler.
I am at a loss what approach has the highest chance of success and is the least likely to prevent success of other methods.
I would be happy to share the system logs.
13 Replies
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Enola wrote:
I had just bought new drives Western Digital 6TB Red Drives (WD60EFAX)
Starting here, this is unfortunately not a good disk choice for ReadyNAS. WD Reds use a technology called SMR (shingled magnetic recording), which often doesn't perform well with the file system that ReadyNAS uses. Write speeds in particular can be extremely slow, which can result in a lot of issues.
I suggest exchanging or returning them. The WD Red Plus drives are fine (the current model is WD60EFZX), as are the Seagate Ironwolf drives.
Since you are just setting up the NAS, I am assuming that you have all the files available elsewhere. Is that the case, or do you have files that you need to offload?
I was hoping you would be my Obi-wan.
I had checked the Netgear compatibility list. I guess this will teach me to always buy a level up from the recommendation. The one week window for return has closed but expensive lesson learned!
Unfortunately, I moved the files rather than copying them. So, I do need to offload them, if at all possible.
Enola wrote:
So, I do need to offload them, if at all possible.
First I suggest downloading the full log zip file.
Try powering down the NAS and removing disk 2. Then reboot the NAS in read-only mode useing the boot menu. That should result in P-2023-Data being mounted. If that doesn't happen for some reason, power down again, reinsert disk 2, and remove disk 1 (leaving slot empty). Then reboot again.
When the volume mounts, it will be flagged as "degraded". That is normal. Offload the data before doing anything else.
After the data is offloaded, you can try to sync the volume again.
In general, RAID isn't enough to keep your data safe, so it would be good to put a backup strategy in place.
Enola wrote:
The one week window for return has closed but expensive lesson learned!
Can you connect the disks to a PC (either SATA or with a USB adapter/dock). If you can, you could try testing them with WD's dashboard utility. If the disks fail the test, you could still do a warranty return. (Of course do this with the NAS powered down).
Enola wrote:
Setup up as 2 2-Disk Volumes - RAID1 - Firmware:6.10.2
Beyond me on how it's possible to operate a more than four years (!) old ReadyNAS OS 6 build, and not update once installed to something more current subsequently - before diving into an adventure of replacing all HDDs, starting from scratch, with a less common storage layout....
Enola wrote:
... Netgear warns if you enable root SSH you may be denied support (sounds like that is a moot point). I have used SSH with my Raspberry Pis and I am old enough to have "enjoyed" working in the DOS world where everything was so much simpler.
For the standard NAS operations, ssh and root access is simply not required. This is why Netgear excluded the support for abusing the NAS and the support provided due to incorrect handling.
Linux, end even less an embedded OS, barely compare to the simplicity of Mess-DOS.
Sounds like I screwed up on many levels, is there a way back to retrieve the data I have moved.
Still have the old HDD set at hand, before doing the replacement?
schumaku wrote:
with a less common storage layout....Two RAID-1 volumes is a bit unusual, and it does have less capacity than XRAID/RAID-5. But it does have one advantage - recovery is much simpler than RAID-5, since the disks are mirrored.
Assuming that the issue is simply that the two disks are out of sync, the system should mount the volume with one disk removed, without needing to go in with ssh and use --really-force with mdadm. Of course there could also be btrfs file system corruption, which would be more difficult to deal with.
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