URGENT. File shares disappeared.

"  Yes I know no 'backup' is 100% relied upon, but this is a bit mad...  "

But this is no backup, if this is your only copy of the data - this is your data, not your backup. Always keep more than one copy of your data, preferably in different physical location (if possible). What if someone stole the NAS? What if there's a fire? Thunder strike frying the device/disks? Someone knocks over a bookshelf that crushes the NAS? 

Anyways, from the sounds of it your data is not lost and there's just some config that got corrupted on the NAS - did you reach out to Netgear support? It may not be free if your NAS is >90 days old but that's the price you pay for not having a backup of crucial data. 

---

sluicegates wrote:

no indication of any root volume issues - no error messages, no warnings, nothing in the logs etc.  where would a root volume error be reported?

 

---

The system should report a full root volume in the web ui.

You can also look at volume.log in the log zip file.  At the end you'll see a section that begins

=== df -h ===
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev 10M 4.0K 10M 1% /dev
/dev/md0 4.0G 955M 2.7G 26% /
tmpfs 1.9G 8.0K 1.9G 1% /dev/shm
tmpfs 1.9G 11M 1.9G 1% /run
tmpfs 961M 31M 931M 4% /run/lock
tmpfs 1.9G 0 1.9G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup

/dev/md0 is the root volume.

There's also a === df -i === section that gives inode usage for ext volumes.  Check that also, since the arm-based OS-6 ReadyNAS like the RN214 use the ext file system for the root volume.  (x86 OS-6 ReadyNAS use btrfs for the root volume).

Normally the root volume is around 25% full (or less).

---

sluicegates wrote:

 

either way, none of this explains why all shares invisible in the Web UI - so I can't change settings/priviledges etc, move data or run backup jobs from the Web Interface - as shares "no longer exist". 

 

---

It does sound like some configuration files got garbled on the NAS.  Often that is a side-effect of a full root volume, but I have seen some other posts where that doesn't seem to be the cause.  Paid netgear support can diagnose/repair it remotely.

On the mapped drives - if you use XRAID, then you can map the full data volume to a drive letter using CMD on the PC:

net use * /delete

net use t: \\nas-ip-address\data /user:admin nas-admin-password

will map the data volume to drive letter T: (when you use the real IP address and NAS admin password of course).  The first command will dismount any other mapped drives.  You do need to be careful on the typing (both slash direction and spaces).

Once you've done that, you can see all the share folders in the root of T (along with home, and some hidden folders like .apps).  Often when a share goes missing, the folder (and contents) are still intact.  If that's the case, there are some simple ways to recover the share configuration.  For instance, if the share was called "share" you could

1. rename the share folder in t:  to "tempshare"
2. create a new share called "share" in the web ui.
3. rename the share folder in t:  to "xshare"
4. rename "tempshare" to "share"

Getting rid of the empty xshare folder would require use of ssh - shares look like folders, but they actually are btrfs subvolumes.  You won't be able to delete them from Windows (though renaming them works).