When you are using NAS, you are expecting to get your data back from the unit.
Not the case with this one. Admin page or/and network share is not reachable. It is better to save data on SD card than on this wonderful piece of equipments, that, by the way is not that cheap.
Very disapointed, never will go with such a poiece of garbage again
SD cards can fail, just as a NAS can. I have lost data on them far more than on a NAS. If you have so little data that an SD card is big enough for you and have no need for it to be on the network, then I do wonder why you would go to the expense of a NAS, even a 10+ year old model that has been replaced more than once in the product line (assuming you have selected the right model from the list).
A NAS is also a complex device -- essentially a special-purpose Linux computer. As such, it requires more "care and feeding" than a simple USB drive or flash device. It will give you warnings about many impending problems, but you do need to pay attention to them. You can't "set it and forget it".
In the more than 10 years I have owned various Netgear (nee Infrant) NAS, I have lost the volume only once. I was told here in the forum that it was a recoverable loss, but I had a backup and had already done a factory default and started the restoration process before that information got to me.
For many, a simple USB device and/or cloud storage meets their needs, and I suppose you are in that category. With USB drives getting bigger every few months, they can meet the needs of many more today that when home NAS (with max drive size of 2TB) were introduced. For those of us with multiple computers that need access to a large amount of data with a fast backup recovery time, a NAS is the right vehicle.
I am assuming here that you posted this because you "lost data" on a ReadyNAS. I don't keep track of who asks questions here, so I don't know if you tried to get advice from the forum or you tried to get help from Netgear in recovering your data. However, you have learned a valuable lesson all IT professionals will tell you and I first learned when using 5.25" floppy disks: If you only have one copy of something, you must not think it's important. You may have also incorrectly believed RAID is a backup mechanization. RAID is mostly about uninterrupted access and concatenation of drive space, not backup.
With so little information, I wonder whether you have powered it on?
What are the symptoms you are seeing, other than it's inaccessible?
I have a very old Sparc based ReadyNAS like the one you list, although not used routinely anymore, and I never had a problem with it for the past 10 years, other than it's a bit slow by todays standards!
It is powering, booting. While it is booting it is accessible through RAIDar.
After some time, indicator show the IP address, as if booting is finished. After that you cannot connect to the unit, as if there is not ethernet connection at all. At the same time the router reports that the unit requested and got IP addres from DHCP list and active (ping works).
But at the same time RAIDar shows that no NAS is accessible in the network. Blue power light slowly turing on/off, "Act" indicator blinking.
Every next startup is following the same steps.
Waited 2 days, without restarting, the same - no connection, slowly glowing power light, 'Act" is blinking, correct IP addres on the display. What is it doing - no idea.
From a browser, can you use the {NAS IP address}/admin shown on the front panel - in fact, is that a proper IP address, maybe DHCP is a problem or something.
If you pull the Ethernet cable out, I think it wakes up the display, and then 'reconnects' to the network when you plug the cable back in. I can try it out, but I only have a Duo (no display).
HTTP request for {NAS_IP}/admin (or /shares) report the same: "ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT"
I can see that DHCP provides the IP and the same IP is displayed on the display of ReadyNAS. I revoking the IP, new IP is provided during next boot. PC just fine - I'm working all the day remotely, so connection is stable withing local network and outside of it.
I see that the unit is not responsive, so willl try the Factory Reset later, does not matter, data is already unreachable.
I would not do that unless you have a full backup.
if you do, then fine. Otherwise there are more things to try.
How long have you been using it since a clean install?
In Windows explorer, you could try to navigate to \\{nas_ip}\share - important to use the IP address.
After this, you could try a firmware reinstall, which doesn't need a full loss of data. What is your disk configuration? Do you have a old hard disk, you could pull out you drives and use the old one for testing.
After that I put back all the drives in order. I have 4 in RAID5 config.Restarted.
After that I got the message on display ""Booting... Found bad disk"
RAIDar reports Disk 1 has about 18000 SATA errors. Also showing "Disk C is dead". I put another drive instead of Drive1. Rebooted. Again displaying that disk C is dead. No option to rebuild the RAID nor in RAIDar, nor in ReadyNAS Frontview app.
Now, the question, why it started to report this only after I reinstalled firmware.
I suggest testing the disks in a Windows PC with vendor tools (Lifeguard for WD, Seatools for Seagate). Run the full non-destructive test, not just the short one.
But it appears to me you have one failed drive and one new one. You can't rebuild a RAID 5 (well, technically RAID4 on that unit) with just 2 of the 4 original drives.
While failure of one drive will not normally create a problem that makes a re-build impossible, it can create problems if file system errors occur while the drive is in the process of failing.
Usualy RAID5 can be created starting with 3 drives.
And fault tolerance: One drive failure
Looks like not in my case. I had one drive failure before and ReadyNAS rebuilt the array, after I insert new disk. Maybe because this is drive#1, it does not work
