My ReadyNAS Ultra 4 has been running OS 6 happily for a long time now. Recently I restarted it using Frontview. It powered down as usual, but after that it didn't boot anymore. When I turn it on, the light in the backup-button and the act-light turn on while the power button is blinking. After a while, the screen and the power-button turn on and act-light goes off. Then the light for disk 4 turns on. The screen only shows a blinking cursor. The NAS is not found by RAIDar.
I tried removing the disks and putting in 1 spare disk but that doesn't change anything. When I try to load the boot menu according to this page, it doesn't do anything.
When I try to do a USB recovery (I'm assuming I need to use the one for OS6 here), the screen shortly shows ReadyNAS USB Recovery and then Debug: Telnet with it's IP address. However, after some initial usage of the USB stick during booting, after that the USB stick is no longer used and the NAS doesn't seem to be doing anything. RAIDar is reporting that it's in Tech Support Mode with Model=None and Serial = N0NE000200000, Debug code: TELNET Mode.
Any idea how I can get my Ultra 4 back to working?
What do the LED display and RAIDar show, both with and without drives installed?
Jumping straight to USB recovery is not your best plan. It can cause additional issues if that wasn't the real problem. And when you do, you can't do a standard OS6 one. You have to use the OS4 method but with a modified OS6 image. Either that or do a full OS4 one with a scratch drive and then re-convert to OS6.
It doesn't matter if I have my usual drives installed, a single spare drive or no drives at all. In all cases the backup-button-light, the powerbutton and HDD4-light are on. In none of the cases, the NAS is recognised by RAIDar.
That does not sound like a problem USB recovery will help with. When boot from flash fails, there is usually more on the display. It doesn't particularly sound like a power supply issue, either. Could be a RAM problem.
I had put in a 2GB RAM module from Corsair a long time ago. Luckily I saved the module that orignally came with the NAS. However, when I use the original module, I get the same result as with the Corsair module.
I would not recommend you purchase a replacement supply and try that -- very low probability of success. However, you can create an adapter cable for a standard ATX supply mounted externally and see if that works -- it's a lot cheaper to just see if that will work or to use it to recover any files not already backed up. But since you were already running OS6, you can just put the drives in a newer NAS designed for OS6 and all should be well, assuming whatever took out the NAS didn't damage the volume.
What I have found best is use a 20/24 pin ATX extender cable and re-wire the two extra 12V in the 4-pin section of the 24-pin side that mates with the supply to pins 12 and 18 (-5V and -12V in ATX) on the NAS side.
For some reason, I couldn't log in on the Netgear community for a while after my holiday, so it took a bit longer than expected...
I tried an ATX powersupply with the two pins changed. When I tried booting, the LED on the powerbutton lights up for a short while and the fan starts spinning a bit. Then everything goes off again.
This wasn't really what I expected and I was afraid I broke something, so I connected the original powersupply again and the device booted normally again. I only tried with 1 spare harddisk and it went to the setupscreen to set up the NAS. Since nothing really changed since it broke down, I don't trust it enough to use it like this.
Could be a marginal power supply or oddball intermittent issue. I would definitely back up your nas if you haven't already. Then, I would use it like normal and see if it does it again to get an idea of what the root cause may be.
