So my RN Pro Pioneer has hung a couple times over the last few months. It has one drive that I've been warned is likely to fail. And it's behind in firmware about two releases. I previously had had similar stability problems with my on RN Pro Pioneer and swapping in a new power supply took care of that. So with this one I thought it might be a good place to start as I don't want it to outright fail during a disk replacement.
Swapped in a new PS and did a nice cleaning inside the case at the same time. Now it won't boot, actually won't power on at all. Unlike other threads here where people reported getting at least network port activity, this one is silent and zero lights anywhere. So without taking it entirely apart again, I just connected the old PS cables to the motherboard and powered it that way. Same thing, completely dead. Bench tested both PS to see if they power on when pin 4&5 on the 24 pin connector are jumped and they both power up. But not when connected to the system and the front power button is pushed.
I assume dead motherboard, but that's pretty coincidental and wondering if there are other things I should look at.
Oh, also removed and reseated the memory a couple times. And removed/reseated the ribbon cables that tie the front panel to the motherboard.
Any chance the power cord or outlet is the problem?
My next guess would have been that you'd forgotten to leave the switch on the supply itself (that's hidden when the NAS is assembled) in the ON position, but trying the other supply probably excludes that unless you did so on it as well. Do you see even a flash of activity when you turn on the rear switch of the unit?
I'm not aware of anything that's easily shorted out when you re-install the motherboard (assuming here you removed it for the cleaning), but that or a loose connection seems most likely.
Always best not to ignore the obvious I agree. And in this case I've made sure to check the basics. Yes the power switch on the PS itself is definitely on and also the one on the bench that I tried with also. And, yes, the power cord and outlet are working fine - as I mentioned both PS do power on if I jumper pin 4/5 on the 24 pin connector.
I'll have to go all over things again to see if I may have knocked something else loose, but I've been over it so many times now. Could it just have chosen that moment to die? How can I go about checking?
Actually I did not remove the motherboard for cleaning, I just dusted out the chassis with a soft paint brush and compressed air in a can.
The only think I can think is could the motherboard crack when I reseated the memory? I mean it takes a pretty strong steady push to get them in and get the retaining clips to pop up.
I can't get over that it's just entirely dead. But that isn't the worst of it. I put the disks into my other working ReadyNAS and it seemed to come up fine. That NAS is the newest firmware. It worked seemingly fine for a day (remember it still has a disk with rising error counts), so I replaced that one disk and it started resyncing data. Somewhere around 73% it hung and the system seems in bad shape, mostly won't boot and just stays on the ReadyNAS screen, but occasionally will come up then hang again in a few minutes. I'll do some research here but it's possible I'll have to start another thread after I've tried whatever I can find in these pages.
There are a couple of heat sinks on parts that are easily knocked off. Make sure you didn't do that and one lodged where it's shorting something out. The board is pretty hefty and well supported, I doubt you did any damage when you put in memory. Besides, while that could keep it from booting, it wouldn't normally keep it from powering up.
The other thing would be the cable for the button, which is why I asked if you see anything when you turn it on via the rear switch. Normally, you will; and most will actually boot at that point. You could try jumpering pins 4&5 of the supply while it's connected to the NAS and see what happens.
All it takes for the front display to say "ReadyNAS" is 5V power, so that's not really a sign of anything specific. The problem you're having with the volume in the other NAS sounds like just a volume issue, possibly due to the bad drive or another one, keeping in mind that a re-sync puts a higher load on the drives than normal operation and a drive about to fail is more likely to do so then.
I know exactly the heatsink you're referring to and I was very careful not to knock it off when I routed the cabling past it from the back to the side. It's intact.
The cabling for the button seems fine and I really didn't muck with it other than to remove and replace it, but I'll have a closer look, perhaps do a continuity test on the conductors.
When I power it on from the switch at the back there is zero indication of anything happening. No network light, no brief lights or sounds or fan slightly moving at all. Normally they start up within a couple seconds, no need to touch the front power switch.
The old power supply was working fine, I just changed it because it's old and I didn't want it to fail when I replaced a bad disk during the subsequent resync.
As you know I started another thread, fearing the worst, about potential replacements. I've been asked to give a run down on the bigger picture here and it makes sense to clarify what has and hasn't been done since there is another RN in the mix here. Instead of keeping two threads going, I'll share everything in that other thread. Sorry for the potential confusion. And thank you both so much for your attention on this, you've both been selfless in your assistance before and I'm grateful.
Oh, one other thing I meant to mention and the reason I bring up the old PS that was still working. I can leave that PS on the bench and plug it into the RN motherboard 24pin and 4pin and I get the same zero response result, leaving me to believe this is not a faulty new PS issue.
