So this morning, I couldn't access my ReadyNAS 102 from my Windows 10 PC - the power ON LED was flashing regularly, the activity light was on solid but the Disk 1, DIsk 2 and Backup LEDs were off. This happens sometimes, and I just have to power it down the non-preferred way (power off at wall), as it has locked itself up and the power button is already flashing.
So, I turned the NAS back on at the power socket and i had the same problem. I then tried the two things that I usually do:
1. I entered the drive path (\\sponge\...) in File Manager and it usually finds the NAS and then "mounts" it (sorry, not really the right term, but it basically appears back in file manager the way I would expect it). This works 99% of the time.
2. If it doesn't, I confirm the IP address of the NAS with my broadband router, and try to access the NAS by entering the IP address in my web browser. This usually brings up the NAS web interface, but this time a connection problem was reported (see attached screenshot 1).
So, I read the manual and decided to undertake a reset (not a factory reset) but an OS reset using the boot menu. I followed the procedure, I selected the disk 2 LED ON option and confirmed with the reset button. The power on LED flashed much faster for 3-5 seconds and then it just started flashing as before. I still cannot see the NAS.
So, I downloaded RAIDar from the Netgear website to see if it could at least find the NAS, and it has, but it states that the drives are formatted in a previous version and that they need to be formatted, see screenshot 2. I am definitely not doing that as I need the data. I pulled the drives and re-scanned and it updated to state that there were no drives, so I know RAIDar is working correctly. I have no backup as I thought having a mirrored RAID would mean i wouldn't have such a problem (not the case I know now), so my questions are these:
1. Does anyone have any experience that might help me understand why this message is coming up in RAIDar?
2. Is there anything else I can try with my current ReadyNAS 102 and drive combination? Given the above is it even worth trying the "Volume Read" boot menu option?
3. If I buy an identical RN102 from a reseller for a cheap price (I have found one), will I be able to migrate the drives or will i face the same problem?
4. As a last resort, even if the RN102 can't read the drives, if I remove one of them and connect it directly to my PC via a USB3.1 to SATA cable, should I be able to read it outside of the NAS?
3. If I buy an identical RN102 from a reseller for a cheap price (I have found one), will I be able to migrate the drives or will i face the same problem?
4. As a last resort, even if the RN102 can't read the drives, if I remove one of them and connect it directly to my PC via a USB3.1 to SATA cable, should I be able to read it outside of the NAS?
Possibly - it depends on what went wrong.
Options are to
boot the PC using Linux (perhaps a live boot USB drive). Then install btrfs and mdadm, and manually mount the volume
Stick with Windows, but look for the beta packages for mdadm and btrfs, and see if they work.
Purchase ReclaiMe or a similar RAID recovery package that supports both RAID and BTRFS, and see if that can offload the data.
2. Is there anything else I can try with my current ReadyNAS 102 and drive combination? Given the above is it even worth trying the "Volume Read" boot menu option?
It's possible that disk 1 has failed. So you could try powering down the NAS, removing that drive and then power up the NAS. It would be a good idea to use the Read-only menu option.
FWIW, your firmware is very old, so when you get the NAS running again, I suggest updating it to 6.10.9. Note you need do this in a couple of steps - first to 6.2.5, then to 6.5.2, and then to 6.10.9.
