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I have a ReadyNAS Pro RNDP6000 that was working just fine. I was having issues getting to iSCSI and so I rebooted it through the web intefrace. Since going down, it has never been able to restart. When I turn it on, I get the display saying "ReadyNAS", but it never gets passed that. I tried entering the bood menu, but it also hangs in exactly the same place. I did find, however, that if I remove all 6 disks, I am then able to boot up into the Boot Menu. At this point I have only run a memory check which seems fine.
Reading other articles, the closest I found was saying its likely an issue with the 12V line on the power supply. I have tried hooking it up to an external powersupply, but this also has exactly the same problem, so I'd be grateful for any other suggestions for things that I could try.
Re: ReadyNAS Pro RNDP6000 hangs on "ReadyNAS" prompt.
The ability to boot with the drives removed went a long way toward saying it was not the power supply or any other hardware issue. While the NAS will say "ReadyNAS" with just 5V good from the supply, there are lots of other things that can keep it from booting. But yours seems to be a software issue. You could just try a USB recovery, or you can put a spare drive in the unit and see if it creates a useable volume. If it does, then the flash memory is also fine.
Unfortunatly, a booting OS4.2.x system shows little on the monitor and does not end with a prompt where you can log into the console. You can install the VGA cable to see if it's a BIOS problem, but I don't think it is.
If booting with a spare drive creates a useable system, you could try booting with each combination of just 5 drives in case one is pulling down everything. Unfotuntely, the Pro6 does not have a read-only boot mode, which is best to use in this situation until you find the right combination of drives that will work.
What firmware is running on your Pro 6? Have you tried doing USB Boot recovery?
If you have isolated the issue on the Power Supply, I suggest booting the NAS on Tech Support mode while the disks are out and reinsert them after. Contacting Support for assistance would be the option if USB Boot won't resolve the issue.
Also, it's best if you can check on your disks if there are any errors.
If you are running OS 6 you may want to check this guide on doing USB Boot recovery
I am not sure if there is a way for me to see the firmware revision anywhere from the boot menu on my broken device. If my notes are up to date, then it is running RAIDiator 4.2.28
I think the fact that I have the same issue with both power supplies rules that out as the issue.
I am also considering recovering the data first directly from the disks which looks like it may be possible with something like R-Studio or Reclaime. I get nervous messing with the Readynas software in case it decides to reinitialise the disks or something. I would love to hear of anyone managing to recover XRaid data which includes cifs/afs and iSCSI partitions.
I've ordered a VGA Header now as well which seems like a useful thing to have. These are sure hard to find on amazon, but I managed to get this link from the artical titles "VGA Header for my Pro 6 RNDP6000". Now just wonderind it a USB keyboard will work.
Thanks @StephenB - Seatools reports all drives pass.
Good to know. If the array is still in sync, then RAID recovery ought to work with no data loss. Getting the data out of the iSCSI LUNS could be tricky though. ReclaiMe supports the BTRFS file system - which is used by the currently shipping NAS. That's why it comes up here fairly frequently. R-Studio doesn't support that file system, but is less expensive than ReclaiMe. In addition to the software, you'd also need a way to connect all 6 disks to a PC, and storage to offload the data.
Note you can do the USB recovery without disks installed, and then try to do a factory install on a spare disk to confirm that it works.
Purchase a used Pro-6 and then migrate your disks. Keep in mind that the Netgear stopped selling the Pro-6 in 2013, so anything you purchase will be at least 6 years old, and likely older.
You could also purchase a new ReadyNAS system (for instance an RN526) - that can mount the data volume temporarily (read-only) so you could try to off-load the data. There is some more information on that here: https://kb.netgear.com/29957/ReadyNAS-Migrating-disks-from-RAIDiator-4-2-to-ReadyNAS-OS-6-x86. I'm not sure if that mode will let you access the iSCSI LUNs or not - hopefully @Marc_V or @JohnCM_S will be able to answer that for you. As noted in the article, Netgear Support can also help (for a cost) if that is needed.
Re: ReadyNAS Pro RNDP6000 hangs on "ReadyNAS" prompt.
The ability to boot with the drives removed went a long way toward saying it was not the power supply or any other hardware issue. While the NAS will say "ReadyNAS" with just 5V good from the supply, there are lots of other things that can keep it from booting. But yours seems to be a software issue. You could just try a USB recovery, or you can put a spare drive in the unit and see if it creates a useable volume. If it does, then the flash memory is also fine.
Unfortunatly, a booting OS4.2.x system shows little on the monitor and does not end with a prompt where you can log into the console. You can install the VGA cable to see if it's a BIOS problem, but I don't think it is.
If booting with a spare drive creates a useable system, you could try booting with each combination of just 5 drives in case one is pulling down everything. Unfotuntely, the Pro6 does not have a read-only boot mode, which is best to use in this situation until you find the right combination of drives that will work.
I assume at this point, that I can just put my original disks back in with minimal risk? Since it says 4.2.31 though, does that mean I was previously running this 4.2.31 and not the 4.2.28 that I stated above or is it possible it bumped me up to a newer revision, and if it did, does this increase the risk of just trying my original 6 disks again?
My gaming PC has 7 open SATA ports, so I can hook all the disks up if I need to. From what you said though, it sounds like there is no software available to help with a recovery. Did I interpret that correctly?
Since it says 4.2.31 though, does that mean I was previously running this 4.2.31 and not the 4.2.28 that I stated above or is it possible it bumped me up to a newer revision, and if it did, does this increase the risk of just trying my original 6 disks again?
Likely you were already runing 4.2.31. Though I wouldn't be concerned if you were running 4.2.28. The changes between 4.2.28 and 4.2.31 were just a couple of security patches. The NAS boot loader would upgrade the OS partition on the disks to 4.2.31, but there's very little risk of anything going wrong.
My gaming PC has 7 open SATA ports, so I can hook all the disks up if I need to. From what you said though, it sounds like there is no software available to help with a recovery. Did I interpret that correctly?
There is software recovery software out there. R-Studio for Windows should work, and would cost about $80 US for the version you need (which supports software RAID and the ext file system). You can download the software first, and see what it finds on your disks prior to purchase. But you do need to purchase before you can offload your data. https://www.r-studio.com/Data_Recovery_Download.shtml
ReclaiMe should also work, but is quite a bit more expensive ($200 US). You can also see what it finds before purchase. ReclaiMe would be needed for a new OS-6 ReadyNAS - they use the BTRFS file system (which R-Studio doesn't support).
Re: ReadyNAS Pro RNDP6000 hangs on "ReadyNAS" prompt.
I put the 6 disks back in at it booted up without a problem, with everything looking as I would expect.
Thanks for your help!!!
Now for some new hardware so I can abandon this device before its too late.
I was consideing FreeNAS because it runs on standard hardware and it would be very easy to take the disks out of a broken old system and just drop them in a new piece of modern hardware. Although that is a big benefit over my current system (in an end of life state), xraid gives a far superior experience when it comes to adding disks and growing the space. It would be nice if I could stay with xraid. Would anyone happen to know if the new family of Netgear readynas products has a better migration/recovery path when disks can be "moved forward". It sounds like Netgear may even have gone in the opposite direction and made it harder to migrate/recover with the move to BTRFS which sounds even less standard.
I put the 6 disks back in at it booted up without a problem, with everything looking as I would expect.
That is good news. I recommend putting a backup plan in place for your NAS - RAID alone isn't enough to keep your data safe (and you easily could have lost data given the symptoms you were seeing). For iSCSI, it's best to run the backup on the iSCSI client machines, and back up the individual files - not the full iSCSI LUN.
After you've done an initial backup, I recommend doing a RAID scrub from the admin web ui. I suspect there might be something going on with the disks or file system, and RAID scrub could uncover that (or fix it).
Would anyone happen to know if the new family of Netgear readynas products has a better migration/recovery path when disks can be "moved forward". It sounds like Netgear may even have gone in the opposite direction and made it harder to migrate/recover with the move to BTRFS which sounds even less standard.
Actually they have moved forward. In the past, disks couldn't be migrated between platform types (sparc, arm, and x86). OS-6 has both arm and x86 platforms, and you can migrate disks between them (though x86-> arm does have some caveats). And OS-6 does allow you to temporarily mount the legacy x86 volumes on the new x86 platforms so you can off-load data when you upgrade.
As far as BTRFS goes, it's not as unusual as you think. Synology is also using it now, though QNAP is sticking with ext.
When you do get a new NAS, I suggest re-purposing your Pro-6 as a backup NAS. I've done that with my own Pro-6. On the new one, I'd start with fewer, larger disks (for instance 10 TB), as that will be more cost-effective in the long run (horizontal expansion being cheaper per TB gained than vertical expansion).
Re: ReadyNAS Pro RNDP6000 hangs on "ReadyNAS" prompt.
One observation was that after having my ReadyNAS back up for a little while, I got an alert stating that Smart errors went from 0 to 6 on disk 1. I was thinking that may be a related symptom to what caused my issue.
@StephenB wrote: I recommend putting a backup plan in place for your NAS
Backups are always a good idea. I probably have most backed up, but my backups do tend to be manual rather than systematic, so I am sure that I would be loosing a little at least. I find these things great for backups. I run an rsync from the client quite often when I have shares mounted. At least with these things, I can plug them into any machine and get at the files directly without any complexities.
After you've done an initial backup, I recommend doing a RAID scrub from the admin web ui. I suspect there might be something going on with the disks or file system, and RAID scrub could uncover that (or fix it).
Thanks, I will look into that in a week or two. For now I have shut it down while I wait for my new box to arrive. Went for the RN526X00 that you mentioned above which looks like it will be quite an improvement.
When you do get a new NAS, I suggest re-purposing your Pro-6 as a backup NAS. I've done that with my own Pro-6. On the new one, I'd start with fewer, larger disks (for instance 10 TB), as that will be more cost-effective in the long run (horizontal expansion being cheaper per TB gained than vertical expansion).
I went with the 3 x 10Tb disks for now as you suggested. That looked like the most cost effective route. And now disks are so much bigger and cheaper I expect I will go with dual redundancy.
I don't think I like the ides of using the old RNDP6000 as a backup solution for the new RN526X since I do not feel that I trust it enough. If I ever need to count on it, I would be quite stressed at the thought of it dieing any minute and having to try and buy another one (second hand) which would be an antique by that time 🙂 I saw that the new one will have an eSATA as well as some USB ports. I'll probably look to those for a backup solution for the most critical files. I can probably live with the backup capacity being 30% since I could live without full backup history from other machines, which is more a nice to have.
I am still looking for a nice way to run some VM's and may well try repurposeing the old box as a FreeNAS box. It sounded like others have managed this. That would serve me two fold I believe. Firstly, I would be able to run VM's from it. Secondly, I could consider using it for backups as you suggested. I would be less worried in this case, because if the box died, I would be able to get the data very easily by plugging the disks into another PC, without a need for recovery software.
I saw some mentions of vmware documented for the RN526, but it sounded like it could not run the actual vm machines which is unfortunate.
@StephenB wrote: Actually they have moved forward. In the past, disks couldn't be migrated between platform types (sparc, arm, and x86). OS-6 has both arm and x86 platforms, and you can migrate disks between them (though x86-> arm does have some caveats). And OS-6 does allow you to temporarily mount the legacy x86 volumes on the new x86 platforms so you can off-load data when you upgrade.
As far as BTRFS goes, it's not as unusual as you think. Synology is also using it now, though QNAP is sticking with ext.
Now that I have read up on BTRFS, I can see that you are right. I thought it was a proprietary technology, but its not.
One observation was that after having my ReadyNAS back up for a little while, I got an alert stating that Smart errors went from 0 to 6 on disk 1. I was thinking that may be a related symptom to what caused my issue.
I agree. FWIW, the NAS normally boots from disk 1, so if it is struggling (but not dead) the boot process can fail.
If the issue is disk-related, then the platform itself is likely still solid. You could just replace the disk, or maybe try doing a RAID scrub (which will exersize all the disks).
I am still looking for a nice way to run some VM's and may well try repurposeing the old box as a FreeNAS box. It sounded like others have managed this. That would serve me two fold I believe. Firstly, I would be able to run VM's from it. Secondly, I could consider using it for backups as you suggested. I would be less worried in this case, because if the box died, I would be able to get the data very easily by plugging the disks into another PC, without a need for recovery software.
FreeNAS of course does give you more options than a turnkey NAS will.
Though in the specific case of VMs, the Pro-6 CPU doesn't support VT, and the RAM is limited. So that might not work as well as you are hoping.
Re: ReadyNAS Pro RNDP6000 hangs on "ReadyNAS" prompt.
The processor can be upgraded to a Core 2, which does support VT, but getting RAM greater then 4GB can be expensive (and then, it only can take 8GB). When the PC2 memory used by the Pro6 was common, few users had 64-bit OS's that could take advantage of >4TB. So, there are few 4GB sticks available on the used market. You must use 2Rx8 configuration memory (aka "low density", not 2Rx4 "high density", which is sometimes labeled "AMD only") with the Pro6.
If you go above some step in the Core 2 line (I forget what point), you also must update the BIOS if it's not at the latest (07/26/2010 FLAME6-MB V2.0), Itys a lot easier to do that before you convert to FreeNAS or upgrade to OS6 because there is a 4.2.x add-on that'll do it.
