Stora MS2110 is not working - Blinking Blue LED

[alb829]

I've had my Stora since October 2010 and never had a problem until I got home Thursday and my Stora was mysteriously powered off. I powered it back on and then it just sat there with the flashing/blinking blue led. Please help.....

I've tried the hard reset w/ and w/o the drive in and never got it to work. I tried the firmware recovery procedure a couple times and never get an orange light. All I get is either a constant flashing blue light or all 3 lights flashing.

[Hitokiri]

I experienced the same in the beginning of January and i contacted the support team and they helped me get it up and running again, it seems there are more than you and I with this issue so I hope they are working on a FW upgrade that will correct this flaw.

I can see you have tried the hard reset several times. i thought i had tried it too but i did as i got described in the mail from the support team and that got it back online. I'll try and post the procedure below.

This is what i got from support when mine was acting up. It can take a good while for it to do the reburn and all ofcourse depending on your ISP and download speed

To do this recovery of your stora, please follow the instructions below:

Recovery procedure Requirements:

• Network connection to the internet
• Presence of a DHCP server on the network

Procedure:

• To put the device into recovery mode, power on the device, wait 15 seconds, then hold the reset button while bootup continues.

• The bootup process will take approximately 30 seconds and the blue LED will be blinking during that period.

• As soon as the recovery mechanism kicks in, the blue light turns off and HDDLED1 will turn orange. The reset button can be released at this point.

• Then the device will request a DHCP lease and try to get an IP.

* If an IP is obtained, HDDLED2 will also turn orange for 1 second.

* If no IP is assigned the following pattern will be shown on the leds and the recovery mechanism will stop.

Power LED Off -> HDDLED1 and HDDLED2 will blink 3 times together -> All LEDs off

• Once network is up, the download and burn process will begin. During the download procedure the LED behaviour is:

Power LED Off -> HDDLED1 and HDDLED2 will turn on and off in turns

• The download and burn will take around 4-5 mins with a fast connection speed.

• Once the download and burn is done:

* If the burn is successful, all LEDs will turn on for 5 seconds and then the device will reboot normally

* If the burn fails the LED behaviour will stay as follows and the recovery mechanism will stop

Power LED On -> HDDLED1 and HDDLED2 will blink together

Troubleshooting if recovery does not work:

- The LED behavior when holding the reset button after 15s is not the same as the behavior described in the recovery procedure.

If the reset button is pressed too early, the LED behavior will be as follows:

Three LEDs will blink together and turn off

In this case if the reset button is still pressed after a few seconds this pattern will repeat one more time and if the reset button remains pressed all three LEDs will continue to blink continuously.

Solution: Ensure that the reset button is pressed AFTER 15s have passed from power on.

• After the unit goes through the full procedure described above, but doesnʼt reboot successfully after
finishing.

The LEDs twill display as:
* Power LED blinking
* HDDLEDs solid amber
* The unit also wonʼt shut down if the power button is pressed.

Solution: Pull the power, wait a couple of seconds and plug it back in. Power the unit on and it should
boot up successfully. The procedure will still finish successfully.

This should most likely solve your issue.
When the recovery procedure is done - you will have to run the Installation again and install your Stora with the same Stora name, Username and password as before.

I hope it helps good luck 🙂

[alb829]

Thanks....I will give it go...

[Hitokiri]

I hope you get it working again, if you arent running the latest FW then you should update it asap and hope it fixes the powertimer bootup issue.
http://support.stora.hipserv.com/en/downloads/index.html <<< There you can download the Stora Agent update. When you get your Stora up and running again update it as the first thing you do 🙂 I hope it helps you. If all else fails then get in touch with NetGear support they should be able to help you and your unit is still under warranty since you bought it last year in October.

[Hitokiri]

alb829 wrote:
Thanks....I will give it go...

Did you get it to work?

[frustratduser]

Hitokiri,

Thanks so much for your step by step advice. I've been at the brink of smashing my stora up because it's crashed so many times, the last time I thought it was unrecoverable.
The step where both drive lights flash orange/green alternately took longer than you mentioned, maybe because of my slower download. I would advise anyone in the same situation to wait a bit longer, once it completes it will reboot as advised.

Great job!

[Beepson]

I've tried absolutely everything mentioned above, and all I get is either flashing blue LED or blue + two green flashing.

Please help me

[mjhamilton]

it would seem the Stora is very sensitive to any power failure conditions and sometimes if there is a glitch in the power supply it will shutdown and you get the flashing blue light of death (FBLOD)

Happened to me when I hit the wrong breaker to do some work in the garage - the firmware recovery process fixes this with no issues, even takes you straight to v2.5.1

Some notes
- Power off
- Press the on button
- wait 15 seconds and press the reset button with a pin

You must be connected to internet
Your device must be able to get an IP via DHCP
You must have at least one HDD installed

- if you got it right the blue light will go out and the ambers will alternate (only one will show if you have a single disk) with green

Leave to bake for 5-10 minutes depending on the network speed and it will eventually reboot and come back as a clean device

Something to remember
when the device comes back it will default to DHCP so could pickup any ip address on the network, don't assume it is not working because you cannot connect to the ip address that it was using previously!!

[Beepson]

But the blue light never goes off! It just keeps flashing with nothing else happening. The only other thing I can get is all LEDs flashing, 1 blue and two greens - meaning that I pushed the reset button to soon.

What to do?

[Dogbert]

If the firmware recovery completed and you still are getting the blinking blue power light, I'd recommend contacting Netgear and getting an RMA on the chassis.

[Beepson]

Well, how do I know if the firmware has completed?

[Dogbert]

After the firmware recovery completes the Stora should reboot, then you can go into the Stora GUI and check the version in the "About Stora" in the bottom right. (Just as a side note: If the "About Stora" is white text and not gray text then you know it's 2.5.1 FW. The earlier versions had light gray text on a black background, which was very hard to read so most users overlooked it. 😉 )

[Beepson]

Well since it doesn't reboot and nothing happens except the blue flashing LED I guess it doesn't recover any firmware...

[Beepson]

So, where do I find info about RMA if my Stora is toasted?

[Hitokiri]

Frustratduser

Glad you got your Stora up and running again 🙂
I must admit I agree with Mjhamilton that the Stora is extremely sensitive to the slightest interruptions in the supply of power.

Kind regards

Hitokiri

[jj1234]

@hitokiri: your instructions worked great for me too as soon as I realised that the reset button is not the button on the back, it's the little hole you have to stick a pin in to operate next to the button.

[Hitokiri]

Jj1234

I'm glad you got yours working too 🙂 It's too expensive a device to just chug in the bin.
and yes the Reset button is located in the hole next to the power button and it's marked with a red circle around the hole.

[Snillet69]

i´m in the same situation as you. I have left my Stora2110 to the store i bought it. I did take out the disks due to much stuff on them is very private and now they say that Netgear requires the disk installed to do a investigation. But then i need to remove stuff/data from the disks, but i can´t access them. I have placed the left disk in my desktop but i can´t see it without accessing through dikmanager and the only nfo. i get is that there is nothing on, 100% free non partion space. I have 2 disks 1TB/each. What will i do?
Anyone :confused:

[Hitokiri]

Hmm...

Have you tried the "Hard reset" where it "burns" ALL settings and starts from scratch? The store you got your Stora 2110 from can they lend you a "new" stora so you can salvage your data?

Otherwise you need a program that can handle the type of format that the Stora processes it's data on the disks with you should ask NetGear support what format the Stora uses when it initializes the disks if it's EXT3 or something and then see if you can get a program that can read AND write in that format inside your opperating system (I don't know if you use Windows, Mac or Linux or some other opperating system) It's a tough nut to crack for sure. I'm only trying to give you ideas so the best of luck to you and do let us know how the venture unfolds...

[styl]

It will work!
Just the 15s is really very important.
Use your mobile phone as a stopwatch.
At the moment of powering up, you will hear the device go up and running, directly start running the stopwatch. Exactly at 15s press the reset button, untill you see the orange led will go on. Now release the reset button and indeed you will see that the update will start.

Now when i am done writing this, i just took a look at my stora...it finally works again!
One thing, dont forget to put in a HDD!

Now im gonna update my whole firmware and gonna take actions, by making a second backup, using cloud, can't effort to loose my pictures, wife will hang me up!

Succes with the Stora

[bigchiefkh]

This worked for me. Was a random event not sure why it jumped into this mode. Glad I didn't lose my data either. Thanks for the great post.

[Boszyg]

Hey All! the latest software is up, but I can not start the recovery mode. the same phenomenon as many others: flashing blue LED is nothing more (no HDD LED nor the network led by the connector at the back). Based on the description of the reset button pressed up so much that I can achieve all three on the front panel LED will flash (in addition to flashing blue LED blinks first five of the two HDD and then go out again and then the third time will remain flashing LED). life can arouse somehow ???