Our good old ReadyNAS 600-TL, that has served us many years well, has been encountering some problems lately. Almost daily, our mounted shares disappear (they don't get unmounted with a message, they just are away and stay away). Re-mounting them is not possible. The Frontview can not be accessed for some hours. After a while, all is back to normal. The Protocols tell my:
Volume scan found and corrected errors And RAID sync started on volume C
After that ends, the Volume is reported being fully redundant.
My concern is now this: What is defect, and needs to be repaired? The drives or the ReadyNAS itself? How can I find that out? I have three WDC WD5001ABYS-01YNA0, and one WDC WD5002ABYS-02B1B0 (that was replaced by Western Digital due to a defect). The ATA Error Count ranges from 0 to 4, no other error counts have numbers different from 0.
Does anyone have an idea, how I can find out, where the problem exactly is located? With kind regards, thomasx
Re: Is my ReadyNAS defect or "just" the Hard Drives?
It seems your unit had performed volume scan at rebooting and it fixed all file system faults by e2fsck program .if the volume has file system errors then it also will trigger raid Resync job,I remember this behavior just designed for Sparc based NAS.
I don't think you need to worry about this,just remember don't ever force power off will protect your data.
Re: Is my ReadyNAS defect or "just" the Hard Drives?
Hi, thanks for your quick answer.
The thing is: it wasnt performed at reboot. it happened mid-use. several times. i tried to reboot it and forced it to check the whole file-system. and it did without finding errors. but a day after that it did it again.
that could maybe mean, that the power somehow went OFF? be it a loose cable or a problem with the ac-unit? or would you think that this has to do with the file-system, the os or the hard disks?
its running 4.1.10, which is the one where all german umlauts are displayed as chinese (?) signs.
Re: Is my ReadyNAS defect or "just" the Hard Drives?
The logs should tell you if there was an unscheduled shutdown (also they would show the startup).
Are you using a UPS?
Also, if you have ssh access you might check for a nearly full OS partition. (or just try an OS reinstall and see if that helps). The OS reinstall will reset the IP config to DHCP, and the admin password back to the factory default, but wouldn't change your config or lose data.
Re: Is my ReadyNAS defect or "just" the Hard Drives?
We haven't had power outages for years, so the NAS should have been (and has been) running straight for some years.
We do not use an UPS.
the logs do not say anything about a shutdown, so I suppose the NAS kept running, but encountered errors.
@de niro: I find it hard not to worry, since losing the access to my data suddenly in mid-work and waiting for about half an hour before being able to log on again is not how our customers think of us handling their data. But apart from not being able to access the data anytime, my worry about maybe losing the data keeps growing.
this is why i would like to find out, what causes the problem, so that I could e.g. exchenge a defective drive or think about a new NAS altogether.
I don't think I have ssh enabled. hasn't this always been a nicht-nicht for when you hope netgear might one day have a look on your device to help you?
Re: Is my ReadyNAS defect or "just" the Hard Drives?
Per netgear (several posts) - simply enabling ssh does not void your support. If there is evidence that your use of ssh caused damage, then that would void it.
As the OS partition fills up, there are various misbehaviors. Given the age of your NAS, it seems likely that it is getting full. SSH is the easiest way to check (for instance, do a df, and see how much free space there is on the boot partition).
The reinstall will change the IP config to DHCP, and also reset the admin password to the original factory value. I'm not sure what that is for the 600. Add-ons and the rest of the config should not be touched, and data should be preserved. "Should" being the key word, make sure you have a backup first.
Re: Is my ReadyNAS defect or "just" the Hard Drives?
Since this NAS only Serves as our CD Server (CDs being as IMGs on there) we have no performance problems when compared to an actual CD. But I would like to use my NAS to the fullest, so I am surprised by the fact that 90% fullness should be a problem.
I will try the reinstallation of the OS as soon as possible (the NAS has just now disappeared again so I will have to wait for it to resync and show frontview again, so that I can shut it down).
Re: Is my ReadyNAS defect or "just" the Hard Drives?
I did the OS reinstall (i think), with shutting it down, holding the reset button pressed, turning on the nas and letting the rest button go after about 5 seconds, when all the lights flashed.
right now the RAID is resyncing and I am worried that this is just the continuation of all the aforementioned behaviour.
Is it more likely to be a HDD-related problem that the resyncing has to take place, or is it more likely that it is the case (and/or the OS), so that this should be replaced?
Re: Is my ReadyNAS defect or "just" the Hard Drives?
I think ordinarily resyncing is done when the NAS detects a drive insertion or if there are some I/O errors. An improper shutdown can result in volume errors, which also triggers it. In all these cases, you should see evidence in the logs.
Following this logic, failing SATA hardware in the NAS, drives that aren't completely seated in the slot, failing hard drives can all result in resyncs.
You have a vintage NAS, it probably makes some sense to plan for a replacement, even if the OS reinstall ends up resolving your immediate problem.
Re: Is my ReadyNAS defect or "just" the Hard Drives?
Just a quick update, since I don't like help-seeking posts where the original poster does not keep his progress posted for everyone maybe having the same or simliar problems:
Our X600 has become unusable. It kept resyncing in such short periods of time, that it was impossible to log into the backend and shut it down. We have ordered a Pro4 with new HDDs which is being installed right now. The Data fortunately does not need to be retrieved from the defective NAS, since I had an offsite backup. Because I this that would have increased my problems almost to infinity.
I was on the verge of ordering a NAS from another Brand that served well in my family in private use, but since all my other work-NAS are ReadyNAS, I decided to stay here.
