NV+ - Won't Boot, Flashing Lights, Bad Memory? (Solved)

As it turns out it was the memory. I had to go do some errands and purchased new memory and it works like a charm but I have a question.

When this started Disk 2 was going bad. I attempted to replace it but as luck would have it the bad memory issue occurred at the same time.

I removed all 4 disks and put one new disk in bay 1 to troubleshoot. That disk is now in the NV+ being formatted. It's the only disk installed.

After the formatting is done can I remove that disk, put in disks 1, 3 , 4 and replace the bad disk 2 with the disk that in the NV+ as a "new" disk 2 or is there something I need to do to the "new" disk 2 before I try that?

ie - will the NV+ ignore any info the formatting would put on the new disk and just rebuild my data?

Dave

The safest course is to power down the NAS, install 1,3, 4, and then power up. Assuming it starts successfully, I would then erase the partitions on the new disk 2 on a PC, and then hot-insert it into the NAS. There is no need to format, just to delete the existing partitions.

Erasing the disk from FrontView will take a long time (it is a "secure erase" that overwrites with a lot of passes).

Note the NAS ought to treat the disk 2 has a new disk anyway (even w/o erasing partitions). My suggestion on deleting paritions is being cautious.

BTW, do you have a backup? If not, I suggest making one before you insert disk 2.

Stephen, thanks. I do have backup for the critical data. It does power up with 1, 3, 4 and even the old disk 2 which is showing SMART errors. Since it was bad memory I want to pick up where I left off: Replacing the old disk 2 with the new disk which was used to power up with the new memory.

You mentioned there's a way (maybe longer time-wise) to zap the partitions using Frontview. I have plenty of time. The NV+ has been unused since August. I just want to get it back online. Obviously I want to make sure I have all the non-critical data saved. That would be easier than putting the "new" hard drive in my tower and zapping them that way.

Question: Should I remove 1, 3 & 4 from the NV+ and leaving the new disk 2 as the only disk to remove the partitions? After that I should be good to go, correct?

How do I safely remove the partitions using Frontview? Shares > Share Listing > Delete? After that the disk will be clean?

I noticed that the current disks and the new disk are all using the same firmware 4.1.8.

(This is really simple but typing all this crap makes it seem more difficult than it is. :D )

Deleting the shares would leave you with an empty volume, the disk would still have formatted partitions. Looking at the release notes, the erase function appears to be in the 4.2.x firmware, not for the 4.1.x.

What I do myself is connect the drive to my PC (using an eSata->Sata cable and a power supply), and then delete the partitions with the Windows Disk Management. (you can also do that if you hook up the drive using a USB adapter).

If this is not possible (and since you have a backup), try powering up with 1,3,4 installed, and than hot-add disk 2. It ought to view disk 2 as new disk, and reformat it.

Thanks. I'll give that a try.

I was somewhat a victim of poor timing with this entire incident.

I never had any major failure so I wasn't aware what the flashing lights meant. Since I was given many error messages about Disk 2 failing I decided to replace it. When I did I got some fatal type errors in the log saying that a newly purchased Disk 2 was bad that I decided to stop for awhile. When I turned the system on with yet another new disk the flashing lights were 1 3 4 with 2 flashing. I thought that meant I had another bad disk. No, it was my memory going bad. After a little searching here I saw that link to the PDF with a description of what those flashing lights meant.

At this point I put in disk 1 3 4 and the previous Disk 2 (which I thought was bad) and everything seems to be okay.

What a nightmare!

I'll be putting that other drive into one of my Ultras.

Thanks for your help, Stephen. I really do appreciate it.

Best,
Dave

I'm glad everything is up, with no data loss.