I'll just copypaste his post for expediency, edited for my situation..
Lights on unit with power on: Power button light on, Backup light flashes quickly, Act light briefly flashes right after pressing power button, display screen on but nothing displayed.
Cannot turn off unit using power button.
Cannot access boot menu using paperclip/reset button method from Netgear instructions.
Tried removing one disk at a time with power cycles between each disk.
The fan spins.
I can hear the hard drives spin up.
I am on the latest version as I checked that before rebooting it for the final time when it died on me.
RAIDar cannot see the unit.
The ethernet lights on the back are active/flashing.
From what I can gather my NAS is pretty much dead, RAID should still be alive unless it has somehow been damaged by all the constant hard reboots which is unlikely so I guess my question is; is it possible to buy a new one, pop my disks into that one and have it recognize my RAID-config and continue using it as normal? Was looking at getting the ReadyNAS 214 which from what I can gather is pretty much a newer version of the NAS I already had. I ran X-Raid2 which from what I understand is basically Raid5 with some proprietary Netgear stuff in it, will that prevent me from accessing the data using a newer NAS? Is X-Raid2 still supported by the newer NAS or is my last and only resort to send my NAS to netgear for data recovery? Some googling suggested I could connect the disks to my computer and use a recovery program to rebuild the array on my computer and save the data that way.
Model: ReadyNAS RND4000v2|ReadyNAS NV+ v2 Chassis only
Have you tried removing all the disks (labeling by slot) and then powering up the NAS? Then see if RAIDar sees it (reporting a "no disks" status). That will let us know more definitively if the issue is with the NAS chassis or the disks.
Also, can you confirm that you have a v2? The labels can be confusing/misleading.
an NV+ (v1)
runs 4.1.x firmware
says "NV+" on the front panel
often has labels on the bottom or back saying "v2" or "v3"
An NV+ v2
runs 5.3.x firmware
says "NV+ v2" on the front panel
The boot menu instructions for the v1 and v2 aren't the same, and that could explain your challenges with that.
BTW, saying "latest firmware" isn't that helpful in the forum. It's better to provide the details.
is it possible to buy a new one, pop my disks into that one and have it recognize my RAID-config and continue using it as normal? Was looking at getting the ReadyNAS 214
The short answer here is "no". The RN214 uses the BTRFS file system, your current NAS uses EXT. So the data volume needs to be reformatted. The OS is also stored on the disks, and that is completely different.
is my last and only resort to send my NAS to netgear for data recovery? Some googling suggested I could connect the disks to my computer and use a recovery program to rebuild the array on my computer and save the data that way.
If you can connect the disks to a Windows PC (either SATA or with a USB adapter/dock), you could also try RAID recovery software - R-Studio ( https://www.r-studio.com/ ) and ReclaiMe ( https://www.reclaime.com/ ) are two popular packages. R-Studio is less expensive, so you probably should try that one first. Both will let you see what they can recover before purchase.
There are other companies that offer data recovery services, though they tend to be regional. Seagate offers one that they claim will recover from NAS raid arrays (and is available even if you don't use Seagate disks). They only charge for successful recovery. However, I haven't seen any posts here from folks who have used it.
I had a long reply all typed out adressing your suggestions and with a few questions of my own out but then decided I'd give it another go and decided to take the NAS apart, clean it and put back the original fan I replaced with a quieter one when I bought it years ago. Turned it on without any disks and to my surprise it actually booted and gave the no disk error. Filled with relief I turned it off, inserted the drives and booted it up and after checking the array it actually booted successfully, all my stuff is there and there appears to be no corruption.
I have no idea what it was that did it, it wasn't that dusty and the fan still worked when I pulled it out but at this point I don't care. Now it's time to back up my stuff and decide on what NAS to buy because I'm not trusting this traitorous toaster ever again.
