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Re: ReadyNAS 312 factory reset itself; have I just lost all my data?

pumpichank
Luminary

ReadyNAS 312 factory reset itself; have I just lost all my data?

I have a ReadyNAS 312 with two 2T drives in it.  It has been working flawlessly for years, but one of the drives died.  I replaced it with a brand new 2T drive, and the machine factory reset itself!  I absolutely know for a fact we did not do a hardware factory reset, and I know for a fact I did not do a software reset.  The first symptom I noticed was that the machine was not accepting my password for login.  After lots of attempts to log into it, I finally tried the default username and password and that got me in.  None of the disks were recognized.  I have not done anything else with the machine.

 

Has the one good disk been wiped already?  Is it possible to pull that drive out and mount it on a Linux machine and recover the data?  I have a backup on ext4 but it's about a year or more old.

 

I'm really upset that this machine auto-factory reset itself.

Model: RN31200|ReadyNAS 300 Series 2- Bay (Diskless)
Message 1 of 12

Accepted Solutions
pumpichank
Luminary

Re: ReadyNAS 312 factory reset itself; have I just lost all my data?

Just to close the loop on this one: the NAS was in Safe Mode because the one good disk was not seated properly.  Once that was fixed, and a new second drive was installed, the NAS rebooted with all of the original settings and sync'd itself over the next 9 hours or so.  Everything is working great now, although I will have to format the USB drive from the CLI (if possible).

 

Here are two takeaways:

 

1) I think the OS should inform the user in the UI when the NAS is booted in Safe Mode.  Some banner or some such indicating the status would have saved a bunch of time and anguish. 🙂

 

2) It would be great if the USB drive as either unformatted, or formatted with an unrecognized file system would show up in the UI and allow us to format it there.

 

Other than that, it's very comforting to know that the NAS did it's job well and this great community helped keep the freak out to a minimum 🙂

 

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Message 12 of 12

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Marc_V
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: ReadyNAS 312 factory reset itself; have I just lost all my data?

@pumpichank

 

There should be no way that the NAS will automatically reset itself, There might be underlying issues we need to check. Were you able to get the logs before this happened? Also, please download the latest logs and send it to me through Google drive if possible.

 

If none of the disks were recognized there's a good chance that a reset has not been done yet. It's a good move to check one of the original disks using Linux or on Windows PC using ReCLAIMe or R-Linux. It might be able to recover the data if it still there.

 

Looking forward on getting the logs so we can check this issue.

 

 

Regards

Message 2 of 12
StephenB
Guru

Re: ReadyNAS 312 factory reset itself; have I just lost all my data?

Are you certain it didn't boot up in safe mode (instead of doing a factory reset)?

Message 3 of 12
pumpichank
Luminary

Re: ReadyNAS 312 factory reset itself; have I just lost all my data?


Hi @Marc_V - I wasn't able to get any logs, because the system just mysteriously rebooted into the mode it's in now.  Really, the only thing we did was pull the dead drive out and replace it with a new drive.  It was formated with X-RAID so I just assumed it would start to sync, but it never did (I've done this in the past with no problems when other drives died).  Now that I'm back into the ReadyNAS (with the default password), I am looking at the logs, but there are no entries older than the ones created after the snafu.  And now, both disks are unreadable.  The machine reports it as healthy and at firmware 6.10.2 but no volumes exist.  I don't even see any disks that I can select to create a volume (not that I would, until I verify whether the data is recoverable).   I am remote to the location of the ReadyNAS so I really don't know what more I can do from here.
@Marc_V wrote:

@pumpichank

 

There should be no way that the NAS will automatically reset itself, There might be underlying issues we need to check. Were you able to get the logs before this happened? Also, please download the latest logs and send it to me through Google drive if possible.

 

If none of the disks were recognized there's a good chance that a reset has not been done yet. It's a good move to check one of the original disks using Linux or on Windows PC using ReCLAIMe or R-Linux. It might be able to recover the data if it still there.

 

Looking forward on getting the logs so we can check this issue.

 

 

Regards


 

Message 4 of 12
pumpichank
Luminary

Re: ReadyNAS 312 factory reset itself; have I just lost all my data?

Thanks for the reply.  I'm not sure the machine didn't boot in safe mode, but it's up and running now and allowing logins with the default password.  Would the UI tell me if it was booted in safe mode?  Neither disk is recognized at the moment.

Message 5 of 12
pumpichank
Luminary

Re: ReadyNAS 312 factory reset itself; have I just lost all my data?

Guess what?  The NAS *was* booted in safe mode!  Somehow the good disk got unseated.  We reseated it and the NAS booted back as it was before.  I have one dead drive so I'm trying to make a backup onto a 2T USB drive if I can figure out how to format it as ext4 through the UI.  Then I'll get a new disk and resync them again.  Thanks for everyone's help!  It seems like safe mode worked the way it should. 🙂

Message 6 of 12
bedlam1
Prodigy

Re: ReadyNAS 312 factory reset itself; have I just lost all my data?

Why are you backing up to EXT4 and not NTFS ?

Message 7 of 12
StephenB
Guru

Re: ReadyNAS 312 factory reset itself; have I just lost all my data?


@pumpichank wrote:

Guess what?  The NAS *was* booted in safe mode!  Somehow the good disk got unseated.  We reseated it and the NAS booted back as it was before.  


Great news!

 


@pumpichank wrote:

 I'm trying to make a backup onto a 2T USB drive if I can figure out how to format it as ext4 through the UI.  


Making a backup before the resync is a good idea.  I agree with @bedlam1 that you can make the backup with an NTFS formatted disk - which would give you the ability to read it on both Windows and macOS PCs.

Message 8 of 12
pumpichank
Luminary

Re: ReadyNAS 312 factory reset itself; have I just lost all my data?

I'm more of a Linux guy, which is why I suggested ext4, but NTFS might not be a bad idea (I do have access to Macs, and Windows but the latter only through VMware Fusion).

 

For whatever reason the USB disk isn't showing up on the Overview page, so I might have to try to format it from the NAS command line (I do have root ssh enabled on it).  Is there a kb on how to format it from the command line?

Message 9 of 12
pumpichank
Luminary

Re: ReadyNAS 312 factory reset itself; have I just lost all my data?

We did manage to put the USB drive on a Mac and format it as ExFAT using Disk Utility.  Then when we plugged it into the NAS, it said the disk was found but not in a supported format so it couldn't be mounted.  But the USB disk also doesn't show up anywhere on the ReadyNAS UI so I don't know how to get the USB drive formatted.  I did a `mount` command from the ssh login and I don't see the drive anywhere in /dev.

Message 10 of 12
StephenB
Guru

Re: ReadyNAS 312 factory reset itself; have I just lost all my data?


@pumpichank wrote:

We did manage to put the USB drive on a Mac and format it as ExFAT using Disk Utility.  


ExFAT isn't supported by the NAS.  You can use ntfs, ext4, or btrfs.  (Fat32 would also work, but is a bad choice because of the file size limit).

 

You should be able to format the USB drive in any linux PC. You'd partition the disk with parted (if needed).  I suggest using the existing partition that was created on the Mac.

 

You'd then create the file system using mkfs.ext4 or mkfs.ntfs.  Either way the disk shouldn't be mounted.  And of course you do need to be very careful to format (or partition) the correct drive.

 


@pumpichank wrote:

 I did a `mount` command from the ssh login and I don't see the drive anywhere in /dev.


Do you mean that you ran mount with no arguments (or perhaps mount -l )?

 

As I said before ExFAT isn't supported.  So it's not surprising that you didn't see it mounted.  It should still have a device path (/dev/sdX )

 

You should be able to distinguish the usb drive from the rest (and find its device path) with ls -al /dev/disk/by-id  

And from there you should be able to create the file system (using the existing partition you created on the Mac).

 

 

Message 11 of 12
pumpichank
Luminary

Re: ReadyNAS 312 factory reset itself; have I just lost all my data?

Just to close the loop on this one: the NAS was in Safe Mode because the one good disk was not seated properly.  Once that was fixed, and a new second drive was installed, the NAS rebooted with all of the original settings and sync'd itself over the next 9 hours or so.  Everything is working great now, although I will have to format the USB drive from the CLI (if possible).

 

Here are two takeaways:

 

1) I think the OS should inform the user in the UI when the NAS is booted in Safe Mode.  Some banner or some such indicating the status would have saved a bunch of time and anguish. 🙂

 

2) It would be great if the USB drive as either unformatted, or formatted with an unrecognized file system would show up in the UI and allow us to format it there.

 

Other than that, it's very comforting to know that the NAS did it's job well and this great community helped keep the freak out to a minimum 🙂

 

Message 12 of 12
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