Hello all - need to confirm next steps, as I'm trying to recover from a disk failure on my NV and this one seems a bit more complex than prior times I've needed to do this.
Some history: This is an NV (not NV+), running 4x 1TB disks. Woke up to some error messages from the unit that a resync was recommended and the following slightly puzzling message:
"Access to the disk on channel (??) is producing I/O errors. Although the array is still redundant, please replace this drive as soon as possible, as it is likely to fail soon."
Needless to say, this didn't help all that much. The unit was locked up tight, but showed a blinking light on disk 2. I rebooted (hard power down, repowered), and after it scrubbed for a while it then showed a blinking light on disk four. It also sent me SMART error count increases for drive 1 (0->1), disk 2 (both 14->1830 and 0->237), and disk 4 (2039-3041) in the same email. No idea why I got two notifications on disk 2. I tried to reboot with disk 2 and disk 4 out of the unit to test, and was unable to get the unit past blinking blue with some isolated activity - i.e., none of the disk LEDs lit.
At this point, suspecting that I may have shot two disks, I pulled them all and mounted them on another computer to test - disks 1-3 came up, though disk 2 was slightly slower to mount and I suspect that the SMART errors indicate a slowly failing disk. Disk 4 was unable to mount.
I replaced disk four with another identical disk, and booted the system. I'm now still stuck at the same condition - blinking blue with isolated disk activity, no disk LEDs. I can ping the unit, but management is not available. I never installed the SSH plugin.
Clearly I'd like to preserve the data on the unit, and it appears lightening may have hit two of my disks at the same time - is this the most plausible explanation? Any thoughts on what steps make sense?
Another possibility would be that the SATA hardware in the chassis is failing. Though I think the two disks failure idea fits the facts better.
You can try cloning disk 2 with a copy utility that does a sector by sector copy. Power down the NAS of course, then insert the cloned disk (with the disk 1 and 3) and power up. Leave disk 4 out for now.
If that boots, then make a backup (assuming you don't have one that is up to date) and try inserting disk 4 again.
It is better ring to the netgear local call center for help. Some misoperation may cause the data lost. If you really care your data, please ask the help for netgear. You also can PM me, I can check for you.
Thanks everyone. Further testing indicated two disks and parts of the SATA backplane died at the same time. This was a good example of why backups are a good thing. It's also driving us towards a replacement unit where we have more than one layer of redundancy in the unit.
Regardless, appreciate the help and quick responses. Very much appreciated in the midst of the oh-#$%@# moment.
