I didn't understand that?? Which drive would I try to clone? One that failed the Short DST test? Is that possible? Seems like sector by sector copy would have errors. What am I missing?
You would clone one of the failed drives to the new one.
There likely would be some errors, but the array could possibly be mounted. There could be some data corruption, but likely some files could be extracted.
If you are interested in data recovery, you should stop troubleshooting now (e.g., don't try the cloning). Doing more risks doing more damage, which makes recovery harder.
Both of my drives that FAIL the SeaTools ShortDST test PASS the Short Generic test. On drive 4 is started to run the Long Generic test but realized that is was going to take 4+ hours so I aborted at 6%. When I went back and reran the ShortDST test on that drive it PASSED. I don't think the SeaTools Long Generic test does anything other than try to read each sector so I am not sure why it would have that impact.
Drive 2 will pass the Short Generic but will still not pass ShortDST. Still fails at 10%. I did not try the Long Generic test on that drive.
Anyway, I though I might try putting drives 1, 3, and 4 back in the NAS as those all now have PASS on the DST tests. What should I do with slot 2? If it is now the only bad drive, will the NAS boot? Will it tell me to replace drive 2?
Is there anything special I need to do with the new replacement 750GB Seagate Barracuda drive I bought as a replacement? Do I need to format it in any way before installing it in the NAS?
With the single new replacement drive installed and being able to boot and connect in that configuration, can I not update the firmware on the NAS at that point so that I can get better diagnostic help when I switch back to the original drives?
With the single new replacement drive installed and being able to boot and connect in that configuration, can I not update the firmware on the NAS at that point so that I can get better diagnostic help when I switch back to the original drives?
You can try that, but the NAS will then attempt to update the firmware on your old drives if you boot up with them in place.
Anyway, I though I might try putting drives 1, 3, and 4 back in the NAS as those all now have PASS on the DST tests. What should I do with slot 2? If it is now the only bad drive, will the NAS boot? Will it tell me to replace drive 2?
If you want to try that, you just leave slot 2 empty. The NAS might boot, hard to say. It will tell you the volume is degraded.
If it does boot, then the first thing to do is back up any data you care about. Do that before trying to add your new disk to the array.
Is there anything special I need to do with the new replacement 750GB Seagate Barracuda drive I bought as a replacement? Do I need to format it in any way before installing it in the NAS?
You'd hot-insert it with the NAS running into slot 2. No need to format it, the NAS will begin by reformatting it anyway.
I believe I have successfully gotten all my data off of the three functioning drives in the NAS. Yay! That is a major accomplishment.
I certainly understand that drives fail. What I don't understand is why my NAS would not boot with the bad drive in Slot 2 and then tell me via FrontView that the drive needed to be replaced. Instead, I had to remove all the drives and test them in an external environment to determine it was drive 2 that was bad. Then when I put drives 1, 3, and 4 back in the NAS it will boot. It can boot without a drive installed in that slot at all and then tell me it's failed, but it can't boot with it in place??? That makes no sense to me. If the drive had failed it should still boot the same as if the drive was removed entirely.
If the drive had failed it should still boot the same as if the drive was removed entirely.
In principle yes. In practice I think it depends on exactly how the drive fails. Also you are running 10 year old firmware, so the problem would be rather hard to diagnose at this point.
Anyway, now that your data is backed up, I suggest upgrading the NAS firmware to 4.1.16 and doing a factory reset. Then reconfigure the NAS, and restore the data from the backup.
Is the way to update the firmware to download 4.1.16 from NETGEAR site to a USB flash drive that I plug into the NAS and then initiate upgrade thru FrontView?
Is the way to update the firmware to download 4.1.16 from NETGEAR site to a USB flash drive that I plug into the NAS and then initiate upgrade thru FrontView?
Replaced drives so that I now have two 1TB certified Seagate drives in slots 1 and 4.
Installed FW on the drives.
Did a Factory Reset.
Connected via FrontView and got into Setup Wizard.
Set for X-RAID config with two drives.
Waited for the drives to sync.
Finally booted and RAIDar showed correct firmware, correct drives, and "healthy".
Was having problems connecting as admin with Firefox. FrontView was showing "ReadyNAS null"???
Read on-line to try a different browser. IE allowed my to connect and access FrontView.
Created four new shares.
Tried to copy files back onto the NAS shares and now I get "Enter Network Password" to connect to NAS??????
This must be some security setting problem but I can't figure it out. My Windows 7 user account does not have a password.
The NAS appears to be set in security mode for "Share" option. Pretty sure this is what I had before. I didn't have any user accounts before and I never had to enter any passwords to read/write from the NAS shares.
The NAS appears to be set in security mode for "Share" option.
Share security has issues with newer versions of Windows, and Netgear deprecated it a long time ago. You only have it because your ancient firmware used it - if you did a fresh factory reset you would lose that option.
And if you are seeing share-mode security, I recommend that you do a second reset. The NAS data volume format has changed since 2007, and you need to create a new volume to take advantage of those changes. Some of these changes are needed to support bigger disks (your NAS can handle up to 2 TB drives if you do the second reset), I think others are performance-related.
That second reset will result in your system using user-mode security. Then you can use the NAS admin account+password to access your shares. Note you can save these in the Windows Credential Manager on your PC(s), so you don't need to enter the user/password every time.
One warning here - your old NAS supports only SMBv1. Microsoft is deprecating SMBv1 in the aftermath of WannaCry, because it is not secure. Over time it will be more and more difficult to access your network shares from Windows systems. So you should plan on replacing your old NAS with a newer model that supports SMBv3 at some point. An RN212 with 2x2TB would give you slightly more storage than you have now, you could also consider an RN214. You could then use your existing NAS to back up your data.
You are talking about a "second reset" to factory settings?
I would do that from FrontView or with reset button on back of NAS?
I would then go through setup wizard again?
After doing this I should no longer see "share" as the first security setting option like I do now?
When changing to "user" security setting, you are saying that I should be able to enter admin and password at the windows network password prompt without having to create a new user and password underneath FV security tab?
When changing to "user" security setting, you are saying that I should be able to enter admin and password at the windows network password prompt without having to create a new user and password underneath FV security tab?
Yes. Though I suggest opening the windows credential manager and creating "windows" credentials for the NAS there. What version of Windows are you using?
Under security tab in FV I still have "SHARE" mode as the first option and it appears to be the default option because it is already checked.
I also have two default shares created: Backup and Media.
I can copy files onto either of these NAS shares with no problem.
However, if I create a new share in FV, it shows up in Windows Explorer under the NAS, but I can't open the share or copy anything to it without my PC asking for some bogus "Network Password". On my PC, Windows 7 Pro, I have only one user "administrator" and it has no password set for it.
I don't understand the security differences between the default shares and the share I create.
Switch to user security, and then use the approach I outlined earlier - setting up credentials using the NAS admin account in the Windows Credential Manager of the PC(s).
It didn't work either with or without using Windows Credential Manager.
My NAS admin is set to the default "netgear1" password and when I try to enter that when either the windows network password box pops OR when I have it entered in the credential manager, it still won't give me access.
My NAS admin is set to the default "netgear1" password
That's part of the puzzle. You need to change that password to something else - there are some checks in the NAS firmware that limit admin SMB access until you've set it to something other than the default.
Now that you're running RAIDiator 4.x if you run into issues with bad disks again (or some other issue that prevents a normal boot), there's a low-level diagnostic mode that can be used to diagnose the situation remotely (if needed).
There is a diagnosis method for RAIDiator 3.x but it relies on the system being able to boot up normally and on later 3.x releases I think Frontview has to be working as well to be able to enable it.
i deleted the "backup" and "media" shares that appeared to be created by default and have created a couple of new ones of my own.
looks like i have access to these shares and have started copying my data back onto them.
something i don't understand is that when switching to USER security mode, i now have a share under NAS named "c" that i don't know where it came from or how to delete it. it does not show up in the list of shares when i am in FV.
i think "c" is the name of my volume, but i don't want to manage a "c" share. how do i delete that share?
You only see the "c" share for your data volume if logged in as the 'admin' user (no quotes). That user is only meant to be used for administrative purposes.
Login as any other user and you won't see a "c" share.
i think "c" is the name of my volume, but i don't want to manage a "c" share. how do i delete that share?
It is the volume, so you really don't want to delete it (or anything in it). If you do, it will be gone. It's just another path to get to your data.
There is no need to manage it, and it's pretty easy to just ignore it. FWIW, it can be handy to be able to map the entire NAS volume to a drive letter, especially if you are backing up the NAS from a PC.
But if you want to hide it/not see it, then as mdgm says, you'll need to create another user on the NAS (for instance OldMan) with it's own password, and then change your windows credentials to use that user account.
