ReadyNAS Ultra 4+ silently shut down

[atebit]

My Ultra4+ is runing RAIDiator 4.2.20.  This morning I woke up to my NVR disk alarm going off.  It turns out that the NAS had silently shut down sometime over night.  I powered it back up and it booted normally, no complaints or fsck.  That would seem to indicate an orderly shutdown.  I downloaded the logs, but didn't see anything shutdown related.  The NAS is connected to a UPS, so I guess it possible that we briefly lost power overnight, but there were no tell-tale flashing clocks around the house. 🙂

The NVR is continuously writing to the NAS, so I would think if there was an abrubt shutdown that an fsck would've been necesary.  If the shutdown was due to a UPS signal I would've thought I'd have seen that in the log as well.  Any ideas on a cause or where else to look for clues?

[atebit]

Note - title should read "ReadyNAS Ultra 4+ silenty shut down", but the edit time expired before I could change it.  Not sure how/why I typed 104...maybe the mods can change the title?

[mdgm-ntgr]

You can send in your logs if you like.

Btw 4.2.20 is nearly 4 and a half years old. The latest firmware is 4.2.30.

[atebit]

Logs sent.  If there's nothing telling there I can upgade to the latest.  Was actually considering going to the OS6 hack until this morning... 🙂

[mdgm-ntgr]

I can't see a reason for the crash in the logs either.

You could go to OS6 if you want.

First step would be to backup your data and verify that that is good.

The ST3000DM001 disks do have very high failure rates. I'd recommend switching to another disk model if possible e.g. WD RED or SeaGate NAS.

[atebit]

So far (at least 4 years) ive been luck with these drives. But part of this project is migrating to 4TB WD Purple drives once I've backed up fully. Since I also want to move to OS6, is there a suggested order that I should complete the volume expansion, factory default, data restore and OS6 upgrade tasks?

[StephenB]

I'd do this:

(a) backup data and document configuration

(b) remove existing drives, labeling by slot

(c) install one purple drive (which will do a reset)

(d) upgrade to OS 6, do basic configuration

(e) change to flexraid, delete the data volume

(f) install remaining purple disks, and create volume with raid-5

(g) convert back to xraid

(h) reconfigure shares

(i) install any desired apps

(j) restore data

Preserving the existing disks gives you a fallback if the backup has problems.  I've attempted to minimize sync time by starting with one disk, and destroying/resyncing the full volume in (e) - (g).

[atebit]

Thanks for the outline, will be doing this within the week.  One more question: If I end up needing to revert to the old drives after moving to OS6, will they still be recognized or will I need to fall back to RAIDiator 4.x first?

[StephenB]

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@atebit wrote:

Thanks for the outline, will be doing this within the week.  One more question: If I end up needing to revert to the old drives after moving to OS6, will they still be recognized or will I need to fall back to RAIDiator 4.x first?

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If you power up with all the old drives it should boot with the volume as read-only.  http://kb.netgear.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/29957?cid=wmt_netgear_organic

Though I haven't seen any posts from OS6-on-legacy users that confirm that this works with the legacy NAS.