ReadyNas 102 Will not boot and is not visible on my network.
Two days ago I purchased a second hand RN102. I put in two identical and formatted disks and connected it to my network. I installed it via the discover option in ReadyCloud and got to the admin page by typing the IP adress in my browser. On the admin page there was a popup saying that a firmware update was available. Ik clicked on install but there was an error number. After clicking "try again" the popup window went blank with only a 'cancel' button which after a while I clicked because nothing seemed to happen. I tried updating the firmware manually selecting a downloaded img file from the option on the admin page but there was a something like a version problem and it gave an error and did not start to update.
In the meantime I installed RAIDar where I saw that the disks needed formatting. I decided to enter the boot menu to go back to factory settings because the thing was second hand an I wanted to be sure no unwanted settings were set.
The next morning (formatting of the 2TB disks took some hours) I found the system working. Power LED, Act LED (I think) and both HDD LEDS were on. I browsed around on the admin page to see all options and I enabled iTunes sharing. Also via Windows Explorer I started copying a folder with a few GB's of data. After some time I noticed that the copying had paused. The HDD leds on the NAS were not lit anymore and after a while I cancelled the copy on my laptop.
From this point on every attempt to connect with the NAS has failed. And powerdown by double click on power button doesn't work. When I turn it on, the activity LED and the power LED come on but nothing else happens.
I can't connect to the NAS any more via its IP address. It is not visible on the network or as attached device on my router. Because I suspected an IP address conflict, I added an IP reservation in my router for the MAC address of the NAS. Also no result. The IP address is not pingable. RAIDar also does not detect any device on my network.
The ethernet port on the NAS gives a nice green glowing LED and the corresponding LED on my router gives a white LED which means there is a device connected with 1GB speed. So the LAN is connected to the router but it gets no IP address assigned? I started to suspect that the NAS was not booting up far enough to start asking for an IP address from the router. and decided to reinstall the firmware.
However OS reinstall and factory reset via boot menu don't work. After activating one of these modes, all LEDS exept the HDD leds start flashing and they keep flashing for hours. The only way to stop the flashing is to power down (by unplugging the power cord).
I tried powering it up with two disks, with one disk and with no disks, the result is always the same. I tried firmware reinstall by booting from USB. All with the same result: blinking lights and no sign the installation is actually starting. If I remember correctly the firmware it had from factory setting was something like 6.1.x. and because I read about the caution not to update in big steps I tried installing different versions ranging from 6.2.5 to 6.9.5. No results.
I am at the end of my wit and start to believe that the thing is bricked. Does anyone have any idea if (and how) my NAS can be revived?
If I remember correctly the firmware it had from factory setting was something like 6.1.x. and because I read about the caution not to update in big steps I tried installing different versions ranging from 6.2.5 to 6.9.5.
If you were running 6.1.x firmware, then the correct upgrade path would be 6.1.x -> 6.2.5 ->6.5.2->6.9.5.
Do you recall what the upgrade offered in the web UI was?
Try powering down and removing the disks. Then power up. Install RAIDar on an PC, and see if it can detect the NAS. Also, if it tells you the firmware that is installed, please let us know what it says. https://kb.netgear.com/20684/ReadyNAS-Downloads
Re: ReadyNas 102 Will not boot and is not visible on my network.
Hi Stephen, thanks for your help.
Sadly I don't remember the offered version in the web UI. I do know that the first one tried, the one I downloaded and picked from the web UI was 6.9.5. That one gave an error and I think that was because of the version.
When booting from USB I tried 6.2.5, 6.4.2, 6.5.2 and 6.9.5. I started with 6.2.5.
I tried your suggestion already but just did it again to be sure.
Power down, remove disks, power on. The on/off button starts flashing and after a few seconds it stops flashing and just stays on. It is the only light burning and... "RAIDar could not find any NETGEAR storage on your network."
The on/off button starts flashing and after a few seconds it stops flashing and just stays on. It is the only light burning and... "RAIDar could not find any NETGEAR storage on your network."
Maybe try the USB recovery with a different flash drive. It's quite fussy, and several posters here have said they needed to try several. Generally older ones work better.
