Hoping for some help here. My issue started with an alert on a disk 1 failure, a day after that the NAS froze up and the only way to reboot it was to power cycle the system. After that it would not start and and displayed "Failed to startup" on the LCD. I tried an OS reinstall...no luck. I finally got it breathing again by doing a USB boot with the latest firmware. The updated the system from 6.25 to 6.4.1. The system now starts up and the failure on disk 1 now shows as healthy. However, I am unable to write to my shares or make any system changes like creating new shares, deleting old ones, install/update apps or access my iscsi luns.
One odd thing is my volume data shows 2MB while I have 2.41 TB free and 588 GB used in snapshots....so it looks like something is messed up there?
Has anyone run into something similar and know how I can get this up and running properly again? My most important data is on my iscsi luns and I really need to get to that asap. Thanks for any help you can provide.
USB Boot Recovery is not meant to be used to update the firmware, but you've done that now.
This looks like a data recovery situation to me.
If you don't have a backup, you should refrain from trying anything else yourself and contact support, also provide them with the logs and they can discuss the cost involved with you.
You could of course try backing up the data on the ordinary file shares (if you have some of those and can access them) but for the iSCSI LUNs you would need assistance from support.
The iSCSI LUN functionality depends on read/write access to the filesystem. As the filesystem has gone read-only you can no longer access them.
The USB recovery was not mean to update the firmware, it was used to get the NAS back to a booting and useable state.
I sure hope your exaggerating when you say this is a data recovery situation that will cost $$$. This is supposed to be a raid 5 volume where a single failed drive should have no affect on the system. Instead it has caused the entire system to go unstable. I didn't expect to shell out $600 for an unstable and senstive NAS system to go haywire over a single failed drive.
USB Boot Recovery puts a good copy of the firmware on the internal flash. That's all.
None of what you have posted would suggest that there was a problem with the firmware on the flash.
Since you put newer irmware on the flash than what's on the disks, the NAS recognised this and updated the firmware on the disks.
I can see your array is currently doing a resync
As for how your volume came to enter this read-only state that would require a more detailed analysis. It appears that with log flooding some logs have already been rotated so that may/may not be possible.
There are problems that RAID cannot protect against, which is why backups are important.
There must be more to it than a disk being marked dead
When the disk was marked as failed that was certainly an indication that it would be a good idea to update your regular backup, and to remove the failed disk and run some tests on it. Certainly leaving a disk that the NAS has determined has failed in the unit and allowing it to be automatically reincorporated back into the array has the potential to lead to problems.
No matter which device you store important data on, you should never store it on just the one device.
It's possible support may judge the situation differently. However with an expired support warranty they would still need a support contract in place.
If the flash was unsuccessful in doing an OS reinstall from the boot menu that most certainly tells me the flash got corrupt, especially when going off the USB finally worked.
To go from a failed drive then the next morning end up with a corrupt OS and flash before I can even get a replacement drive doesn't leave me with many options. THen to hear "hope you had a backup" gives me even less confidence in my product purchase. Then to be told I should be prepared to pay extra for help really starts to make my blood boil. A price point of $600 for a NAS that supports RAID 5 and snapshot options sould have no issues with a single failed drive and the last thing I should ever expect to see is a corrupt file system on the supporting OS.
Since all that has been mentioned is that I should have several different backups I assume my snapshots are useless?
If the flash was unsuccessful in doing an OS reinstall from the boot menu that most certainly tells me the flash got corrupt, especially when going off the USB finally worked.
Your logs indicate that the extraction of the firmware was successful when you did an OS Re-install. It could be there was a bug fix between 6.2.5 and 6.4.1 which meant that you were able to regain access to the web interface in 6.4.1, but if the firmware on the internal flash was corrupt there would have been an error indicating this in the logs.
To go from a failed drive then the next morning end up with a corrupt OS and flash before I can even get a replacement drive doesn't leave me with many options.
The flash was fine, but the problems you ran into led to the management service going offline.
You could have removed the disk that has failed and start testing it. Now, I would not even do that, but rather power off the system, contact support and wait for their advice.
nate1380 wrote:
THen to hear "hope you had a backup" gives me even less confidence in my product purchase.
Well, backing up is certainly preferable to needing data recovery or a support contract.
Then to be told I should be prepared to pay extra for help really starts to make my blood boil.
A 90 day support warranty is common in the industry and is the case for our home models such as the 104 and I did not want to set unrealistic expectations.
In any case if it is a data recovery situation this is not something that would be covered under a support warranty anyway.
A price point of $600 for a NAS that supports RAID 5 and snapshot options sould have no issues with a single failed drive
On Amazon a diskless RN104 is selling for under $250. Of course, disks add to this cost. Businesses spend 5 figures or even more, use RAID and still see the importance of backup.
In most cases things should be fine when a single drive has failed, but as I stated clearly there is more going on here.
and snapshot options sould have no issues with a single failed drive
Snapshots do not provide redundancy. They allow you to rollback a file share/LUN to how things were in the past frozen at a point in time or in the case of ordinary file shares recover a subset of your files/folders on the share from a given point in the past (rather than needing to roll everything back).
Like RAID snapshots can help reduce the likelihood of needing to do a full restore from backup, but they are not a replacement for backups.
A backup is a copy of your data that is stored on a different device to the primary copy. So if the primary copy is on your PC then the copy on the NAS is a backup.
Furthermore keeping at least one backup off-site at all times is recommended to allow for the possibility of fire, flood and theft.
It's up the individual to decide what value data has and what backup strategy is put in place.
Since all that has been mentioned is that I should have several different backups I assume my snapshots are useless?
Snapshots are useless, but it must be stressed that they are not a replacement for backups. Also snapshots are more appropriate for some use cases than for others.
Should you wish for support to make an attempt to recover your data, your snapshots may yet prove crucial to the chances of success.
