ReadyNas stuck on Welcome screen

[zero101]

Hi there,

After several years of faithfull service my RN51600 has developed a fault.

After a recent power glitch my RN51600 never initalises past the Welcome screen, with its fan going at full speed.

No other electronics connected to the same power point has a problem (modem, switches, other NAS etc).

I have tried removing the hard drives and performing a reset, nothing happens, only get the welcome screen.

I have tried just fitting a blank drive, no change.

Is there something I am missing, or do I have a real hardware failure?

If this is a hardware failure, how do I get tech support help (I'm in Australia)?

Thanks.

[StephenB]

The hardware warranty on the RN516 is five years for the original purchaser.  If you purchased one of the very early units your warranty might be expiring very soon.  So perhaps start with verifying your warrranty status on my.netgear.com.

RAIDar should see the NAS if you power it up with no disks installed (and give you a no-disk status).  If it isn't doing that (and maybe even if it is), then contact support for an RMA (my.netgear.com, click "my support", then "contact support", and then "replace my defective netgear product").

[mdgm-ntgr]

An alternative would be to go to www.netgear.com/support and fill out the Contact Us form for a hardware failure.

Support will ask for your Proof of Purchase so get that ready.

Let us know how you get on.

[zero101]

Hi there, unfortunately I can't find my original reciept and without proof of purchase support can't (won't) help me.

Even though I am the person who registered this device and the serial no will say how much warranty is left.

They will not even look at my NAS and quote for repair.

Since I live in Australia we do have consumer laws which prevent manufactures avoiding their obligations.

I have asked our local governments consumer protection department to step in.

Thanks for your help anyway.

[mdgm-ntgr]

Asking for proof of purchase is reasonable under Australian Consumer Law

It's advisable to keep an electronic copy of the receipt in case the original is damaged or misplaced.

Once you find the receipt it should be straightforward to get your RMA, but if you still have problems after finding your receipt let me know.

[mdgm-ntgr]

Now, if you can't find your receipt you do still have multiple options for attempting to recover your data (assuming that your backup is not up to date).

These working smoothly does assume that your disks are fine and that the RAID and filesystem are fine.

1. Move your disks across to another x86 OS6 ReadyNAS. I'd suggest the RN526X, RN626X, RN528X or RN628X as suitable replacements. It's recommended to keep the disk order the same.
2. At your own risk you can use an ordinary x86 Linux machine. We use mdadm for the RAID and BTRFS for the filesystem. So after checking the disk health and the state of the RAID, if that's fine you could start the RAID and attempt to mount the filesystem.
3. At your own risk you could use software for Windows (probably not free) to attempt to recover your data. The software must be able to work with both the RAID layer and the filesystem on top.
4. You could ask a 3rd party (at your own risk) to help with any of the above options. Or for 1, if you had problems you could contact support (though there are costs involved with data recovery attempts - support would explain this).