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Restart a ReadyNAS NV+ RND4000 after many years of downtime
Hi folks,
after many years of downtime I try to reactivate my NV+ (RND4000) NAS server for nostalgic reasons. I took it out of service after some big trouble with the firmware of the seagate Barracuda drives, which resulted in a fully smashed file allocation table on all 4 drives (far as I understood the problem). Activities needed for a repair seemed useless to me at that time. Selling this equipment didn't work. Nobody wants it even for free.
So now I try again with some obstacles, because most of the references given in the documentation don't exist anymore.
After a full factory reset 4.1.13 is the available version of RAIDiator now. I read somwhere, that for 2GB drives I should at least update to 4.1.15.
Obviously I'm too stupid to find this or any other suitable version of RAIDiator as an image to use with the options for local update based on RAIDiator 4.1.13. I guess I'd need an iso file format but don't know how to gererate it.
After browsing this community for more than 2 hours I'm still as stupid as before.
Can anybody provide a direct link to a download of an adequate RAIDiator version, which I can easily get onto my NV+? A short instruction would also be nice, as I didn't succeed in searching this either. My CD from the original package points to netgear.com/documentation which does not exist anymore for reasons I can't understand.
Re: Restart a ReadyNAS NV+ RND4000 after many years of downtime
4.1.13 should work with 2 TB disks, but still you should upgrade to the current firmware, which is 4.1.16. You can try the check-for-updates feature in the web ui, or you can download it manually from here: https://kb.netgear.com/000038792/RAIDiator-Version-4-1-16-Sparc
If you do a manual install, then you need to unzip the download and install the binary image. Installing the zip file won't work.
Although you didn't ask about disks, I do want to point out that the hardware compatability list for your NAS hasn't been updated in many years now. The best option is to use a NAS-purposed drive (the 2 TB WDC Red or Seagate Ironwolf). Enterprise-class drives are overkill, your NAS isn't fast enough to take advantage of them. I don't recommend using desktop-class drives in any NAS.
Also, if you are using the NAS with Windows 10... Microsoft is deprecating the SMB 1.0 client that is needed to access the NAS through file explorer. You can manually enable it - try entering "turn windows features on or off" in the windows search bar.
My own NV+ is still in service btw - though I am only using it as a secondary backup. I plan to continue to run it until it fails, but I won't invest more money in it. It's been very reliable for me, but it's capacity and performance isn't enough anymore.
Re: Restart a ReadyNAS NV+ RND4000 after many years of downtime
4.1.13 should work with 2 TB disks, but still you should upgrade to the current firmware, which is 4.1.16. You can try the check-for-updates feature in the web ui, or you can download it manually from here: https://kb.netgear.com/000038792/RAIDiator-Version-4-1-16-Sparc
If you do a manual install, then you need to unzip the download and install the binary image. Installing the zip file won't work.
Although you didn't ask about disks, I do want to point out that the hardware compatability list for your NAS hasn't been updated in many years now. The best option is to use a NAS-purposed drive (the 2 TB WDC Red or Seagate Ironwolf). Enterprise-class drives are overkill, your NAS isn't fast enough to take advantage of them. I don't recommend using desktop-class drives in any NAS.
Also, if you are using the NAS with Windows 10... Microsoft is deprecating the SMB 1.0 client that is needed to access the NAS through file explorer. You can manually enable it - try entering "turn windows features on or off" in the windows search bar.
My own NV+ is still in service btw - though I am only using it as a secondary backup. I plan to continue to run it until it fails, but I won't invest more money in it. It's been very reliable for me, but it's capacity and performance isn't enough anymore.
Re: Restart a ReadyNAS NV+ RND4000 after many years of downtime
Thank you very much for the quick answer. My NV+ is not connected to the internet and just runs as a local storage for an old desktop with Win XP.
I told the NV to do a reboot and check disks at next boot. Unfortunately it comes up with a "Found bad disks" message without saying which one is bad. Yesterday all of them were still fully ok. The boot sequence doesn't finish. May I take out the disks one by one in this state?
If the NV+ will not boot, I can't test the firmware update. It also doesn't shut down when pressing the power button for five seconds. I will need to force it down most likely, because it is also not accessible via RAIDar so far.
May I take out the disks one by one in this state?
Yes. Forcibly power down and then you can test the disks one-by-one n a windows PC using vendor tools (seatools for seagate, lifeguard for western digital). You can connect the disks using SATA or a USB adapter/dock. I doubt that the vendor tools run on XP anymore.
You can also start over, doing a factory reset with only one disk in place. If that works, upgrade the firmware. Then examine the SMART stats for the disk, and make sure it is actually healthy. If it fails, try again with another disk.
Then hot-insert the second disk, and wait for it to resync. If that succeeds, re-examine the SMART stats for both drives. Repeat this for the remaining disks.
Re: Restart a ReadyNAS NV+ RND4000 after many years of downtime
Now I switched the ReadyNAS NV+ off and on again an did a reboot with only drive 3+4. All drives are WD20ETRX (WD Caviar Green). The boot sequence was successful, but it shows "C: 0/0 MB free", which irritates me a little. I didn't put any data on that device so far. So even if the volume gets lost, this is not a problem for now. I just wonder, what a stupid system behavior this is.
At least I can access it now via RAIDar 4.1.4. I hope, the unzipped file RAIDiator-4.1.16 is an iso file, which I can't see, although my Windows Explorer is set to display file suffix.
The report after reboot btw says "Volume scan found no errors" although the front display still says "C: 0/0 MB free". Very funny! A second message says, the volume shares could not be found. Does this again point to a destroyed file allocation table? So it seems, it's a problem of the ReadyNAS, not of the drives, because it behaves exactly the same way as the seagate Barracudas long time ago. Let's see what's going on after the RAIDiator update.
Now I switched the ReadyNAS NV+ off and on again an did a reboot with only drive 3+4. All drives are WD20ETRX (WD Caviar Green). The boot sequence was successful, but it shows "C: 0/0 MB free", which irritates me a little. I just wonder, what a stupid system behavior this is.
The RAID volume can't be mounted with only two disks, you need at least three. This is standard RAID stuff.
You could try powering down and trying again with 2+3+4. Many times a boot failure is related to the first disk (since the system will ordinarly boot from it if it is present).
Re: Restart a ReadyNAS NV+ RND4000 after many years of downtime
With your help so far this has not been too much work. Many thanks for that.
Checking the disks one by one seems quite boring to me. I failed with this before when trying to rescue the Barracudas several years ago. I once bought such a USB adaptor, because I don't have a desktop with SATA slots at hand. All my computers are notebooks since that time and none of them has a 3,5" hard drive - what a pitty!
Re: Restart a ReadyNAS NV+ RND4000 after many years of downtime
After the file upload there was a request button whether I really want to do a system update. Yepp, that was my intention.
Now I'm booting with drives 2+3+4 and the RAIDiator-4.1.16 file uploaded to the ReadyNAS. It says "Booting..." and "Updating FW". Seems this went nicely so far. Sure, this device is not very quick in everything it does. But this is the "nostalgic factor".
After 6 minutes the fan becomes louder and "Please wait" is in the display". Still also "Booting...". Then the "Please wait" disappears and the fan still goes max for another 3 minutes. Now the fan slows down.
Meanwhile I updated RAIDar from 4.1.4 to 4.3.8 and hope this is compatible with Win XP.
Of course it throws a message "No JVM could be found on your system. Please define EXE4J_JAVA_HOME to point to an installed 32-bit JDK or JRE or download a JRE from www.java.com"
I do what? Well, let's see where this leads me to. Did I mention, that I'm not a gamer at all? This is not fun at all to me. I need my time for better things.
Re: Restart a ReadyNAS NV+ RND4000 after many years of downtime
No. ORACLE bothers me with some stupid license agreements when I try to click that link. I stop that and go ahead with the old RAIDar 4.1.4, which seemed to be ok so far. I'm fed up with ORACLE for a lifetime. I had to negotiate license agreements with them for my company. Their behavior was unbelievable. I don't support them whereever I can. They literally do nothing for me and want to get paid for that. That's no business. That's blackmailing. Companies like that ought to be wiped off that planet.
Re: Restart a ReadyNAS NV+ RND4000 after many years of downtime
I found an older seatools install file which I tried to install again to check the WD hard drives - although I'm asking myself what I'm doing here? Waste even more hours on some idiot system that is not designed to work properly?
That install file requested the .Net environment before it could continue. Again a reason to immediately stop such procedures. I remember what a mess it was to get rid of all this useless stuff on my old desktop PC. No. I won't do this. I'll bring this ReadyNAS to a state that I can claim it works and then hand it over as a gift to my worst enemy.
We live in the age of design thinking and we should quickly leave behind all products, which were not made this way. Computers have to work for me - not the opposite way.
Re: Restart a ReadyNAS NV+ RND4000 after many years of downtime
Being back on RAIDar 4.1.4 also RAIDiator software on the ReadyNAS is displayed again as version 4.1.13 although everything looked quite nicely after the reboot with the image of 4.1.16 uploaded. I don't understand this and I estimate that it is not worth being understood.
What a waste of time this ReadyNAS world is - unbelievable!
Re: Restart a ReadyNAS NV+ RND4000 after many years of downtime
When you log into the web UI, are you seeing 4.1.16 or 4.1.13?
If you are seeing 4.1.13, then possibly the firmware upgrade failed. In that case you should try it again.
wrote:
I found an older seatools install file which I tried to install again to check the WD hard drives - although I'm asking myself what I'm doing here?
...What a waste of time this ReadyNAS world is - unbelievable!
One thing that certainly is a waste of time is setting up a RAID array using marginal/failing disks.
Not sure why you are trying to use an old version of a seagate diagnostic to test a WD hard drive.
In any event, you are complaining about a product that was discontinued 7 years ago. If you want to try to resurrect it, we're willing to help you. If not, just let it go.
Re: Restart a ReadyNAS NV+ RND4000 after many years of downtime
In RAIDar 4.1.4 I see, that the RAIDiator version on NV+ is now 4.1.16, even after a new factory reset, because one more disk was indicated as bad. Actually I can't believe, that 3 of 6 identical disks I'm using should be bad. Two of them are brand new. This is simply not very likely.
After the last factory reset with now RAIDiator 4.1.16 not recognize the C volume correctly, because it says "C: 1/1GB free". There are 4 disks with 2GB each installed.
When I try to configure the NV+ via RAIDar 4.1.4, it won't come up with an adequate interface. The frame is there, also some buttons and the NETGEAR logo, but no text at all. In the right top corner it says "ReadyNAS null".
Testing the blamed hard drives I will leave to some professional. I won't waste my time with getting used to weird conditions such software needs.
Re: Restart a ReadyNAS NV+ RND4000 after many years of downtime
So I finally end up with a device, which kills one hard drive after the other, doesn't work at all even after a full day of attention spent on it and can't even be reset to a working firmware.
It took me years to forget about the pain this device brought to me before. Here we go again.
I know I'm operating a product which was discontinued 7 years before. But when I calculate how long this device did valuable service to me and how much trouble it brought along, which even can't be solved with professional help in a reasonable period of time, I must say, that this brand does not earn my trust. There is a good reason, why I never tried any younger product from NETGEAR after the experience I made with this one. This wasn't some cheap occasion on a fleemarket. It was a considerable invest and this turned out to be a big mistake. Since years I have another NAS in place which really does a perfect job.
Re: Restart a ReadyNAS NV+ RND4000 after many years of downtime
Are you sure the drives are dead, or might the NAS just think they are? "Green" drives can be problematic in a NAS. And mixing them with non-green ones can be worse. The green ones often take longer to spin up and the NAS will mark them as "dead", even though they are not. And once marked "dead", it won't unmark them unless you remove them, unpartition, and re-inset as a new drive. Then, it will reformat them and add them back to the volume. Of course, that only works if one goes "dead" at a time.
If the drives really are damaged, as determined by manufacturer's diagnostic software, then it sounds like there is a good chance that something is vastly wrong with one of the power supply voltages, and you shold stop what you are trying to do before you kill more drives.
Re: Restart a ReadyNAS NV+ RND4000 after many years of downtime
Thanks for the hint that the "greens" might be recognized wrongly as bad. That fits to the experience, that I can put one of the "bad" ones into the system later without any problem at first. But with one of the next reboots the NV+ may stop with the message "bad disk fond". So the period given to the drives by RAIDiator 4.1.16 to spin up is somehow too short. Another 5 second might be fully enough. The whole device is extremely slow anyway. So those 5 seconds won't be a disadvantage. It's really annoying, that in such case the NV+ can only be shut down by switching the power button on the back side.
I can't imagine it would have been complicated to overcome this status with some programming.
With the 500 GB Barracudas from Seagate the problem must have been much worse. They crashed the file table soon as they used all sectors for the first time.
I will let all my disks be checked by some expert. I doubt any of those is really broken. It's the ReadyNAS, that can't deal with ordinary disks.
I understand that the disks should be comparable for the RAID functionality. But more than a comparable capacity should not have any bad influence on operations. Otherwise the product has never been worth the money it once had cost. It simply doesn't make sense to exclude almost every common disk by means of specs. Why does almost every PC get along with almost any HD and a NAS doesn't need to? That's what I would logically call a really bad product.
Re: Restart a ReadyNAS NV+ RND4000 after many years of downtime
I guess you don't realize that the "green" drives didn't exist when the NV/NV+ was designed. So saying that they cannot handle "common" drives that came later is like complaining that an early 70's muscle car won't run well on unleaded gas. Netgear did continue to test later drives while the NV+ was a current product, and almost none of the green ones were on the compatibility list. Even the drive manufacturers said they were not suited for RAID (any RAID -- any brand of NAS, server, or computer). But, you think that's Netgear's fault, not that of the person who failed to do his homework and purchase the right drives?
If you want help, we'll continue to give it to you. If you just want to complain, please take it elsewhere.
Re: Restart a ReadyNAS NV+ RND4000 after many years of downtime
Yes, I must admit that I wasn't aware of chosing wrong harddrives for my ReadyNAS. And yet, I can't accept that I could do anything wrong when putting drives into the slots which fit perfectly on hardware level. If the product asks me to do "homework", it is definitely not the product I want to have. It is simply not able to fit my expectations and guess what happens with a product which was far too expensive for what it helps to solve compared to how much attention it asks from its user: Such a product does not support any trust into the brand written on it. There is no second chance to get that right anyhow later unless I get my money back.
All companies do the same? No, I can't agree on that. I tested other products meanwhile and they were way simpler to use and fit my expectations a lot more. Those brands earn my respect and loyalty. Thanks for pushing me the right way for better purchasing decisions.
