Shutdown and reboot always hangs. ReadyNAS Ultra 2 (4.2.17)

[TrulyVexed]

New owner of a diskless ReadyNAS Ultra 2. Landed on my desk a few hours ago. Installed a single WD20EARS (Western Digital 2TB) hard-drive, was listed on the HCL.

Obtains an IP as expected, could see it using RAIDar 4.3.1 - connected and installed a single RAID0 volume (I've also tried X-RAID).

Get into the webpage management without problems and prompted for an update, download and update to RAIDiator 4.2.17.. update is successful and then told to Shutdown and reboot the device.

Select Shutdown and Reboot.. apply.. and then the unit reboots but the fan kicks in at full pelt and just sits there. Doesn't obtain an IP address, is completely inaccessible.. no lights flickering, just the power LED is solid.. left it for over an hour, no display of activity on the device and it's still inaccessible. It doesn't respond to ping on either the DHCP acquired address or 192.168.168.168 (obviously temporarily placed my workstation on that subnet to test)

Manually switch off by holding the power button in.. switch back on.. device has successfully updated to 4.2.17 and is accessible within RAIDar. Everything looks good.

Use the management page to ask it to Shutdown and reboot.. same thing happens, fan at full pelt and system inaccessible. Ask it to Factory reset.. same thing happens.

Use the management page to ask it to Shutdown and switch off... and it works works fine! Switch back on, everything looks good. Factory reset / OS Reinstall using the 'boot menu' / 'reset' switch works fine but EVERY SINGLE TIME I ask it to shutdown and reboot or factory reset from within the web page management is shuts down, reboots and sits there inaccessible.. left it for 45 minutes before giving up.

Did speak to a member of Netgear Support on the phone who had never heard of the problem before and suggested I test the HD in a workstation instead.. currently running a full test.. but it's passed the quick test and there were no SMART+ errors within the Netgear interface.

Just wondering whether anyone had seen this before and whether there's a simple fix? I've not even put any data onto it yet.. but if it can't handle a simple shutdown and reboot request I'm not sure I want to trust it with my data.. tempted to just send it back but can't face running through all those steps again same day with the reseller / Netgear.

[TrulyVexed]

Hard-drive passed all diagnostics.

Guess i'll try dropping it down to 4.2.15 tomorrow (believe 4.2.16 had overheating issues on the RN Ultra 2) if the problem persists will open a case with Netgear and get the unit replaced.

And I was so looking forward to my new media storage box 😞

[chazen]

Have similar problem with firmware 4.2.17, ever since I installed 4.2.17 the unit becomes in accessible after a while within 24 hours. What I notice is the interface logs Rx errors and so does the switch port the nas is plugged into. The unit ran beautiful for a year straight before the firmware update.

[TrulyVexed]

Downgraded to 4.2.16 (the oldest it would let me), I'm experiencing the same problem. Upgrade to 4.2.17, same problem.

Web Management, Shutdown and switch off.. works pretty much every time.
Web Management, Shutdown and reset, fails every single time.. looks like it shuts down, reboots and then cannot access the hard-drive.. fan kicks in at full speed and the device just sits there inaccessible.
Web Management, Factory default, fails every single time.. same as above.
SOMETIMES after a Shutdown and switch off.. when you switch the unit on, the same problem happens.
It's almost as if on a reboot, the drive is powered down and the NAS isn't waiting long enough for it to spin back up in order to access the OS.

Factory default / OS Reinstall via the 'boot menu' makes no difference.

The hard-drive has passed Western Digitals short and extended tests.

Ah well, I'm tired of troubleshooting this, didn't expect to have these problems with a brand new NAS.. time to speak to the reseller and get it returned, if the next unit exhibits similar behaviour I'll just have to switch to an alternate brand. After the debacle of the SC101 I was wary of another Netgear SAN/NAS, this experience hasn't done anything to improve that. Colour me disappointed.

[TrulyVexed]

Have also tried a single Seagate 500gb (only other drive I had on the HCL) and experienced the same issues. Finally tried the boot menu test disk procedure on both disks which also passed without issue.

Ran out of ideas and RMA'd it.

[chazen]

Update on this: Perform a "Local" System Update of the same 4.2.17 firmware. Download to your desktop the RAIDiator-x86 4.2.17 firmware package from the Netgear support site. From the ReadyNAS Frontview, browse to System, update. From the "Local" tab browse to the location of the firmware package and "Upload and verify image" to install. This seemed to clear up the problem of Rx errors on the interface. ReadyNAS has been working fine since the Local update!

[chazen]

Try installing 4.2.18, (which is now 4.2.19 because its been pulled due to the fact that any AFP-enabled share will inadvertently obtain guest access), from readynas.com the "news and events" page. It's not the support page which is where you think you would find it, but no. Installed 4.2.18 and it seems to be working much better, no thanks to their support line.
-- J

[abray1978]

I have the same unit and am hitting the exact same issue. I told the unit to Shutdown and Reboot from the web interface after it installed 4.2.19 and now it keeps hanging on boot with the fan going full speed 😞