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My drives were removed, and although I thought they were put back in the correct order, apparently they weren't. I saw where a jedi mentioned it was possible for a tech support member to determine which drive goes where, but I'm outside of the support window on this thing. Does anyone know the commands or where to look for this information? I can get in using safe mode, I assume I'll be able to ssh in as well. Or use the support login. Either way.
One option is to remove the drives from the RN316 and then do a factory default with just a single spare drive in place. Then see what happens with the EDA volume.
It might also be possible to remount the RN516 volume. Do you have a log zip file?
Netgear's data recovery service might also be an option here, though the initial assessment would cost $200 USD.
The longer version is: I got a newer NAS, and I plan to use these drives in there. I had all of my important data backed up, but there was some that's technically replaceable. I'd rather not have to, though.... So I hooked up my EDA enclosure and transferred the data there and exported it. Then I took my drives from the system and put them in the new system, but didn't set anything up. (it probably did something anyway, is my thought)
Anyway, I plugged my EDA into another system, and that volume doesn't show up either. Those drives weren't moved or anything other than plugging the unit into my 316. I thought, okay, I better move my drives back and rsync it to a different server... but it wouldn't take the drives gracefully.
Now I guess that's the only way to get that data back is to see why my eda volume isn't showing up.
Follow up, I suppose... The only reason I can reasonably think the 316 won't accept my eda enclosure is the name may have previously been used... Not positive. But with that theory in mind, is there a way to get rid of the stored names from the past?
One option is to remove the drives from the RN316 and then do a factory default with just a single spare drive in place. Then see what happens with the EDA volume.
It might also be possible to remount the RN516 volume. Do you have a log zip file?
Netgear's data recovery service might also be an option here, though the initial assessment would cost $200 USD.
Well, I think you might be onto something... I have a lot of my data on the 316 currently. But, I could initialize the 516 with one drive and see if it'd use the EDA. That's a great idea. Thank you Stephen.
As far as my drives, I think they are just gone now. I put them in a QNAP, which may or may not have started some initial phase to get them ready for the new system. Although I didn't even log in to move forward, I suspect that's probably what happened. Even if I could get the drives back, it really wouldn't matter. Like I said, it's replaceable data, I'd just rather not have to. All of my important data is backed up.
I did the reformat, and when I plugged the EDA in, I was presented with the same error. Remove the inactive volumes.... you know the drill. Just to cover my bases, I rebooted with the EDA plugged in, and upon startup, the volume was there! Great news. Thank you Stephen. That was a great idea. Even if the data wasn't essential, I really didn't want to have to go digging for 18TB of data.
You cannot just plug an EDA500 into another system, or even the same NAS after a factory default. You have to EXPORT that volume before you remove it from the original NAS. But, so long as all the things you've done have not made the matter worse, there is a solution. You can just put the EDA drives into your main NAS and it should boot, showing the original main (normally data) volume as missing but the EDA volume accessible.
From that point, you have three options. You can just back up the data and start over with the EDA on another NAS, or you can EXPORT the EDA volume now so it can be added to another NAS. The caveat here is that once you do the EXPORT, you can no longer boot with the EDA drives. So it's best to make the backup anyway, then you can try the EXPORT just to save restoration time. An import is done automatically by plugging the EDA into the new NAS with power off and powering up. The third option has a lot of caveats, so is not recommended, and that's to just leave the EDA volume as the main one and DESTROY the (now non-existent) main (data) volume. But that can cause issues with home folders and apps that require a lot of messing around via SSH to fix.
Unfortunately, I've been unable to figure out just what the EXPORT does. So if this solution doesn't work, I know of no other one.
For the benefit of others, not all ReadyNAS are compatible with the EDA 500. But the 316 and 516 are, so this solution works for you. This solution is also available to you because your NAS has 6 bays. A user of a 2-bay system couldn't mount a 5-drive EDA volume in their main NAS. It can be done with a 4-bay NAS, but the volume will come up as degraded.
None of this is covered by Netgear documentation, AFAIK, so don't feel bad that you missed it. I ran a lot of experiments when I lost an EDA500 volume and had to restore it, anyway. And I then ran more when I moved the main 516 volume and two EDA volumes into a 12-bay rack-mount system with a 24-bay expansion chassis (which, as it turns out, just works) and then had the 516 and two EDAs on which to experiment (well, one real EDA500 one one third-party 5-bay eSATA chassis).
