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i got this used in 2011 from an acquaintance. Since I bought 2 new drives (WD red) in 2012 since one drive went kaput and I wanted to keep the same model drives. I had issues before where power outages required a factory reset and frankly i only use it as a tertiary storage. .
electricity went kaput today (thanks Pacific Gas & Electric!). My APC UPS didn't have enough power for me to gracefully shut the NAS down via power button. I was scrambling trying to shut down PC also though that other APC UPS has a fresher battery. both PC and NAS were on separate USPs. How when I try to power up, i have the left drive blink 2x, then the power, status and both drive blink at the same time. and the cycle repeats for blinking. I cannot find a status light pattern for this on the documentation or internet.The ethernet light isn't also blinking even when I switched the cable and put it directly to router vs. a switch. I don't think ethernet cables die anyway from power outages or surges, or at least least likely to die.
One last resort I'll try is to put back the old spare drive from the original pair and see if that resets. below is a short video of the status lights. pardon the noise as i'm next to an electric fan. anything else i can try while i'm researching my next NAS?
I reformatted my 3.5" drive and it's usable in windows 11. But then i plug it into the NAS, i still get the same beeps. Time to call it quits and declare it dead?
I still am wondering if it is the disk. The NAS has no speaker, so it actually can't beep - all it can do is flash the LEDs. If you are hearing beeps, they are coming from the disk - which is not a good sign. WD says to replace the disk if you hear them. But this could also indicate a power problem, especially if you don't hear them when they are connected to the PC. Still, the very slow formatting time in Windows suggests the disk isn't very healthy.
So I think the three possible causes remain on the table:
failed disk
power issue with the adapter
failed chassis
But I think it does make sense to move on.
Personally, I am going to run my own Duo v1 (and NV+) as long as they work. But I won't spend much (if anything) to fix them when they eventually fail. My primary storage and backups are hosted on newer, faster NAS, these two are only used as secondary backups.
That said, you could alternatively do a risk buy of a compatible power adapter, and/or a replacement disk. Total US cost would be around $125 (assuming a 2 TB purchase). The disk could be used in the new NAS if this fails, so the risk is only the cost of the power adapter.
It looks like you actually have the original Duo - called a v1 here.
The original duo
says "ReadyNAS Duo" on the front panel
runs 4.1.x firmware
The v2
says "ReadyNAS Duo v2" on the front panel
runs 5.3.x firmware.
There are other labels on the original Duo that might include v2 - those indicate minor hardware revisions, and create confusion when identifying the platform. So ignore any other labels.
The LED patterns are
LED blink behavior for 2 disk systems is three quick blinks of all disk LEDs and the backup LED, followed by an 1s delay, followed by a number of slow blinks. The number of slow blinks will be the error code.
Current error codes:
1 - Vendor mismatch
2 - No disks detected
3 - Bad contents on root partition of disks
4 - Flash error
5 - Unsupported RAID configuration
So this sounds like the NAS is not detecting the disks. I suggest powering down, and connecting them to a Windows PC (using SATA or a USB adapter/dock). Then test them with WD's dashboard software.
If you still have 2 disks in the NAS, then label them by slot as you remove them.
No need. The WD20EFRX is no longer manufactured, so anything you find online would be old inventory. The replacements are the WD20EFPX and the WD20EFZX. Both of these are branded as WD Red Plus. The 2 TB Seagate Ironwolf (ST2000VN003) will also work. You can use any of these three options in your NAS (and they don't need to match).
Avoid the WD Red (WD20EFAX), as it uses SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording), which doesn't work that well in RAID arrays. FWIW, most desktop-class 2 TB drives are now SMR, and should also be avoided.
Note the original Duo is limited to 2 TB or smaller drives. The v2 can handle larger ones.
thanks @StephenB for clarifying the version. Oddly the bottom sticker says V2 and it's always been confusing then which firmware to run. It's been stable for the past few years without the need for factory reset. We had power failures before and oddly it recovered so not sure on this.
i actually just got a sata connector with power this time since my previous connector i used for 2.5" and m-sata didn't enough power to power up the drive. I found the led pattern also and oddly one time and switching up the drives including an old one i just kept on backup, i managed to get 1 just the drive slow blink. but i cannot replicate and it's back to the original no disks detected
.
it's taking quite a bit of time to format and that's what i thought too - see if i can reformat and see if that works. i actually started doing that vs. seeing your post to use WD dashboard software but i have the other drive still i can do that on. So far, at least the connectors or the drive's hardware isn't bad because windows can see it and is formatting, though stuck at the same number of 49% for a while now.
i thought the original duo was only limited to 1tb (many many years now from my recollection). so i bought 1 tb only. nonetheless, i'll just start researching new NAS's what to replace especially since i have to use an old firefox browser due to TLS to access it (vs. using raidar).
well unsure how the firmware can be reloaded since powering up with the reset button pressed (pressed even for at least 30 secs) isn't doing anything. I reformatted my 3.5" drive and it's usable in windows 11. But then i plug it into the NAS, i still get the same beeps. Time to call it quits and declare it dead?
I reformatted my 3.5" drive and it's usable in windows 11. But then i plug it into the NAS, i still get the same beeps. Time to call it quits and declare it dead?
I still am wondering if it is the disk. The NAS has no speaker, so it actually can't beep - all it can do is flash the LEDs. If you are hearing beeps, they are coming from the disk - which is not a good sign. WD says to replace the disk if you hear them. But this could also indicate a power problem, especially if you don't hear them when they are connected to the PC. Still, the very slow formatting time in Windows suggests the disk isn't very healthy.
So I think the three possible causes remain on the table:
failed disk
power issue with the adapter
failed chassis
But I think it does make sense to move on.
Personally, I am going to run my own Duo v1 (and NV+) as long as they work. But I won't spend much (if anything) to fix them when they eventually fail. My primary storage and backups are hosted on newer, faster NAS, these two are only used as secondary backups.
That said, you could alternatively do a risk buy of a compatible power adapter, and/or a replacement disk. Total US cost would be around $125 (assuming a 2 TB purchase). The disk could be used in the new NAS if this fails, so the risk is only the cost of the power adapter.
my mistake. i put "beeps" but i meant blinks! i have 2 more drives to try and re-format and stick in. it was fairly slow to format, yes. i figure because they're more nas type drives? speed is less important than reliability especially if data just moves on a cat 5e? efforts now is just for kicks and a secondary NAS as i'm deciding on the next one. i don't like throwing stuff away that "might" still be salvageable.
i'm doing low level format. first pass i did was using mini-tool partition wizard and with just putting "0" (or "1") it was 5% at 1 hr. It was an option to wipe the WDD Red. So I stopped that and I figure I'll get my old 500gb (it's 500gb, not 1tb as i thought that was backup). it was also slow via partition wizard app too. i stopped it and i did diskpart in windows using clear command. i didn't time it but it was probably 2-3 hrs for 500gb? this drive was old and probably slow at 5400 but i don't recall and didn't verify looking at the drive's specs sticker.
will update once done. at least i can pop-in the 500gb again and try with a low level format via windows diskpart.
i'm doing low level format. first pass i did was using mini-tool partition wizard and with just putting "0" (or "1") it was 5% at 1 hr. It was an option to wipe the WDD Red.
just back to town... it took 2.5 hours to low level format using diskpart and clean all for the 1tb drive.maybe the mini-tool partition is like my acronis trueimage using some dod algorithm to erase the drive? clean command didn't take as long as mini-partition tool.
i couldn't wait longer the other night so unsure if the one i did earlier is consistent in speed. not sure what SMART info is valuable using WDD's digital dashboard. it says health is normal, gen 3 6.0 gb/s and some write performance numbers since i'm doing a second pass at low level format to see if the duration of the process is same as the other 1tb drive. i stopped the clean command to run a short diagnostic and info is attached.i'll had to do the same for the other drive.
i think it's more a hardware issue now. at least 2 low level formats and extended SMART tests, i am still getting the same blink patterns. Same with attempt to do factory reset. Is there a way to forcibly update the firmware?
not sure how else to eliminate the 12v power supply.
