Seagate 2TB IronWolf on RNDP200U ReadyNAS Ultra 2+

[DS327]

The worst. customer. support. in. the. solar. system.

[mdgm-ntgr · Accepted solution]

You should be able to access the NAS normally over your network.

It is possible to power down, remove the disk and connect the disk up to a PC and mount the volume, but that process does involve some steps (e.g. a handful of commands on the Linux shell, or using 3rd party software on Windows) and is really something that you should only consider doing if the chassis has died, you're not getting a new x86 ReadyNAS to move the disk to and there are some files missing from your backup.

When you hot-add (add while the NAS is on) the new drive it will automatically be wiped and a resync will occur to sync it to the existing disk.

[mdgm-ntgr]

Are you referring to a support case?

If you could message me the case number and why you feel that way about your experience I can review it for you.

[DS327]

Thank you, but I'm not about to pay $90 for customer support.  A company as big as Netgear should supply basic customer support and design its products to be more user friendly to non-technical customers.  I'm not dumb.  I just don't build computers or code. The thing that is frustrating is when a tech company doesn't bother to test its UX and UI with non technical humans.

Why in the world would there be no indication of what level RAID was running in the NAS I have?  I installed the drives many years ago.  I don't remember if it was RAID 0 OR 1.  Would it be so hard to have a panel of spec information pop up in the user interface somewhere?

I shouldn't have to get into operating system code to answer that simple question.

Netgear should join the movement to create the human-centric new world.  Not force machine-head.

Nothing personal mgdm.  Thanks for your interest.

[Sandshark]

You bought your NAS "many years ago" in your own words.  Name a tech company that provides free lifetime support on consumer grade products.  While I have heard of some support instances that do seem extremely poor, I don't put yours in that category.  This Forum is here to help you with your problems past warranty, free of change.  Why don't you avail yourself to it instead of just posting a tirade?  With a few details, you will likely have your answer.

What NAS model and firmware are you running?  OS6.x most certainly does show you the RAID level on the Volumes page.  Older 4.x and 5.x firmwars definately tell you if it's XRAID or not.  I don't know if they go into depth if it's FlexRAID.  What size drives are installed, and what is the size of the volume?

Since you have to go to extra steps to do something other than XRAID, I would certainly expect you to know what you did.  But no matter, the RAID configuration can be determined from the size of the drives and the volume contained on them.  Netgear even has a RAID calculator to help you with that.

[DS327]

Thank you. No tirade. To be honest, I just want to get the thing working and save my files.

I'm buying a Seagate 2TB IronWolf NAS SATA 6Gb/s NCQ 64MB Cache 3.5" Internal Hard Drive  to replace the bad drive.

Also would be great to know: is it possible that the single drive still in the chassis can mount on my desktop temporarily until I add the new replacement for the dead drive? I tried mounting it but it doesn't.  I'm leaving the nas powered up because I'm afraid to power it down with only one drive in it.

Also, will the new drive already be formatted?  If not, will the chassis do that when I install the drive?

The documentation for replacing a drive says:

The volume automatically synchronizes with the new disk in the background. This could

take several hours depending on the disk size. You can continue to use your ReadyNAS,

although access is slower until the volume synchronization finishes. You are notified by

email when the process is complete.

But it doesn't sound like it's saying that it will format the drive. 'Synchronization' doesn't sound like 'formatting'.  How do I pair this new drive with the existing one good drive without losing the 500 gb of data I have on the drive?

Thanks.  

[mdgm-ntgr · Accepted solution]

You should be able to access the NAS normally over your network.

It is possible to power down, remove the disk and connect the disk up to a PC and mount the volume, but that process does involve some steps (e.g. a handful of commands on the Linux shell, or using 3rd party software on Windows) and is really something that you should only consider doing if the chassis has died, you're not getting a new x86 ReadyNAS to move the disk to and there are some files missing from your backup.

When you hot-add (add while the NAS is on) the new drive it will automatically be wiped and a resync will occur to sync it to the existing disk.

[DS327]

Thank you.  New drive installed while nas running. 2 Tb Seagate IronWolf.   It made some minor noises and the lights blinked.  Raidar shows no change. 90 minutes later, no change.

I'm thinking I'll power the chassis down and relaunch.  After that, idk.

I just need the thing working.

Thanks

[DS327]

By the way, I do appreciate your help. 

I have to point out parenthetically, to answer your (rhetorical?) question as challenge of

Name a tech company that provides free lifetime support on consumer grade products.  

A:  The largest tech company on Earth; you may have heard of it..  Apple   ...provides free lifetime support on consumer grade products.  I'm not saying they repair/replace them for free forever.  I'm saying that in my twenty year experience with owning their products, a live human employed by Apple will help you solve issues with any Apple device.  They are not perfect, but they know what's up concerning UX.

I hope to someday have usage of my ReadyNas someday before I have Alzheimer's.  Still working on solving it. 

Sincerely, thank you for your help.

[DS327]

(I post the following in case its helpful to someone else in the same situation: one failed drive [of a pair] in a ReadyNas that was running the drives in Raid 1 level redundancy)

An update:

I was able, by replacing the failed drive with a new Seagate Ironwolf 2tb, get the system towards operational.  As I write this, the chassis has shown up in the "admin window" or whatever it's called

(accessed by entering

https://nas-ip-address/admin

into an internet browser's url window and then logging in with your NetGear user name and password)

...and now the system has on its own started "syncing" the new drive by copying the data from the old surviving drive.  I don't yet know if the system will be operational when it finishes syncing, but it seems like it should, since both drives now show up in the Raidar app as mounted.

Here's what the windows look like:

Bon chance!

[StephenB]

FWIW, on your NAS model the web ui is called "Frontview".   It has different names on some platforms (for instance "Dashboard" on the v2 platforms).  So I usually call it the "admin web ui".

It looks to me like all is well from your screen shots.  You might look at the data with File Explorer (Windows) or Finder (Mac), just to confirm that it is present.

[Sandshark]

It looks like it was probably that bad drive pulling down the +12V, or the warnings would have continued during the re-sync.  So it should be smooth sailing.  You can access the volume duing the re-sync to verify everythng is intact, but it will be a bit sluggish.