Steven L. O'Harra 3595 Quail View Street Spring Valley, CA 91977 Cell: 1-619-xxx-xxxx (redacted for posting purposes)
Attention NetGear Corporate - Technical Support Group SUBJECT: QuinHong's Exceptional Customer Service Support Case #25572749 Support Engineer/Technician: QingHong 34004
To whom it may concern,
Two of my ReadyNAS RN-104 NAS Devices firmware upgraded from 6.2.4 to 6.2.5 just fine.
The third eadyNAS RN-104 NAS Device did not (I believe) properly update from 6.2.4 to 6.2.5. (it hung after the update and had to be manually powered off-on to come back online on my home network)
It was several days after the update that I first access this third RN-104 file system. When I did, the root structure appeared in Windows8.1 File Explorer (which Ipresume is stored in non-voatile memory) but when I attempted to access files/folders beneath the shared folders, Microsoft Explorer timed out.
I rebooted the Win8.1 Client and the now-suspect RN-104 and tried (still w/o success) to access folders/files in the shared directories.
I then connected to the RN-104 through the web interface only to discover that the single volume could not be found.
I booted the RN-104 and navigated to the Boot Menu > Disk Test. Several hours later, the Disk Test discovered no errors. I rebooted the RN-104 and again, the single volume could not be located.
I have a spare (number 4) RN-104 so I physically moved all four 4TB Seagate Baracuda drives into the spare RN-104.
The same problem (unable to locate the single volume presented itself.
Again, I booted the spare (new in box) RN-104, and ran the Boot Menu > Disk Test. As before, several hours later, the Disk Test discovered no errors. I rebooted the RN-104 and again, the single volume could not be located.
At this point we called NetGear Support to see whether the volume could be restored and (failing that), any data could be recovered. (this NAS is backed up by nearly 700 Blu-Rays... not looking forward to restoring all that via network copies and hundreds of Blu-Rays.
In a short while, this Support Case was escalated to your "Level 3" Tech Support.
Soon I was contacted by QingHong 34004 whom took ownership of the Support Call.
QingHong, had me place the RN-104 in debug mode and promptly remoted in to the NAS for troubleshooting.
QingHong found that he too, could not reair the volume and asked that I install an empty drive via the RN-104's external USB plug.
I attached a freshly formatted WD-6TB drive and notified him it was available to access for purposes of data recovery (after I agreed to NetGear's well written Remote Access Agreement.
Over the course of a few days, QingHong was able to recover the first 5.5TB of my data. He was unable to recover more as the 6TB external drive was now full.
At his request, I removed the now-full WD 6TB drive and replaced it with a freshly formatted 4TB drive to recover the remaining files. As I write this letter, he is attempting to recover the remaing folders/files.
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I am a retired IT guy of 30+ years. I have never experienced a more professionally handled Support Ticket.
QingHong's communication was clear, regularly updated and better still, is doing an exceptional job of recovering my files.
QingHong is a credit to NetGear and to Tech Support industry.
I cannot possibly be more happy with the thorough, timely and professonal manner in which this Trouble Ticket has (and is) being performed.
I ask that this letter be forwarded to his supervisor and to NetGear Corporate.
Thank you!
Steven L. O'Harra
P.S. - I wanted to post this in NetGear's Community Forum so others could read of my exceptional Tech Support experience.
Of course I also copy-pasted this into my Tech Support Feedback and to the Tech Support team at NetGear.
Thank you very much for expressing your appreciation to the support experience with NETGEAR support team.
We appreciate your contribution to the community. Feel free to post any suggestions, questions, recommendations or anything about your NAS that you think needs attention or will help others.
