ReadyNAS 516 Everything lost on Reboot. Please Help

[rswoodford]

Please help. My ReadyNAS appears to have wiped everything.

Model: ReadyNAS 51600 with 4 bays populated with WD Red 6TB drives

Firmware: ReadyOS 6.9.2

This morning I logged into my ReadyNAS admin page and noticed that everything was normal (Volume status, Shares, Backup configs etc) Except the Apps page was completely blank.

I couldn't see any apps.

I triggered an upload of the latest Plex Media Server bin to be installed.

Once browser upload completed nothing else happened.

So I decided to do trigger a system restart.

Once the system rebooted and I returned to the admin page, I was given a message saying no volume exists.

I ssh'ed into the server with my existing root password and did an ls on /data

/data is empty.

I did a server shutdown.

Please help, I am no longer supported by Netgear since I purchased the server more than 90 days ago. Is there anything anyone can suggest? Is there any way to get back my volume, shares, accounts, backup configs, anything?

Many thanks in advance,

Rory 

[rswoodford · Accepted solution]

Right, I solved the problem.

On second boot, a log message appeared stating a free space issue with the main OS drive.

A few days earlier I had accidentally misplaced a "./" during an rsync and filled /root with photos, causing the drive to run out of free space. On reboot the OS had no space to complete standard procedures and failed to mount the main volume.

So I ssh'ed in, discovered my rsync error, and removed the files. Rebooted and everything returned to normal.

Cheers,

Rory

[StephenB]

While you no longer have free support, you do have access to paid support via my.netgear.com.  This situation sounds like it would need data recovery (which would be paid support in any event).  https://kb.netgear.com/69/ReadyNAS-Data-Recovery-Diagnostics-Scope-of-Service

If you can connect the disks to a windows PC (using either SATA or USB) you could also try ReclaiMe ( https://www.reclaime.com/ )

It's best to power down the NAS - and if you must power it up, use the boot menu to ensure it is read-only.  If you allow writes to the data volume, data recovery becomes more and more difficult (and anything overwritten can't be recovered).

[rswoodford · Accepted solution]

Right, I solved the problem.

On second boot, a log message appeared stating a free space issue with the main OS drive.

A few days earlier I had accidentally misplaced a "./" during an rsync and filled /root with photos, causing the drive to run out of free space. On reboot the OS had no space to complete standard procedures and failed to mount the main volume.

So I ssh'ed in, discovered my rsync error, and removed the files. Rebooted and everything returned to normal.

Cheers,

Rory

[mdgm-ntgr]

Thanks for sharing the resolution.

If you are comfortable with SSH and have that enabled checking for a full root volume is one of the first things to check if you're having any problem. It's certainly very quick to check for that.

It's worth noting that mishaps using SSH such as making a typo entering a command are not covered by the 90 days of basic phone support from the date of purchase. Data recovery attempts aren't covered by that either.

Regardless of whether you're using SSH or not you should make sure that you backup your important data regularly. RAID is great but it's not a "magic" fix for any and every possible problem you may run into.