ReadyNAS NV+ Stuck at "Booting......" 04-Dec-17

[AlansWright]

Hi Folks,

I've got an odd issue with my ReadNAS NV+ appreciate the device is EOL, but any assistance greatly appreciated. 

the issue started with not being able to access remotely. I opted to go for an orderly reboot, however, it doesn't complete the boot sequence, just sits there with "Booting......." on the screen, while the power light flashes slowly.

It is a standard NV+, with the latest available Firmware and 4 2Tb drives from the compatibility list. 

I have searched the community, read the posts for the same symptoms and confirmed, where I could that the root cause is not the same. (eg: there was an issue where a faulty NIC Cable was causing a NV+ to hang on reboot.)  There was one other where the issue was resolved via DM / Private chat, so have no sight of that. 

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance. 

Al.

[StephenB · Accepted solution]

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@AlansWright wrote:

 I've found a scratch disk and put it in. before the factory reset, I thought I'd just try booting it up and it starts without issue on a factory default configuration, so it looks like there's no further hardware failure other than the PSU. 

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Good.   That was the point of the scratch disk test.  Depending on the prior use of the scratch disk, the NAS can do either a factory install, or get stuck with a corrupted root on boot.  Doing the factory reset with the scratch in place simply preempted the latter possibility.  However, you got the factory install anyway, and I agree with your conclusion that the NAS hardware looks healthy.

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@AlansWright wrote:

Your thoughts on the next-steps would be greatly appreciated. Ideally, I'd like to avoid destroying the original raid set, if possible. 

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You could try booting up the NAS using the option to skip the file system check - not sure if that will change anything, but it is easy to try.  If it does work, you should back up the system right away.

There are two other approaches to extracting data from the drives.  One is to boot the system into tech support mode, and attempt to mount the RAID array manually.  The second is to connect at least three of the disks to a PC (either through SATA or USB), and then boot the system up under linux (perhaps using a "live" linux boot disk).  Either way you'd then use linux shell commands to attempt to mount the array, and then offload the data.  

An alternative to using linux in the PC is to use data recovery software (such as ReclaiMe).   Though that is an expensive approach if the array is functional.

Once you have the data, then it's easiest (and safest) to do a factory reset, rebuild the NAS configuration, and restore the data.

[StephenB]

I'd start by powering down the NAS, and removing the disks (labeling them by slot).

Power up the NAS with no disks, and see if it boots and shows "no disks" on the LCD display.

Test the disks in a windows PC using vendor tools (seatools for seagate, lifeguard for western digital).

FWIW, Netgear stopped updating the disk HCL years ago, so it isn't useful anymore.  WDC WD20EFRX (2 TB Reds) work well in the legacy NAS.  I expect the 2 TB Seagate Ironwolf would too, but I haven't tried them.

[AlansWright]

Hi @StephenB,

Thanks for the tip !!    

I've removed the disks (labelled them) and it doesn now attempt to boot. The screen shows "ERR: NO DISKS"

I've not yet tested the disks, but will. FWIW, they are: WD20EFRX's have been in it a couple of years.

I've also had a thought, these devices will have a BIOS battery, I've never replaced it..... Worth checking ?

Thanks for your help. 

Al.

[StephenB]

It does have a battery, so that might be worth replacing.

[AlansWright]

Hey quick update:

It would seem that the issue is a failed power supply. I left it powered off for a while (24+ Hours), replaced the battery and then powered back on.

All I got was a faint pop and smell of burning. sure enough, PSU was fried.I've read that these burn PSU's out quite readily, so I must have been lucky, this is the first tIme I've had a failure. New one ordered, will be with me next week. 

In the meantime, I'm going to test the disks, to ensure they are all OK. 

[AlansWright]

Hi @StephenDB,

I've now got the replacement PSU, I'll get it installed this evening and see where I get to.....

Would you expect it to come straight up and just work ? or would you think it's more likely that'll default and I'll need to reconfigure ?

I also replaced the CMOS Battery, checked the HDD's and replaced the fan for a silent running one.  Only thing left would be a memory upgrade 🙂

Thanks in advance !

Al.

[StephenB]

It should simply boot up.

[AlansWright]

Hey @StephenDB,

It's now all back together and powered on. Alas, it doesn't boot. I'm back to where I started. Screen shows "Booting......." but gets no further. 

Next step, I guess, is a factory reset...........?

TIA. !

Al. 

[StephenB]

A factory reset is worth a try.  If you care about the data, you can remove the disks (labeling by slot), and try the reset with only a scratch disk in the NAS.

[AlansWright]

I should have said, it does complete a quota check before attempting to boot and it does respond to a ping, but not a browser. There's clearly some life in it. 

I'll get a scratch disks and try the reset. 

Thx. 

Al.

[AlansWright]

Hey @StephenB,

Once again, thanks for your help.   

I've found a scratch disk and put it in. before the factory reset, I thought I'd just try booting it up and it starts without issue on a factory default configuration, so it looks like there's no further hardware failure other than the PSU. 

I shut it back down and put the original disks back in and it sits at "Booting.........." following the quota check

Note: I've still not yet performed the factory reset

Your thoughts on the next-steps would be greatly appreciated. Ideally, I'd like to avoid destroying the original raid set, if possible. 

TIA

[StephenB · Accepted solution]

---

@AlansWright wrote:

 I've found a scratch disk and put it in. before the factory reset, I thought I'd just try booting it up and it starts without issue on a factory default configuration, so it looks like there's no further hardware failure other than the PSU. 

---

Good.   That was the point of the scratch disk test.  Depending on the prior use of the scratch disk, the NAS can do either a factory install, or get stuck with a corrupted root on boot.  Doing the factory reset with the scratch in place simply preempted the latter possibility.  However, you got the factory install anyway, and I agree with your conclusion that the NAS hardware looks healthy.

---

@AlansWright wrote:

Your thoughts on the next-steps would be greatly appreciated. Ideally, I'd like to avoid destroying the original raid set, if possible. 

---

You could try booting up the NAS using the option to skip the file system check - not sure if that will change anything, but it is easy to try.  If it does work, you should back up the system right away.

There are two other approaches to extracting data from the drives.  One is to boot the system into tech support mode, and attempt to mount the RAID array manually.  The second is to connect at least three of the disks to a PC (either through SATA or USB), and then boot the system up under linux (perhaps using a "live" linux boot disk).  Either way you'd then use linux shell commands to attempt to mount the array, and then offload the data.  

An alternative to using linux in the PC is to use data recovery software (such as ReclaiMe).   Though that is an expensive approach if the array is functional.

Once you have the data, then it's easiest (and safest) to do a factory reset, rebuild the NAS configuration, and restore the data.

[AlansWright]

Hey @StephenB,

THe saga continues. Went for the reboot but skip quota option, now have a screen showing "Resycing Volume"

Clearly that's typo, I hope it's "Resyncing", rather than "Recycling" 

[StephenB]

Do you have access to the data (using SMB/File Explorer) ?

[AlansWright]

Not had chance to try it. Had a quick check this morning, the screen still says "Resyncing"

WIll test connectivity this evening. 

[StephenB]

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@AlansWright wrote:

WIll test connectivity this evening. 

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It would be very reassuring to see that your data is still there - and that the resync isn't related to creation of a new (empty) volume.

[AlansWright]

OK - here we go:

• It's still "Resyncing" the volume, that's now ~36 hours. I suspect it's not actually doing anything.
• SMB and HTTP & HTTPS connections are refused , but it is on the network, so would appear to be only partially loading.

From this, I'm assumig the OS install, Raid-X volume or both are corrupt. 

MY next step is to go back to the Scratch disk and do the factory reset. (I didn't do that before, as it appeared to come up clean, but perhaps it didn't.......)

Any thoughts / comments / suggestions ? 

[StephenB]

It should have completed by now.

You could try data recovery software (for instance ReclaiMe in an Windows PC) if you really need the data.  That is pricey, but I don't know of any data recovery software that isn't.

Another approach is to try booting up with only three drives in place.  That is, start by booting up with only slot 1 empty.  If that succeeds, see if you have data.  If it fails, power down and boot up again with only slot 2 empty, etc.  You probably should also use the boot option to skip the volume check.  If one of these boots, then immediately off-load the data. 

If you decide to give up on the data, then I suggest doing a reset with one of your actual disks in place, and see if that comes up normally.  Then add one disk at a time (waiting for resync), and see what happens.

[AlansWright]

I got tired of the exercise of trying to root out the failure, as I have 95% of the OC on this device backed up elsewhere, I put the original disks back in and did a factory reset, expecting it to wipe the 4 disks start over. 

As you would expect, it went through the steps of (re)installing the firmware and then very much to my surprise, presented the original Raid-X volume, but with DRive #4 marked as dead. 

First thing I did was backup the remaining 5% OC I didn't have secured.

The interesting thing is that I tested all 4 drives with the vendor software, all passed. so it might be that Bay #4 is dead, rather than the disk. I'm going to test with a scratch disk, the same one that i've used in earlier tests, so I know it works.  if it doesn't detect that disk, then it's the bay that's dead and I'll have to reconfigure the volume, as it's currently not redundant. 

@StephenB - Thanks for your help along the way. 

[StephenB]

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AlansWright wrote: 

@StephenB - Thanks for your help along the way. 

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I'm glad I was able to help.

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@AlansWright wrote:

I'm going to test with a scratch disk, the same one that i've used in earlier tests, so I know it works.  if it doesn't detect that disk, then it's the bay that's dead

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Exactly.  A variation is to power down, remove the operational disks (labeling by slot) and put the scratch drive in bay 4.  When you power up the system should boot (assuming the scratch disk wasn't erased after your factory install test).

The bays do sometimes fail - there's no way I know of to fix that.  So you'd need to recreate a three-disk volume.

[AlansWright]

Strangest thing........  I shut the NV+ down and booted with a single (Scratch) disk in Bay #4, the one that was showing as dead. the NV+ came up without issue. 

I shut it down again and then booted with the three "good" Raid-X disk. As you might expect, it booted fine, but reported the Raid-X set as non-redundant. 

I inserted the supposedly failed drive into slot #4. The NV+ detected it and ran a sync. which took about 7 hours. (there's ~3Tb used.) 

It's now been stable for 48 hours and is working just as well as ever. 

Thanks (again) @StephenB for your help with getting my unit back to where I needed it. 

[Sandshark]

You should check the SMART stats on that drive just to be sure it was a fluke and not a sign of impending failure.

[AlansWright]

Hey @Sandshark - Thanks for the tip, Have checked, it seems to be OK, but will keep an eye on the logs.

Thanks !!

Al.