September 11, 2014
Today or this week I should say, my attention got focused on this nas. I wasn't really using it and turned it off, like I have done many times before when it's not being used. Unfortunately when I went back to turn it on again, it got stuck on booting. Well it started a few days ago, but I haven't bother to look at it as it's going to take some serious looking into it. It's not the type of thing you just go at since it holds your pictures and files and stuff you normally like to keep. In short I'm going to attempt to get all the basics done before calling it in which is the other reason this is not fun, but I got the time so I may as well get it done correctly if possible. So here's what I'm going to try now...I will be following these instructions for the basic troubleshooting I can do myself without doing a reset.
http://kb.netgear.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/20898/~/readynas--accessing-the-boot-menu
Since it's been a long time since I even did any troubleshooting on this nas, I'll post here as a reminder for me and maybe anyone else running into this years later. This is when the fun begins. Although it's an older nas it is pretty solid once it's up and running and although I can't upgrade the hard drives any more I still have a ways to go before I even fill this thing up.
1. Check the memory to make sure that's fine...so far it checked good.
2. Downloaded and install the RAIDar to see if it would even see anything, but nothing...
http://kb.netgear.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/20684/
3. Trying to go into the Disk Test, but the nas goes pass that to tftp...arg...so it won't let me test the drives...unplugged nas and will try one more time...okay I held the power button as long as I could, tftp resets to try again and it won't go past that...HD LED's 1 and 3 are off, 2 and 4 is on. Not sure what that means if anything. So I was trying to check the hard drives and then do the os install from within if it needed to be done. Well can't get to any other options, so I need to contact tech support because I can't do anything else. After I finish uploading the video.
The ironic part is that my password for their site is in this thing! LOL
So here is as far as I can get with this...
4. Since it's time to contact support I thought I try their online chat...well I can't use it apparently because my serial number on the back has faded away. Great, so I need to go to some other support page, but I keep getting sent back to this same page...here's the correct login support page that's needed for support so you can log in a ticket...
https://my.netgear.com/registration/login.aspx
5. I reset my account there so I can login a support ticket. So far so good...
6. After thinking about this a bit more and re-reading the instructions above I realized that in order to redo the firmware install from within the nas, you must use the reset button on the back. Okay no big deal except if you keep it pressed for too long of a period, then you can do more harm than good. I decided to try this before letting netgear into the nas just to make sure I had cover all the bases on my end...
7. So what happens when you do this, the message isn't clear on the front, but after I counted about 5 or 6 seconds I just let go of the reset button...then I saw a quick message telling me the switch was resetting...this took a few minutes, but then I got some other stuff on the lcd and then the booting...once again. The good news is that the nas has come back to life and there are no physical problems showing up. It took a little while since I could not connect. My dhcp was starting from .2 which is my nas and I could not get to it because my desktop kept getting that .2 ip address. I then changed that dhcp and now I'm able to get to it again. I have another laptop I used to connect directly to it first, then I fix this other issue which had nothing to do with the booting. Well it's 1:28am, but at least I got this working again.
It's now the next day and I'm coming back to making sure this works. It looks like the last two firmware updates seem to cause this booting phenomenon since it happened each time I updated the firmware. In any case my nas is hardly full even though I have maxed the drives to the 2T each that I remember this thing allowed. I haven't followed the forum so I don't know if there have been any other changes as this unit is a bit older, but still works just fine.
Now I have just turned it off and will turned it back on just to make sure it's back up completely....
The good news is that it now booted right back up...phew. So all looks good again.
In the meantime here are a few more pictures...as you can see, I'm not even close to filling up the nas.
So everything looks good again so far.
I have to say that netgear has been great in responding to my case. I didn't need them here as I figured this out last night, but their support has gotten to be one of the best around. No questions asked other than what they needed to help me get this sorted out. I just have to let them know that I got this sorted out, but it's good to know you can get support from them when your nas decides to take a vacation.
January 20, 2015
I have now put my old UPS on this nas in order to make sure the power is not randomly cut off on it. I got a new UPS so I'm now using that on my desktop as well. Make sure you get a UPS on these unless you like to lose your data too. This problem was due to a firmware update but I also ran into a problem when the construction next door kill the power to the whole block in the area. So this is the reason I mention this.
http://kb.netgear.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/20684/
3. Trying to go into the Disk Test, but the nas goes pass that to tftp...arg...so it won't let me test the drives...unplugged nas and will try one more time...okay I held the power button as long as I could, tftp resets to try again and it won't go past that...HD LED's 1 and 3 are off, 2 and 4 is on. Not sure what that means if anything. So I was trying to check the hard drives and then do the os install from within if it needed to be done. Well can't get to any other options, so I need to contact tech support because I can't do anything else. After I finish uploading the video.
The ironic part is that my password for their site is in this thing! LOL
So here is as far as I can get with this...
4. Since it's time to contact support I thought I try their online chat...well I can't use it apparently because my serial number on the back has faded away. Great, so I need to go to some other support page, but I keep getting sent back to this same page...here's the correct login support page that's needed for support so you can log in a ticket...
https://my.netgear.com/registration/login.aspx
5. I reset my account there so I can login a support ticket. So far so good...
6. After thinking about this a bit more and re-reading the instructions above I realized that in order to redo the firmware install from within the nas, you must use the reset button on the back. Okay no big deal except if you keep it pressed for too long of a period, then you can do more harm than good. I decided to try this before letting netgear into the nas just to make sure I had cover all the bases on my end...
7. So what happens when you do this, the message isn't clear on the front, but after I counted about 5 or 6 seconds I just let go of the reset button...then I saw a quick message telling me the switch was resetting...this took a few minutes, but then I got some other stuff on the lcd and then the booting...once again. The good news is that the nas has come back to life and there are no physical problems showing up. It took a little while since I could not connect. My dhcp was starting from .2 which is my nas and I could not get to it because my desktop kept getting that .2 ip address. I then changed that dhcp and now I'm able to get to it again. I have another laptop I used to connect directly to it first, then I fix this other issue which had nothing to do with the booting. Well it's 1:28am, but at least I got this working again.
It's now the next day and I'm coming back to making sure this works. It looks like the last two firmware updates seem to cause this booting phenomenon since it happened each time I updated the firmware. In any case my nas is hardly full even though I have maxed the drives to the 2T each that I remember this thing allowed. I haven't followed the forum so I don't know if there have been any other changes as this unit is a bit older, but still works just fine.
Now I have just turned it off and will turned it back on just to make sure it's back up completely....
The good news is that it now booted right back up...phew. So all looks good again.
In the meantime here are a few more pictures...as you can see, I'm not even close to filling up the nas.
So everything looks good again so far.
I have to say that netgear has been great in responding to my case. I didn't need them here as I figured this out last night, but their support has gotten to be one of the best around. No questions asked other than what they needed to help me get this sorted out. I just have to let them know that I got this sorted out, but it's good to know you can get support from them when your nas decides to take a vacation.
January 20, 2015
I have now put my old UPS on this nas in order to make sure the power is not randomly cut off on it. I got a new UPS so I'm now using that on my desktop as well. Make sure you get a UPS on these unless you like to lose your data too. This problem was due to a firmware update but I also ran into a problem when the construction next door kill the power to the whole block in the area. So this is the reason I mention this.
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