NETGEAR ReadyNas 102 problems

mima47 · November 24, 2020

Hello everyone, I recently got a ReadyNas 102 used from a relative, and there are some problems with it. First off, my relative gave it to me because he said that both drives failed at the same time and I could have it. So once I plugged it in, everything was fine.

Problems started when I put a drive in it (just one!). Booted up just fine, did the setup wizard, and started setting up the NAS. I remember enabling disk spin-down (I'm very suspicious that this a problem. I will explain later.), setting up shares and so forth. The problems started when I tried to remove a torrent client I installed a bit earlier, realizing that I didn't actually need it. It was deleting very slowly. About a minute later, an error came up saying that it couldn't remove the app. I tried to remove it once again, but the same error came up. Suddenly I heard that the disk in it stopped for no reason and started up again. And then stopped again, and started again. This went on for about a minute where I had enough and plugged it out. I booted it up once again to be greeted with an error message saying it could not boot up from the saved configuration on the disk. I didn't have any data on the disk, so I went through the install wizard again and formatted the disk. This time I didn't turn on disk-spindown because I still think this is part of the problem. Setup all the shares again but I didn't download any apps this time. Enabled readycloud, and shared it with a relative. We started to fill the NAS up because it seem to have no problems now, but we still didn't but any valuable data on it. So today (the setup was 2 days ago) I was organizing things in the cabinet the NAS is in, and accidentally knocked it (It wasn't very violent, I barely touched it) and heard that the disk stopped. I assume this is a safety measure so the disk(s) won't get damaged if the NAS is being moved around, or it senses an impact. The disk spin up again, but this time I cannot reach the NAS. I can ping it, it replies, RAIDar sees it too, but when I go on the admin page in the browser, although it asks for authentication, but never displays anything. (This page isn’t working. 192.168.0.209 didn’t send any data.) I tried restarting it too, as the support page told me (Press power button, starts blinking, press it again) but it doesn't want to shut down. I don't want to pull the pulg, because I still don't wanna have to reformat the disk. The data isn't that important, it's just a lot of trouble getting it on the NAS again.

So, TL;DR:

Relative gave a NAS to me because both drives failed at the same time,

totally unresponsive after (I believe) disk spindown,

now I can't access it, but can still ping, and RAIDar detects it, but if I want to do anything with it, it says bad password although it is correct,

can not shut it down "gracefully" (unresponsive),

want to get it working again (preferably) without data loss

RAIDar

Web browser error

Please ask if you need any more info, I really want to get this sorted out. Thanks in advance!

DogKnight · December 1, 2020

No idea's about how to do it without data loss. Would be trying to use the unit with another hard drive in it so that hopefully becomes responsive and you can factory reset it.

One thing is for sure, if you ever manage to get the data off that drive, never use it again.