red/green led flashing - rebuilding for 2 days?

[timpecter]

Hi there,

I have a TS-410 running RAID 5. A few days ago I noticed that one of the drives' leds was red. I checked the log and it indicated the drive had become 'disconnected' - this had happened once before several over a year ago and a restart and rebuild sorted it out. The drive had functioned fin up until now. This time I was unable to repair or rebuild the RAID from the web interface so I chose to shut down and restart the NAS. Now, the status led has been blinking red/green (which I assume indicates it is rebuilding) but it has been doing so for two days! I recall it taking a long time to rebuild before but this seems like too long. How long should it take and what should I do now? I'm afraid if I try restarting it again and it is in the middle of a rebuild I will lose my data.

Thanks,
Tom

[timpecter]

I should also mention that I'm unable to find the QNap on the network and can't access the web interface for it.

[pwilson]

Hi there,

I have a TS-410 running RAID 5. A few days ago I noticed that one of the drives' leds was red. I checked the log and it indicated the drive had become 'disconnected' - this had happened once before several over a year ago and a restart and rebuild sorted it out. The drive had functioned fin up until now. This time I was unable to repair or rebuild the RAID from the web interface so I chose to shut down and restart the NAS. Now, the status led has been blinking red/green (which I assume indicates it is rebuilding) but it has been doing so for two days! I recall it taking a long time to rebuild before but this seems like too long. How long should it take and what should I do now? I'm afraid if I try restarting it again and it is in the middle of a rebuild I will lose my data.

Thanks,
Tom

Check out: Check System Status (LED and Alarm Buzzer) section of the on-line manual, in order to gain an understanding of the Status LED's. You didn't explain the duration of the flashes etc, so I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to interpret the status LED's based on this document.

If your drives are being "kicked out" of the RAID array, you might want to consider replacing your drives. Check the QNAP HDD compatibility list to find potential candidate drives. After you have chosen the drive you intend to use, do a "search" (upper right hand corner of this screen) for your chosen drive model, to see if other QNAP owners are reporting issues with your chosen drive. If you are seeing positive responses in the forums about your chosen drive, then you should order your replacement drive.

As you chose not to share your drive models, it is pretty difficult to predict how long it should take. The TS-410 only has a 800MHz processor, and as our NAS's use Software RAID, it will probably take quite a while to rebuild 5.4TB of RAID array as this process will be very CPU intensive. It is quite possible that there is nothing wrong with your drive for use in non-RAID configurations, but most consumer-grade HDD's are not RAID certified.

Your biggest decision should be to decide whether your "data" or your "hardware" is more important to you. You can save money by attempting to use non-RAID certified drives (at your own risk), but personally my "data" is worth far more to me than my HDD's, so I try to only use "RAID certified" drives when working with RAID configurations. I have neither the patience nor the time to rebuild my RAID array regularly.

Obviously your perspective may be different. Good luck with your RAID array recovery.

Patrick.

[SergioPlayboy]

Hello,

I have a very similar problem with my 419P (with 4 1,5 TB WD1503FYYS HDDs, running RAID 5). Three days ago I turned it off, it was working normally up to that point. Yesterday I turned it on and now, more than 24 hours later, display on NAS still says ''Welcome!''. System status LED is flashing red/green every 0.5 secs and LAN LED is flashing orange - but the NAS is not seen in my home network and I cannot reach it via web-interface. I have no idea what's going on. What shoud I do? Wait? For how long?
And yes, my "data" is much more important to me than my "hardware".

Thanks for any reply/advise.

Sergio

[schumaku]

Yesterday I turned it on and now, more than 24 hours later, display on NAS still says ''Welcome!''. System status LED is flashing red/green every 0.5 secs...

...and LAN LED is flashing orange - but the NAS is not seen in my home network and I cannot reach it via web-interface.

(The LAN LED does just show other taffic hitting the interface.

Power-down the NAS, unplug the HDD (just from the backplane, pulling by about 1 cm is enough) and don't mix them up.

In case you are using port trunking, disconnect the second LAN cable.

Power-up the NAS without the HDD plugged. Check if QNAP Finder is able to locate the NAS on your network - the will be no configuation, dodn't worry about that.

If QNAP Finder is not able ot locate the NAS, you need to recover the NAS boot area. The process i documented in the "NAS Troubleshooting Guide" http://docs.qnap.com/nas/en/index.html? ... ooting.htm - Chapter 8 Firmware Recovery Guide for ARM-based NAS Models, resp. Chapter 9 Firmware Recovery Guide for Intel x86-based NAS Models

Once done so, re-check the above. Then power-down the NAS, plugh the HDD, and boot. Good Luck!

No: don't ask me how this can go bust... I simply don't know, too.

[SergioPlayboy]

Well, schumaku, that was quick, thank you, my friend!

I did everything exactly as you said. QNAP Finder located the NAS. But, with HDDs re-installed, once booted, the status of NAS is the same as before, system status LED is flashing red/green every 0.5 secs for more than an hour now. I think I will leave it over night and see the status of NAS in the morning.

[SergioPlayboy]

Still the same, system status LED is flashing red/green every 0.5 secs for 10 an hour now. I just hope it really does RAID rebuilding and not formatting HDDs!!!

[SergioPlayboy]

No changes, it's been the same for a day and a half now. Just emailed to QNAP's online support, we'll see if they reply.

[SergioPlayboy]

Jesus Christ, after reading this: http://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=51741 I'm really worried. Yes, my NAS was pretty full (only about 400 GB left), has a large number of files and was also really slow when writing, but it didn't really matter because I was using it ONLY to store music (flac) files and stream them (via LMS) to my Logitech Transporter. As I understand, the process goes like this: HDD kicked out of RAID - trying to rebuild- failed > data lost!!! And all that with no warning!!! If this happens I will lost over six years of work - ripping, tagging, scanning covers etc. of 7.700 + CDs!!! And I bought QNAP for its reliability!!!

[schumaku]

Well, backup is for cowards only.

[SergioPlayboy]

Update: system status LED is flashing red/green every 0.5 secs for almost 2 days now, still have no idea what the NAS is doing (rebuilding, formatting or something else), although it seems there is no activity at all inside the machine. Don't know what to do so I'll leave it on for some more time. No response from QNAP's support yet. And shumaku, my friend, you're absolutely right, but it does not help me much at this time.

[schumaku]

-> QNAP support, I?m sorry. Dont want to take risk to destroy your data.

[SergioPlayboy]

Update: after 3 days of warching red/green LEDs flashing I decided to power-down my NAS. Hoping the data is still there and waiting for response from QNAP support. BTW, I am wondering am I really the only one with this kind of a problem (or the first one, maybe)? Nothing similar found on forum.

[SergioPlayboy]

Update #3: Just received a response from QNAP support. Here's what they suggest:

1. Power off the NAS. Remove the HDD

2. Power on the NAS without any disk attached

3. After a short beep and a long beep,Run QNAP Finder, it will find the NAS.
Note: Do not re-initialize when the QNAP Finder prompt a message, if you have some useful data in the disk

4. Plug the disks back to NAS one by one in original order.
push in till the previous HDD led flashes constantly green.(Not Blinking)

5. Connect the NAS by SSH port 22, login as admin
(Putty Tutorial: http://www.webmasters-central.com/artic ... sh-client/)

6. Issue the commands to check disk space
# config_util 1 -> Start mirroring of the first partitions.
# storage_boot_init 1
# df

7. Please issue the following commands to copy back default configfile
# cp /etc/default_config/uLinux.conf /mnt/HDA_ROOT/.config/ (You can also replace the text 'uLinux.conf' with others )
# rm -r /etc/config
# ln -sf /mnt/HDA_ROOT/.config /etc/config
#setcfg -f /etc/config/uLinux.conf Misc configured TRUE
# reboot

8. The above procedure will reset the configuration back to default and then you need to reconfigure it.
But all the share should be available now.
Do NOT to re-initialize the HDD,which would wipe out the data.

9. If you encounter any difficulty doing the above,please allow us to remotely connect your NAS.

I don't have the time to go through all this procedure right now, will try it tomorrow.

Will report back.

[SergioPlayboy]

Update #4: Following the procedure described above (and after some more reassurement from very kind mr. Yang of QNAP support that hot-plugging HDDs is perfectly safe) I have managed to revive my NAS! It works, although in degraded mode. Very strange since I'm pretty sure all HDDs are perfectly OK. Nevermind, my data seems to be all there so here's what I'll do next. Safety first, so now I'm copying all my data to another NAS (non-QNAP), lended from my friend, 13 hours left right now! Then, I will do system migration as described here:http://docs.qnap.com/nas/en/system_migr ... Bmigration to a brand new 419P (same make and model) kindly lended from a hardware store. Thank God for friends! When done, I'll have my original NAS checked what (if anything) is causing these kind of problems. Not quite solved yet but getting close!