Bricked TS-410 during expansion

[sidkipper]

I've managed to turn my NAS (TS-410 running v3.3.3) into a useless brick during an expansion, and am hoping somebody might have some useful pointers on what to try.

It had 3x 1.5 TB Seagate disks in RAID5, and I was extending it with a new 1.5TB Western Digital drive (I'd ordered another Seagate but it was substituted with WD15EADS, which I've now realised is unsupported). The expansion started off OK, was going to take about 4 days to complete, then when a about half way through it became inaccessible (ping only). After a day I decided to power cycle it, following which I can't even ping it (or find it with the QNAP Finder). I've now removed the additional drive and power cycled it again, but its still unpingable.

Thankfully I've got a backup of the critical data, but there's another 2TB of stuff that would be hard to replace. However, I just want a usable device back - any suggestions on how to get it back on the network...?

Many thanks in advance..!

[fribse]

Sounds like some serious tweaking is needed.
I'm not sure what the best approach is, I would create a ticket with qnap, and contact them via msn or skype.
My guess is that remove the drives, insert a new drive, and configure that.
Then the hope is to be able to restore the raid back, but I'm very unsure on how to solve that, so contact qnap first.
Are there a 'reserved' port on the back on the 410? On the larger models there's a 'reserved' port, that's actually a VGA interface, so one can see what is actually going on in the nas when booting.

[P3R]

Are there a 'reserved' port on the back on the 410?

No, only on Intel-based models.

[sidkipper]

I've opened a support request a few days back but not had a response as yet, so in the mean time I've started trying to get it working again myself...

My device is now back on the network, I pulled all the drives out and power cycled it. The NAS came up and picked up a DHCP address (so I'm assuming its lost all config - if the config is held on the disks that would no doubt be expected). Access via the web interface brings up the quick config wizard and asks for disks to be inserted, access via SSH doesn't work (TCP session connects then gets closed by the NAS prior to prompting for login).

I've inserted the disks and the web interface now states...

Initialize the hard drive and install the firmware.

The system cannot detect any hard drives. Please install a hard drive.

A hard drive already exists.

Press [OK] to initialize the hard drive.

...will pressing OK reformat the disks (destroy the old RAID pack)? Is there a way to get in via SSH without making changes to the disks?

[sidkipper]

Making some progress, but can't create a new RAID5 volume...

Still no response from QNAP support (which appears to be expected going by other forum users experience).

My NAS can now start and get onto the network with no disks in, which is positive, but that's about as far as I can get. I initially attempted to upgrade from v3.3.3 to v3.3.7 - this failed to complete uploading. So I've reinserted my disks and completed a Bad Block scan which ran overnight so I now have disks with Status of "Ready".

But when I attempt to create a RAID5 pack things don't work. It progresses far too quickly (completes in 50mins, took around 2 days when I first bought it!), then completes and shows the filesystem as "unknown" with a status of "unmounted". I've re-attempted a few times, each with the same result, the log shows...

2010-12-17 1865 13:44:16 System 127.0.0.1 localhost [RAID5 Disk Volume: Drive 1 2 3] Initialization failed.
2010-12-17 1864 13:43:42 System 127.0.0.1 localhost [RAID5 Disk Volume: Drive 1 2 3] Formatting failed(Cannot unmount disk).
2010-12-17 1863 13:43:41 System 127.0.0.1 localhost [RAID5 Disk Volume: Drive 1 2 3] Formatting completed.

...anybody got any suggestions on how to proceed...?

[P3R]

Still no response from QNAP support (which appears to be expected going by other forum users experience).

Never had to to contact them myself but Skype or MSN seems to be the best way judging from other forum user experiences.

My NAS can now start and get onto the network with no disks in, which is positive, but that's about as far as I can get. I initially attempted to upgrade from v3.3.3 to v3.3.7 - this failed to complete uploading.

You can't upgrade firmware without any disks.

[fribse]

After you create the ticket, get a hold of them via skype or msn.

[sidkipper]

I'm not on MSN or Skype, hence I'd been avoiding having to sign up just to contact QNAP (and I didn't fancy paying for a potentially lengthy long distance call).

Anyway, noticed that the logs were full of SSHD restart entries and bounced the NAS a few times to stop that happening. Eventually got on via SSH and couldn't find any problems, returned to the web interface and the recreated RAID 5 volume was looking good (no default folder shares but otherwise good).

So all seems to working again - thanks to all that in any offered any assistance, its much appreciated.

Cheers