Hi,
I know this is old thread, so I'm wondering if you guys are still here....
I have an issue with my NS4300N unit that goes like this. It is a RAID 5 with parity consists of four (4) 500MB seagate hard drives. I have the unit since 2007-2008 or so with no issue, checked it from time to time, never any "reported" issue on hard drives or bad sectors or raid issues.
Two days ago, I lost access to it, i got to the unit and see it with red light next to power button, and none of the 4 leds next to the drives is on. I attempted to press and hold the power button to reset/shutdown, but it wouldn't do anything. I pulled the power plug and it turned off. I plugged it again, press the power button, unit started, fans are spinning, yet no beeps and none of the (green) drive lights gets on. No access to unit. I figured that something is wrong with the enclosure/motherboard, and not drives. So I pulled the drives out, attempted to connect them to Ubunto system to pull data out, but Ubunto claims it can't mount it. I also tried multiple ext3 read software on PC but none could access it. I also tried running acronis backup to try and copy the drives to other brand new drives so that i can get a replica to "play with". It wouldn't do the copy claiming the size of the source cant fit to destination (even though bother were 500GB drives) or something with wrong/bad file system.
Next, i started wondering, and i took apart the NS4300N, and decided i can try and replace the power supply...hoping that it is the culprit. The plug is standard 24 pin ATX, so i used a brand new computer PS, and plugged the 24 pin header. For some reason, i put in back drives 1,2, and 4. Drive 3 was in another room. I turned power on...and surprise, the green lights next to the drives turned on...I was so happy. then i realize that i forgot to put the drive (3). So i pressed and held the power button and turned off the unit, i put in drive (3) in and restarted. After about a minute, the unit started beeping twice every 10 seconds. I was again, happy to gain access to the unit by browser but not the share/files. When i got in the RAID properties, it showed my raid 5 but only drive #4 being member of it. While drives 1,2,3 were listed as Free drives.
I attempted to add them to the raid, but i kept getting error message that it can't do that.
I started to suspect the drives... So I put drive #1 under seagate tools under DOS, and it said it failed the short and long test. It suggested to repair a bad sector. I let it do that, then it completed successfully.
I later run same test on drive #2, it completed long test with no errors.
I now run test on #3. (it takes about 3 hours to complete)
My theory is that the power supply crapped out, and crushed the system and somehow 3 of the 4 drives got damaged???
I mean so far only 1 bad sector was found in 1 drive. Drives are fully detectable with SMART OK, and also pass the long test of seagate...
What is the chance that the failure of the Power supply damaged the main board/motherboard of the NS4300N such that the raid controller is compromised...I sort of hoping that it is the case...and if i can get a working NS4300N case from ebay or something, and simply put it my four drives, it would "start working" and i could get access to the raid data??
I also had the original firmware running on it, never updated it. Do you think it would be wise to upgrade it to latest one? And if i do that would it allow me to still access my raid or maybe even worse kill any possibility of ever getting it back?
Where exactly is the RAID info stored at? I'm referring to the Raid properties, not the data itself. Is it on the main board of the NS4300N or on the drives themselves.
Please help me.
Any advice or tip is god sent. Some of the data was not backed up, and it includes stuff that is price less to me like family photos and videos. My heart is broken over this.
Had I done RAID 10, I would probably have my data too, but...
Ended up pulling the drives and popping them into Ubuntu.
Drive 1 & 3 checked out fine.
Drive 2 had 8 bad sectors and Drive 4 had 68 bad sectors and was recommended to be replaced.
I ran Western Digital's WDC Diag Extended test on Drive 4 and no block issues were found.
fsck would not run telling me "promise_fasttrak_raid: not found"
Trying RAID Recovery inside a VM...