Oh crap!

Posted by: intothevoid on 13 December 2011

My QNAP NAS has just died 

 

This is not going to be a very merry xmas...

Posted on: 13 December 2011 by Harry

Oh dear. Has the box gone? Do you have a USB back up?

 

..... and I've just seen the iPod thread. Shit indeed.

Posted on: 13 December 2011 by intothevoid
... And the hard drive in my laptop died last week, so I'm having a bit of a technology 'mare at the moment.

It looks like the NAS has lost its firmware settings from what I can make out. The box boots, so the power supply is ok. The network card led's flash, so the NIC looks ok.

I think it's a boot loader / firmware issue. Looking at the QNAP site I may be able to re-flash it, but I'm full of trepidation!!!!

Starting to wish I still had a CD player
Posted on: 13 December 2011 by Peter_RN

You are not alone, our CD player seems to have given up the ghost after only 16years, nothing seems to last these days.   Worse, no longer repairable! 

 

Although it has been switch off for several weeks as we only seem to stream now it is strangely uncomfortable knowing you are not able to spin a disc.

 

Good luck with your attempted re-flash.

 

Peter 

Posted on: 13 December 2011 by intothevoid
Cheers. I could live with 16 years!!

I've posted to the QNAP forum to see if anyone can help before I take the plunge.

Technology - great when it work, but a b*stard when it doesn't.
Posted on: 13 December 2011 by garyi
Does qfinder see the nas?
Posted on: 13 December 2011 by intothevoid
Nope.
Posted on: 14 December 2011 by intothevoid

Poxy Windows Firewall...

 

Yes, QNAP Finder does see the NAS, but it appears to have gone back to factory settings. That's a start at least.

Posted on: 14 December 2011 by intothevoid

Wishful thinking...

 

It's official. The unit is bricked. 

 

My only choice is to send it back for repair. That's going to hurt and takes weeks. Why does it always happen at the most inconvenient times??

 

Worst part is I will be without music until it is returned  

Posted on: 14 December 2011 by Loki

Can your dealer loan you something?

Posted on: 14 December 2011 by intothevoid
I've always taken a pragmatic view to backups, and only keep what I can't otherwise recover.

My music collection is ripped from my cd's, which is the backup media itself. I always thought that if the worst came to the worst I would re-rip, but now faced with over 800 to do again I am questioning my sanity!

Even with a loan unit I will have to rip what I want to listen to. On the other hand, maybe a load CD player... Hmm, thanks Loki
Posted on: 14 December 2011 by BigH47

A backup in the source too. Although a bit of high load I still have 3 sources so not too bothered if one "goes down", once I get my NAS sorted I'll back up to another H/D so I can still play from the PC.

I know this is  of no help to you.

 

 

I don't know too much about these NAS things, but isn't your music still on the H/Ds in the unit, so maybe that is still intact and you just need the "reader" to be fixed?  

Posted on: 14 December 2011 by Mrox

Now you just convinced me.

I'll stick to my original plan (who comes from computeraudiophile.com if I'm not mistaken)

Since I ripped my cd many years ago, it's all MP3...  I'm now in the process of doing it again but FLAC format this time.

 

-So I'm making a copy for my "daily" usage on my drive#1.  I can do whatever with it, rename, change volume or bite rate, etc.

-One copy on my drive #2, the master files.  That as to stay clean as it was when ripped (not even compressed)

-And finally on drive #3 my back up copy of the master files.

DBpoweramp is making all these copies at once so it's making my life more easy (I even do a 4th copy (mp3 again) for the little portable devices)

 

I was wondering if it was overkill.  Now reading your post, I'll stick to the plan.

 

Don't look at the 800 CD mountain for now, start with a few ones to cover the next weeks events.

Slowly you'll go through it!  Good luck!

Posted on: 14 December 2011 by intothevoid
BigH, the disks are safe but, as I understand it, are 'tied' to the server. As long as I get it repaired they should slot back in and life is good. But if I put them in a replacement nas it would not recognise them. I'm a bit fuzzy on this though...

The problem with terabytes of data is that it becomes increasingly difficult and costly to backup. Really speaking a need a nas to backup my nas!

Cheers, Steve
Posted on: 14 December 2011 by intothevoid
Cheers Mrox. It sound like you have a good plan there.

My disks are configured in RAID5 to embed some redundancy should a disk fail. Wht this doesn't allow for is when the controller fails.

Steve
Posted on: 14 December 2011 by BigH47

This sounds as useful/customer friendly as car manufactures coding the ECUs to actual cars, so you need a main dealer to install the replacements (if you can afford them).

 

Tying to specific box sounds really bad in a customer care basis. I can understand some sort of security stopping someone stealing your H/Ds and installing them in another box, but if you are replacing the box surely there must be a way that the factory can reinstall? If not and you have to re-rip I would suggest getting another manufactures device, after asking suitable questions about data security and recovery.

 

I'll have ask what the situation with my HP server.

Posted on: 14 December 2011 by intothevoid
Hindsight, BigH, hindsight...

That's the main reason I'm posting my woes here, so that anyone else following the streaming route becomes aware of the pitfalls.

Alms for a ex-leper...
Posted on: 14 December 2011 by garyi
What happened to get you to bricked?

If qfinder sees it why don't you just uplaod firmware to it from the app?
Posted on: 14 December 2011 by intothevoid
It wasn't the firmware after all.

QNAP finder would only detect the device when no disks were present. Adding a disk bizarrely made it undetectable.

Turns out to be the disk controller itself. David from QNAP was really helpful with the diagnosis, and now it has to go to the Netherlands for repair.

I probably wont see it until next year

Steve
Posted on: 14 December 2011 by BigH47

Does that mean your data is saved?

Posted on: 14 December 2011 by chesky

don´t worry for your music collection - I had a similar issue when my qnap died due to overvoltage after a lightning strike (fortunately my Naim equipment was shut down).

After I bought a completely new qnap NAS (switched from TS-119 to TS-419U now) I inserted the original hard drive and during first installation the setup routine recognised an existing system on this disk and asked if all data and adjustments shall be kept. I ticked yes and voila - after a few minutes which included the latest firmware update I had all my music back. Well done qnap!

 

regards

chesky

Posted on: 14 December 2011 by garyi
As long as you use a qnap with the same amount of drive bays it should be a case of swapping out, this assumes of course what ever fritzed the controller stopped there.
Posted on: 15 December 2011 by intothevoid
Cheeky, that's ally good news. It's what QNAP told me, but it's always good to hear from someone who actually gone through it.

I'm returning my TS-409U for repair and may buy a TS-419U after what I've Been through. What are the odds of two NAS's dying at the same time????

Gary, I don't think anything fried the controller. Not electrical storms here, and no other equipment affected. I guess I'll blame Murphy or Sod. Technology has a limited lifespan. It breaks.

Thanks for your comments guys.

Steve
Posted on: 15 December 2011 by Rosewind

Thank god I have never had that happen to me (yet) - I have so far owned a Synology 106j, a Qnap 209 II and am currently running a Synology 209 +. The only issue I had was with two 1tb WD-FYPS disks that had similar (early production) defects that would render them unstable in a raid set-up. Fortunately the contents of the disks were left untouched by this instability.

 

I have two back-up disks: a sata-disk attached directly to my NAS and a dedicated disk on my main computer. Onto those I back-up the Synology music folder at irregular intervals. I suppose that the only thing that would completely erase everything would be a house fire or a very thorough burglar (knock on wood).

 

Good luck with your new Qnap!

 

Best wishes,

Peter

Posted on: 29 December 2011 by intothevoid

Thanks for the encouragement Rosewind,

 

Ok, so here's an update...

 

Ordered a new TS-412U last week and it arrived overnight from Denmark. Ordered it at 3pm and it arrived by 11am next day. Wow!

 

Stuck my disks it it and powered it up. It said "initialising disks"!!! so they were quickly removed . Turns out that the disk array is not recognised between the models of QNAP NAS that I have.  BEWARE!!

 

So, an working NAS with no disks. Hmm. Remembered I had a couple of spare 250GB disks handing around so stuck them in and ripped a few of my favourite CD's and presto! Music again. So that was Xmas sorted anyway.

 

A week later (today) my repaired TS-409U arrived home. Replaced the power supply. Have to say that the guys at QNAP bent over backwardss to be helpful, especially at this time of year. Cost me £101 to send it to the Netherlands, get it repaired, and sent back. Over Xmas. Can't complain about that.

 

Re-united the 409 with it's old disks and upgraded the firmware. Everything back to normal.Full library of music, films, and pictures all safe and sound.

 

Now backing stuff up!!

 

Is there a moral to this? I guess; you can't plan for everything...

 

Happy New Year to you all!

 

Steve

 

Posted on: 30 December 2011 by nickpeacock

Lumme Steve, this is worrying stuff but I'm glad it resolved itself in the end.

 

The Computer Audiophile method cited above always seemed to me a little OTT but on the other hand maybe the risk of losing everything means it's what we should all be doing.

 

Personally I rip once via DBpoweramp to the NAS in FLAC and back up the NAS every month or so via USB onto a portable hard drive. It takes 2 days (yes, really) to back up!

 

I wonder if there should be a sticky about backing up...