QNAP nas bricked

I had a similar problem a couple of years or so ago with my Synology NAS which was out of warranty. 

The Synology support team talked me through a number of diagnostic checks and suggested the problem could be a motherboard failure, but offered to check it out free of charge if I sent it to them (minus the hard disks) . Their original assessment turned out to be correct and the unit couldn't be repaired. However, they advised me that if I purchased another Synology NAS, I should simply be able to slot in my old hard disks, and be up and running with no requirement to restore from my backup. I purchased a replacement Synology NAS, and sure enough I was able to be up and running again pretty quickly by simply slotting in the original (mirrored) drives.

I suggest you contact the QNAP support team and see what they suggest. Hopefully they will be just as helpful and efficient as their Synology counterparts.    

I found one potential fix online finally -- to remove the hard drives (fortunately easy on this model; they are installed in slide-out bays) and reconnect it drive-less.  I saw it on my network at that point.  Powered off...reinstalled drives...and after 15 minutes it finally shows up.  Running diagnostics now . . . 

BACKUP YOUR DATA PEOPLE.  You never know when some piece of hardware will fail

I keep two separate backups.  

Always keep 2 separate backups of all your important or irreplaceable information in different locations to guard against fire and flood. With Nas connected to the net this is easy. I also photocopy important documents such as invoices, insurance etc. In fact all you might need to prove to your insurance company the true costs of your household equipment. Don't give insurance companies 'wiggle room' Rich 

Bart posted:

I found one potential fix online finally -- to remove the hard drives (fortunately easy on this model; they are installed in slide-out bays) and reconnect it drive-less.  I saw it on my network at that point.  Powered off...reinstalled drives...and after 15 minutes it finally shows up.  Running diagnostics now . . . 

BACKUP YOUR DATA PEOPLE.  You never know when some piece of hardware will fail

... keeping finger crossed, hopefully the QNAP will be able to recover the last state before failure! 

As you point out, the event is a very compelling reminder that a sound backup + restore practice is absolutely mandatory.

In my view, the event also speaks for running UPnP and Roon servers on a dedicated devices that can easily be cloned at low cost and whose failure does not imply data losses or time-consuming restoring procedures. I do not use any NAS in my LAN but if I would use one, I would not rely on it for serving music files to my main listening system.  Just my two cents, of course.

Rich 1 posted:

Always keep 2 separate backups of all your important or irreplaceable information in different locations to guard against fire and flood. With Nas connected to the net this is easy. I also photocopy important documents such as invoices, insurance etc. In fact all you might need to prove to your insurance company the true costs of your household equipment. Don't give insurance companies 'wiggle room' Rich 

You're not wrong there.  Remember insurance companies are the Mafia with headed notepaper.

Fortunately just a scare - no data loss and eventually the nas booted up as it should. It appears that this particular OS update was a big one, perhaps (I've not the patience right now to look) a change to the file system used on the hdd's.

I keep redundant nas boxes "just because" and this is a good opportunity to update my usb drive backup of my library and bring it to my office for safekeeping.  The drive I have tucked away there is quite a few months and gb behind.  (I have a full copy in Dropbox as well so it's really belts and suspenders.)

Bart posted:

Fortunately just a scare - no data loss and eventually the nas booted up as it should. It appears that this particular OS update was a big one, perhaps (I've not the patience right now to look) a change to the file system used on the hdd's.

...

A change of the FS would indeed be a rather scary sort of update! All's well that end well, but I would keep a critical eye on the device and perhaps have a closer look at the log files.

Seems that ext4 has now been adopted by QNAP and they are rolling this out via firmware updates.  But I'm in over my head at this point!  

I had this with the last firmware upgrade on my QNAP. Had to the same as you to get it back. Then I had to wait for it to rebuild the raid. It's a lot quicker now at booting and shutting down than it was. No data loss at all just annoying.

Today's QNAP update went just fine . . . hopefully that was just a bump in the road.

qnap used of 5 years ,no problems... like the web page very much... just wonder how long it is healthy.  3 x 3tera back ups one of them stored else.  dread ever re-ripping collection of 3800 cds

The latest QNAP firmware updates (2) have improved the update procedure irself with the update swirling circle webpage. Even my TS653A manages to reboot now without having to press its power button.

I can never get my 253A to reboot automatically when it does updates, and when I shut it down in the summer when we went away all the lights went off apart from the two green HDD lights, and the fan stayed on. The only way to stop it was to pull out the power plug. Everything’s fine when it’s just running. I’m a bit scared to do another update in case it goes funny again. There was a time when it wouldn’t do differential backups, which was fixed with the last update. So if there is another update I will make sure my two usb backups are fully up to date. 

hungryhalibut posted:

I can never get my 253A to reboot automatically when it does updates, and when I shut it down in the summer when we went away all the lights went off apart from the two green HDD lights, and the fan stayed on. The only way to stop it was to pull out the power plug. Everything’s fine when it’s just running. I’m a bit scared to do another update in case it goes funny again. There was a time when it wouldn’t do differential backups, which was fixed with the last update. So if there is another update I will make sure my two usb backups are fully up to date. 

Hi Nigel,

I have had that happen to mine 'once' (the two green HDD lights with the fan staying on I mean) on my 253A QNAP and did the same as you, regarding just pulling the mains plug out. I turn mine on and shut it down all of the time and have never experienced that same problem since, weird. When my one does an update I command it to do a restart at the same time and have had no issues or problems whatsoever. It sound likes to me, from what you describe,  that your QNAP is working fine.

Bart - glad to hear you appear to have sorted things out with your QNAP update.

My QNAP, model No. TS-251A is saying there is a new update available, version number 4.3.5.0722. Can anyone tell me if this is the update that has caused problems?

Thanks

N

Nigel I'm now on 4.3.5.0728.  0722 may well have been the one that gave me the hiccough.  But then moving to 0728 was fine.  I'd go ahead and update . . . maybe by now it lets you go directly to 0728

Cheers Bart.