In the event of a firmware upgrade failure, your ReadyNAS may be unable to boot.
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Generally, this happens because the new ReadyNAS firmware was not fully written to the chassis due to something unexpected during upgrade. When the chassis reboots into normal mode, it might proceed with trying to upgrade your chassis with the poorly copied firmware image, fail, and still try to start up. The unit may not be fully bootable at this point. A solution is to try using the USB Recovery tool to reflash firmware on the ReadyNAS chassis.
What the USB Recovery Tool is
- A recovery tool for reloading current firmware onto the chassis for recovery purposes only
What the USB Recovery Tool is not
- A magic fix-it-all-in-one utility to resolve non-chassis issues
- An alternative to OS Re-install
- A tool to revert your chassis to an older firmware in an attempt to downgrade your existing setup's firmware
Warnings
This tool should only be used at the recommendation of NETGEAR Support. Read through all of the steps and make sure you feel comfortable in proceeding; otherwise, do not proceed with the steps below. The USB Boot Recovery program attempts to overwrite existing firmware data inside of the chassis. Using the USB Boot Recovery could cause irreparable damage to the chassis if used incorrectly: powering down the chassis prematurely during write operations, or attempting to downgrade the firmware of the chassis. Using this is at your own risk.
Preparing the Software
- Download the Recovery Tool
- Download the RAIDiator 4.2 USB Recovery Tool
- Extract RAIDiator 4.2 USB Flash Recovery.zip to a new folder on your desktop.
- Download the final RAIDiator 4.2 firmware (4.2.31) from http://www.downloads.netgear.com/files/GDC/RNDU2000/RAIDiator-x86-4.2.31.zip
- Extract the firmware file and release notes from the zip file to the same folder you extracted the Recovery tool.
Prepare the USB
- Find a USB that is greater than 256 MB but no more than 32 GB.
- Ensure there is only one partition on the USB.
- Pre-format that USB as FAT-32.
- Identify the drive letter your USB is assigned after formatting.
Creating the Recovery USB
- Open usbrecovery.exe from the Recovery Tool folder on your desktop.
- Select the drive letter the USB was assigned under "Select the USB Drive:"
- Select the firmware under "Select Firmware image:"
- Click Create
USB Booting your ReadyNAS
- If you have a desktop model ReadyNAS, place the prepared USB in the front USB port while the unit is in a powered down state. On a rackmount unit, place the USB in any available port.
- Before powering on the device, press and hold the Backup (or Reset on Rackmount) button. Start the chassis and continue holding the Backup (or Reset on Rackmount) button for up to 15 seconds.
- Units enabled with LCD will indicate that it has entered USB Recovery mode.
- 2-bay desktop units, you may not be aware when the unit enters USB Recovery mode, unless your USB has an activity indicator.
- On rackmount units with VGA, you can connect a display to watch the update process.
- When the ReadyNAS completes the recovery, it will power down the device; then you may remove the USB and try booting normally.
Troubleshooting
- The ReadyNAS USB Boot Recovery mode is very picky about the USB you use. If your ReadyNAS is still on after 20 minutes, then it is likely that the recovery process failed. Some USBs report incorrect information during the recovery process that makes the USB unmountable. If this is the case, the ReadyNAS did not attempt to overwrite your flash. Try several different USBs until the ReadyNAS satisfies the recovery process.
- If you were upgrading and your chassis was unable to boot properly, you may need to OS reinstall your box and re-extract the chassis firmware over the top of your existing operating system. Follow your device's boot menu procedures for more information
- Using this tool to downgrade your chassis' firmware could have unintended consequences. Many changes happen between firmware releases, including changes to bootloader and internal components. Attempting to downgrade could render your unit useless, including the inability to USB Boot Recover. Only USB Boot the same or newer RAIDiator 4.2 firmware.
- In the event that the USB Recovery Tool resolves any chassis booting issues, but you still have an issue, consider factory defaulting and restoring from your pre-upgrade backup.