ReadNAS Annoyance – Let Go of My Drives

For some strange reason, I decided today was the day that I was going to shut down my ReadyNAS NV+ and clean the dust out of the inside of the drive bays. Maybe the fact that the management console told me the system was “busy” for the past 30 minutes could of had something to do with my decision.

After shutting down the system for the first time I can remember this year, I attempted to remove the drive bays and was a bit frustrated by the fact that I couldn’t release them. They have a small button on the bottom that you push and it release the lever that latches the bays into place. I could push the button in to the point of breaking my finger but the latches wouldn’t dis-engage.

Very frustrating! And a bit concerning.

Has any other ReadyNAS NV+ owners encountered the same problem?

I was eventually able to use a paperclip to force the internal mechanism to release (for some reason pushing the button was supposed to slide this latch behind the button down, but it wasn’t; luckily I was able to find the latch with the paperclip).

Other than this strange “hardware” failure, the ReadyNAS has been a great data storage device for all my media and photography. (Though I wish it was a bit faster, see my post about the ReadyNAS Pro.) I might need to start upgrading my disks soon, I could use additional space and I’m getting close to my MTBF.

Update: I just realized that the ReadyNAS web admin isn’t compatible with Firefox 3.0. That was the source of the repeated “system is busy” message I kept getting when logged in. As soon as I opened the admin interface in Safari, it worked as expected.

Update2: Since writing this (in the past 24 hours) we have had two power outages. One for 10 seconds and one for 1.5 hours. Both caused the ReadyNAS to go down. The first one took the RAID 3.5 hours to resync itself with no failures or lost data. The second one just ended and the NAS is staring it’s resync process. This has spurred me to go buy a UPS system. The trick here is to get one with enought power so that you can run the NAS and your key equipment during a short outage and shut stuff down safely during a longer one. And what information does Netgear not provide in their documentation? How much power the ReadyNAS uses. (You would think this would be available in the section talking about “connecting a UPS”?) Luckily, I have a Kill-A-Watz lying around and was able to measure the power usage. For those who are wondering: 60-65 Watts running. Thought it did spike to 80 Watts during boot up…

3 Replies to “ReadNAS Annoyance – Let Go of My Drives”

  1. Hey Greg, Thanks for the heads up… I haven’t attempted to take any drives out of mine yet. But I have delegated the NV+ for backups only because of the issues I have read about with OS X and PS CS3 saving to network drives.

    [Reply]

  2. Mark,

    Yeah, I was surprised when I herd Jim G. talking about this issue. Sure am glad I haven’t upgraded to CS3 yet! Ever since converting over to the MacBook Pro, I hardly ever do image processing on the PC anymore…

    [Reply]

  3. Hi, I’ve found your page because of searching for “netgear nas busy” 😉
    ok, now I use safari to admin the nas. thanks for this info.

    I must say, I’ve no problems to get the hd’s out of my readynas, but it’s only 6 months old. – Maybe I can tell about the same problem in 1 or 2 years.

    [Reply]

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