crunchlife: Linksys NAS200 Disk Failure

Linksys NAS200 Disk Failure

Ryan Baxter — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 19:58:00 -0800

After 18 months of abuse, my NAS200 finally lost a hard drive. I heard a muffled beep this evening while working on a new design for this website. Thinking it was one of my daughter’s many noisy toys, I dismissed the alarm and continued working. About an hour ago I attempted to save my work to a share on the NAS200, but was greeted with this rather ambiguous error message.

I could ping the device, but browsing to its administrative website resulted in a 404 error.

The NAS200’s power and Disk 2 lights were blinking in alternation. The Disk 1 indicator was not lit at all. My heart sank at this point. So I next did what all IT professionals do when disaster strikes. I hit the power button and said a small prayer. Unfortunately, my NAS200 would not shut down. I yanked its power cord from the wall, let it cool down, and plugged it back in. As the NAS200 powered up, its fan whirred and lights began blinking.

After reboot, the NAS200’s lights blinked in the same pattern as before, but this time I decided to wait a few minutes rather than have a panic attack. During this time the ACT light flickered rapidly for about 10 minutes. When it finally went out, the power and Disk 2 lights stayed lit, but Disk 1 remained dark. At this point I was able to browse to the administrative website and view Disk 1’s status. The drive appeared to be “removed”. Huh?

I’m perplexed as to what this means. I did not receive a hardware failure e-mail and the “removed” status makes me think that the controller has failed rather than the disk itself. Hmmm… Disk 2 is still accessible so my plan is to back it up as quickly as possible and then proceed as if I’m dealing with a disk failure. Wish me luck.

*Update: The second part of this article can be found here.

"Linksys NAS200 Disk Failure" by Ryan Baxter

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 20:56:58 -0700

Success! Read about it here.

"Linksys NAS200 Disk Failure" by Ryan Baxter

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 19:33:07 -0700

I'm working on it right now. I thought it best to backup everything from Disk 2 to an external drive so I'll have a redundant backup of my files. I still haven't determined whether or not my NAS200 has a bad controller or the drive has failed. Ultimately, I plan on including an off-site storage solution so I don't have to rely on my NAS200 as much. From what I've read, most NAS200s that have drive failures with Disk 1 do so because of overheating caused by the NAS200. I think that is what happened in my case. I'll post an update when I have more news.

"Linksys NAS200 Disk Failure" by anotherNAS200 user

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 19:10:18 -0700

hey, can you update me on what happened with your drive? did the drive fail or the controller in the nas200? I have a nas200 that I picked up about 2 months ago. and Im ok with its slowness... but am really worried about its reliability and ability to alert me of impending drive failures. will you be keeping your nas200 or upgrading to some other network attached storage device? I think if this fails I try a drobo.

"Linksys NAS200 Disk Failure" by Ryan Baxter

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 10:14:09 -0700

I bought another drive and will be attempting to resuscitate the NAS200 tonight. Hopefully it goes well.

"Linksys NAS200 Disk Failure" by Gamer

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 17:53:27 -0700

Ouch, hope all goes well with the backup since disk 2 is accessible.