NAS540 4 (4TB) Drives won't come active

jw0847
jw0847 Posts: 6  Freshman Member
First Comment
in Personal Cloud Storage

What is the default RAID Configuration for the NAS540 4 drive unit?

I have had my NAS540 for several years without any problems so it got taken for granted. It survived many power outages.

Today I came into steady beeping. Drive lights not active and could not access the drive. Power off and on has no longer any beeping, I hear the drives spin up but no flashing lights or disk activity and no access to the NAS unit and no response to ping. I am assuming the processor has a problem. I don't see parts or units available.

Don't know if I can recover my data on another unit. I can't find any NAS540 units on Ebay or via search.

Would there be any chance that buying a generic 4 drive NAS and putting my drives in would work?

I found this unit on NewEgg:

Is this compatible with disk configuration? Put old NAS drives in and it works?

Asustor AS3304T 4 Bay Drivestor 4 Pro Desktop NAS (Diskless)
4-Bay
Realtek RTD1296 1.4 GHz (Quad-Core) Processor Processor
1 x 2.5GbE
3 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 https://www.newegg.com/asustor-as3304t/p/N82E16822225064

I appreciate any help!

John

Accepted Solution

  • Mijzelf
    Mijzelf Posts: 2,805  Guru Member
    250 Answers 2500 Comments Friend Collector Seventh Anniversary
    Answer ✓

    Would there be any chance that buying a generic 4 drive NAS and putting my drives in would work?

    No. A NAS always uses it's own layout.

    I can't find any NAS540 units on Ebay or via search.

    A NAS542 would also do. If you can find that.

    BTW, if you have the possibility to check/exchange the power supply, try that. It is, apart from the disks, the most wear sensitive part of the hardware.

    ZyXEL uses default Linux software raid, so if you can connect the disks to any modern Linux box, odds are that the array is automagically assembled. And else it can be done manually.

    I have had my NAS540 for several years

    Do you have any idea how old it is? There very first '540's used a 64kB memory page size, which yielded an incompatible filesystem. It can be mounted, but some helper software is needed. (For future readers, you need a fuse implementation of the ext filesystem).

    This 'problem' was solved in firmware 5.10, around mid 2015.

All Replies

  • Mijzelf
    Mijzelf Posts: 2,805  Guru Member
    250 Answers 2500 Comments Friend Collector Seventh Anniversary
    Answer ✓

    Would there be any chance that buying a generic 4 drive NAS and putting my drives in would work?

    No. A NAS always uses it's own layout.

    I can't find any NAS540 units on Ebay or via search.

    A NAS542 would also do. If you can find that.

    BTW, if you have the possibility to check/exchange the power supply, try that. It is, apart from the disks, the most wear sensitive part of the hardware.

    ZyXEL uses default Linux software raid, so if you can connect the disks to any modern Linux box, odds are that the array is automagically assembled. And else it can be done manually.

    I have had my NAS540 for several years

    Do you have any idea how old it is? There very first '540's used a 64kB memory page size, which yielded an incompatible filesystem. It can be mounted, but some helper software is needed. (For future readers, you need a fuse implementation of the ext filesystem).

    This 'problem' was solved in firmware 5.10, around mid 2015.

  • jw0847
    jw0847 Posts: 6  Freshman Member
    First Comment

    Thank you! All good info!

  • jw0847
    jw0847 Posts: 6  Freshman Member
    First Comment
    edited December 2024

    It seems the issue is a failure in drive 2. It doesn't spin up when I tested drives externally just to see if they all spun up.

    I have a refurbed one ordered and will go from there. My expectation was the NAS should have continued to work with 1 drive bad, just don't know what type of failor that would allow the unit to keep going.

    Any tips to be able recover the array? The NAS Firmware is 5.20

  • Mijzelf
    Mijzelf Posts: 2,805  Guru Member
    250 Answers 2500 Comments Friend Collector Seventh Anniversary

    Indeed the NAS is supposed to run fine, with 1 failing disk. Depending on how you organized the array, your data could also be OK. But if the failing disk draws too much power, it is possible that it stops the NAS from booting. So just try to boot with the 3 remaining disk. And if you configured redundancy (raid5, or 2*raid1) you can insert the 'new' disk, and use the webinterface to add it to the array.

  • jw0847
    jw0847 Posts: 6  Freshman Member
    First Comment

    Using the NAS Starter Utility it sees the NAS unit but without an IP assigned. I configure to use the DHCP but it never picks up an IP. It won't take a manual config either. I figured it was because of the bad disk stopping it from actually booting. It's the same with the replaced disk. The issue with the old disk is the PCB board and swapping the PCB doesn't change the problem.

    I wonder is anyone has a NAS540 or NAS542 without disks that they are interested in selling?

    Thanks

    John

  • Mijzelf
    Mijzelf Posts: 2,805  Guru Member
    250 Answers 2500 Comments Friend Collector Seventh Anniversary

    Strange. The NSU runs on the same ethernet as DHCP. Have you tried the other port?

  • jw0847
    jw0847 Posts: 6  Freshman Member
    First Comment

    Yes I tried both ports. Strange problem.

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