Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[thannibal]

Want to share my experience since I couldn't find any records describing the problem.

I have a DNS 325 with a 1 TB disk (left position) and a 3 TB disk (right position). Both setup as standard disks and it has been running well for at least a year like that. We access the NAS using both Windows and Mac OS X.

The NAS stopped responding - not able to access it by the finder or by the web interface. It was possible to ping the server via Terminal window and the router said that the NAS was connected. Strange!

When I rebooted the NAS it was possible to access the web interface for about 1-3 minutes then it stopped responding again. If I removed the 3 TB HDD then everything worked as it should. If I removed the 1 TB it stopped responding as when both of them was added to the NAS.

During one of the short sessions where I was able to access the server via the web interface I realized, that I only got 4 mb left on my 3 TB HDD. I therefore started to figure out how to delete some files and free space. I tried to delete files using "my files" but I lost access before I could complete the operation. After that I realized that I needed to access the drive in another way. I bought a USB dock for SATA drives and connected the drive to my Mac Book (OS X 10.11.4 El Capitan). OS X didn't recognize the filesystem. I needed a third party driver to be able to read the Linux Ext3 files system that DNS 325 use. First I installed Fuse for Mac (https://osxfuse.github.io). That didn't help. Then I installed Paragons ExtFS (http://www.paragon-drivers.com/extfs-mac/) as a trial ware. It mounted the system partition but not the data partition (the disk has a small system partition). The data partition was inactive (not mounted), so I tried to activate it using ExtFS. That didn't help either. The disk wasn't activated. Then I got desperate. I re-inserted it to the NAS (obviously without any success) followed by a re-insertion into the USB dock. Bingo. Now I could access the the drive using Finder. 

I deleted some big files and released several Gb. Needed to empty the trash to complete the deletion. I honestly didn't know if the NAS would recognize that I had deleted the files. I read on forums etc. that both Fuse and ExtFS wasn't reliable when it comes to writing. But in my case it worked. Re-inserted the disk in the DNS 325, rebooted and I was back in the perfect world.

I expect the ExtFS driver from Paragon to be the one that ended up helping me. Fuse needed to have an add-on to be able to handle Ext3 and Ext4 and I didn't do that. But I do not know exactly how I ended up solving the problem.

I hope this can help other people.

[FurryNutz]

One other item you may want to check out if your NAS had been working then seem to experience disconnections or maybe the NAS doesn't come to readly fully or turns on for a short time then powers off. Check the power adapter voltage at the tip of the plug. Make sure that the out put voltage reads the same as what is listed on the sticker. We've seen some power adapters fail entirely or show beginnings of failure and voltages at the plug are less than what is reported on the sticker. Over time power adapters will give out or slowly deteriorate. If you have had this unit for a while, a new power adapter is suggested. The NAS unit is dependent upon getting good power from the adapter. 

Thank you for posting and hope it helps future users.