Device will not setup (RESOLVED)

[eastbayrae]

Day one:
1. Setup went okay on four 3TB HDD's in RAID 5.
2. The first file I tried copying to the device caused the drive in bay 1 to become disconnected. The whole array failed after that.
3. Rebuilt the array and tried copying a different file. This caused bay 1 and 2 to become disconnected.
4. I tried several different ways of rebuilding the array including taking all the drives out and installing/formatting them in a different pc/enclosure. Same result: drive 1 and 2 still said both failed.
5. After all this I cannot perform any setup on it. It shows its configuring, but isn't. So now it just beeps two beeps continusously with drive bay 1's status light dark and the system status light is red. I can't even log into the web interface because it can't find the system at all.

All in all its a wonderful product on paper.

[eastbayrae]

I still can't get it to configure. The drive status lights are blue and the system light is red. How do you configure this thing? Removing all the drives and re-installing the software did nothing.

[kevinkar]

These ready made NAS boxes are a bit finicky at times. It's difficult to know what they are actually doing so you are left with red, orange, and blue lights to watch while eating some popcorn. It can be a bit frustrating without a console window to watch as it boots up as on a full linux/unix system.

I suggest taking all drives out. Connect one to your PC and reformat it into whatever you want and then delete the partition. Get it back to a totally blank and un-setup state. Take that one drive and put it in the Javelin and boot up. Wait for it to fully initialize (the beep and all blue lights). Then try getting into the web interface. In the RAID set up, take that one drive and see if you can set it up as a single RAID 0 and format it. It should be Volume 1 with all the default Javelin folders (Video, Music, Picture, etc.).

Once that's done, try connecting to it and copying data. This will show that the Javelin is working and the mapping of those folders works on your PC.

After that's done, delete that RAID and put in the second drive (you may want to unformat it on your PC as well) and try RAIDing those two drives together in a simple stripe (two drives as one volume). See if that works.

Essentially, try the easy options first to ensure the Javelin is working and then build more complex RAIDS as you go. It may take some time but you'll get good at understanding and using the Javelin interface. You may already be at this point.

I'm assuming you are using 3TB Seagate Barracuda XT drives? If so, that's what I'm using though I'm just running a simple RAID 0 on all 4 drives so I have 4 volumes. But they do work.

Hopefully some quick experimenting like this will help. If not, I'm sure Badintentions will have some good advice.

[BadIntentions]

At one point I personally experienced issues with a new batch of Hitachi 3TB SATA 6.0Gb/s drives. What drives are you trying to use?

Try this: Remove all the drives, and reboot the Javelin. Log into the web interface and erase any existing arrays, then insert all your drives again. Recreate a RAID 5 array, and let it settle for 30-45 minutes (there are more array maintenance activities happening during this time span that the Javelin does not inform you of.) Attempt to copy large files to the array and see if it errors out again.

If the array kicks out again, its possible one of your drives is spitting out a few errors and doesnt support TLER. The Javelin uses an enterprise grade raid controller, and it can be finicky about drives that take too long to recover from read errors. Try removing the drive that ends up with a red LED, and recreate the array. If the issue doesn't happen again, then you have a drive that is marginal for RAID, but probably fine for bulk storage. If the Javelin appears to be randomly selecting a drive to drop from the array, then there are two possibilities:

1) The Javelins RAID controller doesn't like the drives, and is kicking them from the array as 'failed' too quickly because the drives are slow to recover. This is a very likely scenario, especially if the drives are not in the tested drives list, or related to a drive in the tested drives list. In this case, the drives need to be swapped/exchanged for a different model that is on the tested/approved hardware list. Try testing with different drives and see if the issue goes away.

2) The Javelins PSU or Backplane are faulty. This is a rare possibility, which i haven't experienced with either of the units I have. It is, however entirely possible. Before starting an RMA for this potential issue, you really REALLY need to test with a different set of drives.

[eastbayrae]

I am not able to connect to the web app. I go into the dashboard and it see's the box. I do the configure without any drives. The status light turns blue for maybe 30 sec and goes back to red and its starts beeping again.

*UPDATE* I had a 1TB Hitatchi drive I dropped in bay 1. All blue lights now. The dashboard shows the box and the setup wizard is my only option. Every time I open the dashboard I have to run the setup wizard again. The web interface is still INOP. When I click on the 'refresh' I get a pop-up box saying the network and NAS settings are wrong and I need to re-run setup.

[eastbayrae]

I have been at this off and on for two straight days with numerous configurations. I still cannot log into the web app. I can 'see' it on my network and not much else. Monday I'll RMA and get something from Synology or QNAP.

[ChrisTWL]

Before you RMA the unit. I would try doing a factory reset. You need to put a paperclip (or similar sized object) in the little hole on the back of the unit. You need to leave it in there for about 20~30 seconds (the unit will beep a second time). It will then shutdown when you remove the paper clip. Turn it back on and try and log in with the default username and password. See if that allows you to access the web interface.

[eastbayrae]

Before you RMA the unit. I would try doing a factory reset. You need to put a paperclip (or similar sized object) in the little hole on the back of the unit. You need to leave it in there for about 20~30 seconds (the unit will beep a second time). It will then shutdown when you remove the paper clip. Turn it back on and try and log in with the default username and password. See if that allows you to access the web interface.

Alright, this worked getting me back to being able to log into the web interface! Thanks mate!

[eastbayrae]

A couple of other things:
e-SATA port on the back does what? I tried hooking it directly to the server and it did nothing. I wanted to back up my entire server, ~5TB or so, to this NAS box. The reason being its transferring over our network at 10meg/sec.

[kevinkar]

A couple of other things:
e-SATA port on the back does what? I tried hooking it directly to the server and it did nothing. I wanted to back up my entire server, ~5TB or so, to this NAS box. The reason being its transferring over our network at 10meg/sec.

I'm pretty sure it's for connecting another drive in an enclosure that connects via eSATA with the caveat that the drive be formatted by the Javelin. However, if the Javelin formats in ext3, it's possible a previously formatted ext3 drive may be pluggable without needing the Javelin to format it though I have not tried that (I run Windows, not Linux).

So you can't simply connect it to another machine via eSATA. I don't think the Javalin has firmware or OS bits to do that. That would be a nice enhancement in the future though.

One thing I find a bit silly is that USB drives need to be formatted in FAT32 or ext3 which is annoying since FAT32 can't manage files greater than 2GB meaning I can't transfer large ISO files via USB thumb drive and I don't currently have a Windows utility that formats/reads/writes ext3 to a USB thumb drive. Where's the NTFS capability? Grrr.

There's also no information in the PDF manual about the eSATA connectors by the way. Odd.