Hi community,

 

I'm helping a small charity in the UK with their IT, mostly by remote administration. They bought a LenovoEMC Totalstorage px6-300d with 4x 2TB disks in 2014, so it's still in warranty until February 2017. The disks are configured as RAID5.

During the weekend I did some maintenance on the unit and also upgraded the firmware to the latest LifeLine version 4.1.212.33882.

This was downloaded from the official page, uploaded to the storage unit and applied. The process of applying went through and the unit automatically restarted as expoected. Up to here everything looked normal.

 

On boot-up the display only showed "Lenovo" and the power LED was flashing.

The webinterface was not reachable and the unit did not answer on ping. I left it running for about 3 hours with no change in display/LED status. No amber or red LEDs flashing anywhere.

 

After that 3 hours I powered it down by short press on the power button and powered it back on after a short while. This resulting in the same behaviour as before: display "Lenovo", power LED flashing, no other LEDs lit up or flashing and no ping answer/UI access.

 

I left it running until this morning and started looking for solutions here in the forums and elsewhere. I already tried:

• unplugging all network connections and rebooting -> no luck (same as above),
• powering off the unit, removing all disks, power back on -> no luck (same as above)
• press and holding the reset button on the back -> nothing happens/no luck

I suspect the firmware upgrade went wrong somehow which would be the first time that this happens. I always kept the unit up to date and made about 10 or more updates since 2014.

 

Is there anything else I could try? Since the unit is also an iSCSI target for backups it would be good to find a non-destructive way of regaining access.

 

Any help or suggestion appreciated.

 

cykman77

Hello cykman77,

If the NAS will not boot with the drives removed, you will need to contact main support:
https://lenovo-eu-en.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/14722

Hi Gus,

 

thanks for your answer. The person in charge of the charity contacted support yesterday afternoon.

From your experience is there a chance to get the device back up and running without losing all the data?

 

cykman77

cykman77,

Yes, for the px series we can generally flash the DOM with the drives removed, it has a high rate of success in this scenario.

OK, we will try that first. Will report back how it goes. Thanks for your help.

Some further questions: support gave us the link to download the imager. This goes back to fw version 4.0.8.23976. We had version 4.1.208.33789 running before the failed update to 4.1.212.33882. So is this imager correct version, it appeasr to be pretty old?

What is the procedure for flashing just the DOM with the drives removed? It's clear to power off the device first and remove the drives. Afterward plug in the USB thumb drive and follow the instructions included with the imager. But could we update the firmware to 4.1.208.33789 before re-inserting the drives? Any special instructions on re-inserting the drives (e.g. one by one while the NAS is running or all of them at once while the NAS is powered off or ...)?

 

Sorry for all these questions, but the instruction just do not cover this special case of just re-imaging the DOM with drives removed.

cykman77,

Here are the imaging instructions:

Imaging a Lenovo (Iomega) NAS device:

You will need a flash drive (at least 2GB) formatted FAT32
and a Windows 7 64 bit PC in order to complete the steps below:

*Some ix4-300d devices only require the reset button to be held for about 15 seconds when imaging to 4.0.8.These devices will show "USB Boot..." on the display, release the reset button when
this appears.

**Windows 7, 64 bit, is not absolutely required, but has offered the best results with our imager

1. Download the appropriate imager via the link you were provided by your support agent.

2. The imager will be in a compressed file, it will need to be unzipped (7zip is a free utility that can accomplish this).

3. There may be instructions in the form of a PDF file included, these instructions replace those.

4. Also in the zipped file will be an .exe file listed as an application, run this and it will ask you where you want to install the imager.

5. Direct the application to install the imager to the FAT32 flash drive.

6. The NAS will need to be powered down at this point.

7. Connect the flash (with the imager installed) to one of the USB ports on the NAS.

8. Press and hold the recessed reset button (usually located on the back of the NAS, marked by two arrows in a circle) while powering up the NAS.

9. The reset button will need to be held until the network and flash symblos are shown on the device display (or about one minute for devices not equipped with a display).

10. Release the reset button after the expected display appears or after one minute, depending on your device.

11. Once the NAS has been successfully flashed, it will power itself down (the process should take about 15 minutes).

12. Unplug the USB device, wait about one minute and power up the NAS. After the boot process completes, the device should be restored to a factory state.

---------------------------------------------------------------
*Note, if you are getting an "Unable to clean removable drive" error from the imager when installing it onto the drive, please attempt to clean the drive. This can be done with a utility called Ccleaner (also free).

**The imager .exe file includes an uninstaller. After the imaging process is complete you will need to run the uninstaller in order to return the USB drive to its original storage capacity.

------------------------------------------------

For you, power down, pull the drives, then follow the directions as listed above.

On the px series you can either hot install the drives after running the imager, or install them while the NAS is powered down.

I recommend getting the NAS running with the imager that support provided, then requesting that we run some diagnostics for you, and if everything looks good, run a backup and upgrade the firmware.

Hi Cykman
Any luck getting your Server up running again by the imager?