Pull Drives for restore?

one of our 4000 has been running at our warehouse in KY for a little over 2 years. The net work back there is a differnt subnet allowing coms via VPN to our sales office.

At some point the VPN dropped (DSL w/ static ip modem got flipped out of bridge mode and started handing out ips). Once that was unscrewed i was unable to rdc to the 4000 via the subnet IP or the static IP. Called the warehouse and they said the 4000 says Network Disconnected on the dash. I have an identical unit here and was only able to replicated that message by unplugging the network cables.

We had both nics plugged in with different ips staticly assigned. I had the warehouse guys power cycle the unit (gracefully) a couple of time as well as switch out cat cables. had them hook it into a spare switch to see if maybe the switch had packed it up, but the message still persists.

The unit is on its way to me here in CA. WD told me to run recovery on it. There is nothing on the drives that i cannot stand to lose, but i dont want to wait all the time for it to rebuild the raid. The unit only has 2 - 2TB drives in it.

Can i pull the drives and try running the recovery (last option) or will it want the drives in there? I never locked them. If the recover is successful and the nics come back (i have my doubts) will it know what to do with the drives? I can repopulate them, but it would take a while (days).

The router in KY has DHCP enabled (for a range of ip addys outside of the satic ones on all the equipment there) so the guys/gals can get onto the wireless with their phones/ipads/ect. The router didnt try and give out an ipaddy to the 4000. checked the tables on both the Cisco 082 and the RT66N and there were no unaccounted for ip addys. Pinging the server from a local machine and here via the subnet didnt find anything.

Obviously i will try and get into the unit before running the recovery. I want that to be my last ditch effort. I have a isolated router i can set to DHCP and my laptop so i can hack away at it on a closed network. Will run some of the tricks on it that I’ve read about here.

Prolly way to much info, but any advice is appreciated.

I’ll just wait till you get it in your hands. The nic stuff

As far as pulling the drives, no, the OS is on them, not a chip like a *nix* NAS

If it is currently booting, just misbehaving, recovery should not take ~ 4 hours

apparently it is booting, just no network activities. should be here friday (tomorrow) prolly wait till monday to start  the shenanigans

Built the USB drive and did the “Insert USB, hold reset until…”

Just as expected. No NIC activity at all. Recovery started but it didnt magicly make either one of the nics come back to life :frowning: So obviously the server could not be found. And this is one of the non vga ported versions.

You have a dhcp server somewhere?  Can you look and see if the Dx got an IP?  The pc you are running recovery on is getting an IP from the same dhcp server?

Are the nics lit up?  Just use one

Yea was hooked to a router that was off the network and had DHCP turned on (a failover/stand by RV325, new in box, lol). No ips assiged, no unknown mac addys. Only my laptop had an IP addy assigned (it is set up static on the laptop). Had the DHCP range set from 192.168.2 to 192.168.1.254.

All the lights on the 2 nics on the back are dead. No amber or green. Swapped from one to another to see if i could coax it back to life but no joy. Pretty sure the NICs are fried/dead. Filed a warranty request. We’ll see how this goes.

Yes, very much sounds like there is nothing you can do.  No Lights, no dice :frowning:

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