DS212 Intermittent LAN

[TomOnSNB]

Hi

A newbie here, so please be gentle ;-)

My DS212 started dropping its LAN connections a few days ago. It started as an intermittent problem that would occasionally be put right by a hard restart.

However, now LAN only comes online rarely, and then only for seconds to minutes before dropping out again. When it drops out, the LAN LED on the front panel goes dark.

My sense is that it is circuit board component related rather than anything in software/firmware. Can anyone point me to the RJ45 circuitry on the board, so that I can get my local wizard to check for continuity, dry joint(s) etc.?

Any pointers would help- An annotated circuit diagram would be brilliant.

Thank you.

 

[thiggins]

Unless your "wizard" can resolder surface mount components, I wouldn't let him touch it. The Ethernet PHY is easy to spot, it is usually right near the LAN rJ45.

The problem could also be a bad cable or bad port on the device at the other end of the potentially bad cable.

 

[TomOnSNB]

Thanks Tim,

The problem is definitely with the DS-212. I've used multiple routers/switches and many different cables connecting to the DS, and it fails every times regardless of the cables/switches used. I was hoping to identify some of the circuitry that would impact/cause Intermittent LAN failure and have him assess for connectivity/ bad connections. As it is, the device is useless, so I'll have to leave it to him in the hope that he can make a difference. If he can't find a physical problem, he won't touch anything, allowing me to try and get my data off the device using a serial port or whatever.

Does a service manual exist for these devices?

 

[TomOnSNB]

My DS-212 has become inaccessible due to a problem with the RJ-45 port. It contains 2 * 2 TB drives set up as a straight 4TB volume.

I also have a DS-209 and a DS-207+ from earlier Synology investments.

Can I pop the drives out of the DS-212, put them into either of the earlier devices and access the data?

I understand that, to make this work , I would have to install an earlier version of the Synology server to accommodate the earlier devices, but as I understand it, that would sit on its own area within the Volume without affecting the Data area.

 

[thiggins]

No service manual.
Best bet is to copy your data to a USB 3.0 drive.

 

[TomOnSNB]

As I can't get access to the device, I can't kick off a copy to USB3, although I suppose I could do that If I can connect via the onboard serial port...

 

[thiggins]

D'oh! Not a helpful suggestion, eh?

Maybe get a drive dock to mount one of the drives to a 'nix machine.

 

[TomOnSNB]

All suggestions gratefully received...

I could certainly mount a drive on a Ubuntu machine. However, isn't the data written by the Diskstation across both drives in my non-mirrored scenario? I'm not sure how I could get meaningful data from half the pair of disks at any one time...

 

[thiggins]

If you had the two drives in JBOD or RAID0, you're probably going to have a difficult time with recovery. If you left them as independent volumes, you're ok.

 

[TomOnSNB]

Any other views om this? I'm grateful for the responses so far, but I am kinda stressing out abt. this now, and could really do with some kind of a result from this forum..

 

[sfx2000]

Anandtech had an article where writer's Synology died, and he walked thru the recovery steps - bit of work, but he was able to recover all his data.

 

[L&LD]

I would not put the drives into a different model of NAS myself.

Can you track one down to buy (or just use) until you get your data off? Otherwise, depending on the importance of the data, it may be time for a professional data service recovery method.

There is also two ways you can have a 4TB volume from 2x 2TB drives. One is RAID0 and one is JBOD or SPAN. Which one was yours configured with?

Btw, this type of failure (NAS hardware instead of drive hardware) is why I recommend buying NAS' in identical multiples to my customers (never just a single example of any particular model).

 

[stevech]

This type of failure is why I don't use RAID on my 2 bay. I use 2 volumes.
LAN interface quits. NAS power supply or mainboard fails.

But the larger question is: There is no backup on USB3 or some such?

With RAID, it's not if, but when you get in trouble due to a corrupt file system (you have just ONE with RAID, unlike 2 volumes) or human admin error.
Usually this happens well before a drive or electronics hardware failure might occur.

Tell us more about the RJ45 problem. And if the LEDs on the NAS are rather normal after power-up. Maybe we can simply get that going - bad cable, bent pin, bad switch port, etc.

Worst case, send me your two drives, marked slot 1, slot 2, and I'll put them in my DS212 and try to copy files to a 3.5in. drive that you send.

 

[sfx2000]

My DS-212 has become inaccessible due to a problem with the RJ-45 port. It contains 2 * 2 TB drives set up as a straight 4TB volume.

I also have a DS-209 and a DS-207+ from earlier Synology investments.

Can I pop the drives out of the DS-212, put them into either of the earlier devices and access the data?

check with Synology Tech support before hopping disks and breaking an array...

Synology, like QNAP (and perhaps others) actually use some fairly predictable methods on their storage

not easy, but between MDADM and rebuilding the array, and sometimes having to go deep into LVM (pv attachments, volume groups, logical volumes), and - breaking out the vicegrips and blowtorches on the file system...

getting ninja on linux, it can be done...

 

[thiggins]

Any other views om this? I'm grateful for the responses so far, but I am kinda stressing out abt. this now, and could really do with some kind of a result from this forum..

What else are you looking for, Tom? Have you contacted Synology support?

 

[thiggins]

I merged the DS209 thread with this one.

 

[TonyH]

Hi

A newbie here, so please be gentle ;-)

My DS212 started dropping its LAN connections a few days ago. It started as an intermittent problem that would occasionally be put right by a hard restart.

However, now LAN only comes online rarely, and then only for seconds to minutes before dropping out again. When it drops out, the LAN LED on the front panel goes dark.

My sense is that it is circuit board component related rather than anything in software/firmware. Can anyone point me to the RJ45 circuitry on the board, so that I can get my local wizard to check for continuity, dry joint(s) etc.?

Any pointers would help- An annotated circuit diagram would be brilliant.

Thank you.

Did you try different LAN port on the router? If same the problem is with NAS. If luckily router LAN port is bad, get a switch. Is you local wizard is very good with multi layer board SMT stuffs? First suspect is RJ45 socket.

 

[sfx2000]

This type of failure is why I don't use RAID on my 2 bay. I use 2 volumes.
LAN interface quits. NAS power supply or mainboard fails.

But the larger question is: There is no backup on USB3 or some such?

Both @stevech and I have preached about this in the past...

Not meaning to make light of OP's situation - I feel his pain.

This is a great example of why the NAS needs to be included in a backup strategy... it's even more critical to back up that server than the PC's that are using it as a backup source, due to the concentration of data that usually happens as people use the NAS more and more...

There are two kinds of people out there - those who do backup, and those who have never lost a hard disk

 

[stevech]

Tell us more about the RJ45 problem. And if the LEDs on the NAS are rather normal after power-up. Maybe we can simply get that going - bad cable, bent pin, bad switch port, etc.

 

[sfx2000]

bad cable

That, honestly, is the very first thing to check - LAN ports do burn out from time to time, but very rare...