Netgear ReadyNAS RNDU4000, SATA-port not working, help diagnose or repair [FIXED - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / repair

author: Orfeous
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2020, 10:07:27 pm
content: My Netgear ReadyNAS RNDU4000 seems to have a faulty SATA-port on channel 2.1,3,4 works correctly.All 4 disks is OK.I have tried swap disk between them all and the issue still exists on channel 2.Disk on Channel 2 powers up. But NAS dont see the drive. Web interface says "Channel 2 not available" or "Channel 2 not present" in RAIDar windows software.System log does not tell me anything about this.How can i diagnose this? Can it be something else that is broken?I attach some pictures of PCB

author: 60Hurts
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2020, 01:43:01 am
content: Just joined and delurked to say I have a Netgear ReadyNAS RNDP4000 with the exact same problem except dead SATA port 1. I just pulled it out of my "fix it later" pile and will be following along with great interest. Hopefully some of the gurus here can help. I don't know much about electronics so I can't help. When the NAS went bad I disassembled it and reseated all the connectors and etc. but no change, that is the extent of my troubleshooting (if you can call it that) so far.

author: Orfeous
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2020, 10:29:26 am
content: Seems to be a known issue.I took it apart yesterday and cleaned the best i could but no success.Havent tried to disassembly everything yet and reseat all PCBs and connectors.Just cant figure out whats wrong with it.Happy to see that im not alone with this issue.If this cant be fixed i might through it away and get something else.

author: Orfeous
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2020, 11:41:54 am
content: I just fixed it!Took it all apart, resoldered SATA-connector on channel 2. Reassembled and now it works!Visual inspection i saw that the SATA-port was tweaked a little so i guess the solder joints must have loss their connections.Happy!

author: PA0PBZ
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2020, 12:03:24 pm
content: I guess that's because they are made so that you plug a connector on a drive, not plug the drive into the connector

author: 60Hurts
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2020, 12:40:39 am
content: Do I just use a soldering iron to reheat/reflow the rows of SATA connectors (circled in red in the attachment) or is the repair more complicated than that? I have a 40W iron, is that sufficient? Details for a rookie would be appreciated.

author: Orfeous
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2020, 03:01:36 pm
content: Please do this at your own risk! Something might fail.I had no issues with the power-SATA-port so i just resolder the SATA-data-port the little one besides the long. I heated the pins up and added a little little new solder to pins and it worked.Be careful to not heat up the PCB or such too much.Dont know how to explain.In my case it could had been something else too, i retweaked the port a little bit and i inserted my drive cases very lightlyDont know if my "reapair" is permanent or.. as long as i dont move the disks around it should work.Someday i might change the port out completley for a permanent repair.You can give it a try in your case?Does the disk spin up? Or is it not recognised as it was in my case?You can also check the logs and see what is says in the smart-log.

author: 60Hurts
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2020, 12:55:01 am
content: > Does the disk spin up? Or is it not recognised as it was in my case?I don't recall if the disk spins up or not. However in the control software it says no drive detected (drive was fine) so I suspect it is the data connections that are bad. Thanks for your help and congrats on your repair.

author: 60Hurts
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: May 31, 2022, 08:45:27 pm
content: I finally had some time to tackle some side projects that have been sitting around and I got the NAS to work by reheat/reflowing the SATA connectors per Orfeous' advice. I put in 4 new HDDs and restored to factory settings and created the partion using RAID 5 and all is well. I'm going to leave it running for a while before I put it back in service for backing up my data. Thanks for all the help.

author: fordem
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2022, 02:11:13 pm
content: Quote from: PA0PBZ on September 03, 2020, 12:03:24 pmThat doesn't make a difference - the connectors are designed to align themselves as they are inserted - backplane mounted SATA/SAS connectors are used on thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of servers and NAS/SAN storage devices, and have been used for over two decades.If there is a problem on the ReadyNAS units, it's going to be in ReadyNAS fabrication or quality control.For what it's worth, I also own a ReadyNAS unit (two bay) and have managed to break the release handles on both caddies - in the twelve years I've owned it, I've never had a drive failure, drives have only been removed for capacity upgrades and there have only been three such upgrades - 500GB to 1TB, 1TB to 2TB, 2TB to 8TB - so pretty much three removals. I've certainly swapped disks in/out of my IBM/Lenovo servers a lot more than that, and the same goes for my Equallogic iSCSI array.Yes, the ReadyNAS is not in the same price range/market segment as the other equipment, so you know it's not the design of the connector, it's the quality of the construction.