Project PC's

So, My ReadyNAS sort of died. My first instinct was to get some assistance Infrant Forums. I posted what happened and the people running the post definitely did an excellent job responding. Everyone was very helpful, but it still didn't resolve my problem. I ended up calling their support line. This is where it got interesting.

The guy I had on the phone was walking my through all the First Level Troubleshooting steps that are laid out in the Infrant Wiki. I was a bit annoyed, but obliged and continued because I wanted it up and running again. It ended up being pretty interesting because he explained how Netgear had bought out Infrant, and there's a few lapses in Support process right now. The major one being Contact Support page doesn't actually work right now (It looks like they finally updated it with a Note to just call the 800 number). The tech also explained that their support center doesn't have the expertise to diagnose a lot of problems with the ReadyNAS, and most of the problems are being sent to second level support, which is currently Infrant technicians.

After an hour on the phone with him, he finally said "Okay, I'll send this off to 2nd Level Support." I laughed a bit; what can you do? He gave me the case number and we went our separate ways.

It took about a week for the 2nd level support to contact me. On the initial call, they warned me 2nd level support is pretty busy, so this didn't surprise me much. This technician had me do the same steps I previously did, which was TFTP a new version of the bios and try to boot from a USB drive. The difference was he was able to tell me what it was supposed to look like and why it wasn't working. We, umm, he discovered that my Flash had been corrupted, and issued and RMA for a new one. I was excited. It's been a week that I've been trying to do workarounds because I was missing files.

Anyhow, I sent the ReadyNAS out. It arrive in Memphis on a Friday. I had my ReadyNAS back the Following Wednesday. My glitch was they asked me to remove the Hard Drives before sending the ReadyNAS. I wasn't sure they'd be repairing my ReadyNAS or just shipping another one back out. So, I removed the Hard Drives and left the Hard Drive Trays. I was nervous that this was going to bite me. Sure enough, when I got my ReadyNAS back on Wednesday, I had No Drive Trays.

On the phone again, I called the RMA support number and they shipped out the Trays. It's Friday again, and the trays are due in on Monday. I'm just crossing my fingers that everything else goes smoothly.