[Help] F4-210 suddenly no longer recognises hard drives [SOLVED]

[REBELinBLUE]

I have a F4-210 with 4 Seagate Ironwolf 4TB hard drives in a RAID 5 configuration.

Today I was streaming media from Plex without problem

A few hours later when I tried again it was unable to connect to the network share. When I tried loading the TOS UI the login screen only partially loaded, the form fields were showing but no CSS was loaded. I tried logging in but couldn't. I tried SSHing in and just got connection refused. I tried connect to the shares via Finder and they wouldn't connect either

I restarted the NAS and now the UI shows nothing but

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No hard drive detected!
Please install hard drive(s) and try again!

.

Trying to ssh in just errors

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❯ ssh -vvv nas
debug1: OpenSSH_10.3p1, OpenSSL 3.6.2 7 Apr 2026
debug3: Running on Darwin 25.5.0 Darwin Kernel Version 25.5.0: Mon Apr 27 20:38:56 PDT 2026; root:xnu-12377.121.6~2/RELEASE_ARM64_T6000 arm64
debug3: Started with: ssh -vvv nas
debug1: Reading configuration data /Users/xxx/.ssh/config
debug1: /Users/xxx/.ssh/config line 1: Applying options for *
debug1: /Users/xxx/.ssh/config line 10: Applying options for nas
debug1: Reading configuration data /opt/homebrew/etc/ssh/ssh_config
debug3: expanded UserKnownHostsFile '~/.ssh/known_hosts' -> '/Users/xxx/.ssh/known_hosts'
debug3: expanded UserKnownHostsFile '~/.ssh/known_hosts2' -> '/Users/xxx/.ssh/known_hosts2'
debug2: resolving "nas.lan" port 9222
debug3: resolve_host: lookup nas.lan:9222
debug3: channel_clear_timeouts: clearing
debug3: ssh_connect_direct: entering
debug1: Connecting to nas.lan [192.168.115.136] port 9222.
debug3: set_sock_tos: set socket 5 IP_TOS 0xb8
debug1: connect to address 192.168.115.136 port 9222: Connection refused
debug1: Connecting to nas.lan [::] port 9222.
debug3: set_sock_tos: set socket 5 IPV6_TCLASS 0xb8
debug1: connect to address :: port 9222: Connection refused
ssh: connect to host nas.lan port 9222: Connection refused

I shut down and removed & reseated the drives, same thing

All 6 lights are on and green.

At no point has TOS said there was anything wrong with any of the drives, I logged into the UI last on Thursday and there was no warnings then about any drive

I thought maybe I should do a reinitialise but if I put a paperclip in the reset hole there is nothing to press.

Any help is appreciated.

[CursaYang]

The scenario where your computer restarts and enters the initialization interface may be caused by the following reasons:

Poor hard disk connection: Dust accumulation or loose connection prevents the system from reading the hard drive properly.

Damaged system partition: Caused by abnormal power outages, forced shutdowns and other issues, which makes the partition unable to be mounted.

Hardware problems: The hard drive itself has physical failures (such as bad sectors).

In addition, the F4-210 does not have a reset button. You can refer to Method B in this post:

viewtopic.php?t=423 Remove all hard drives, enter the initialization page, then reinsert the hard drives and reinstall the system.

[REBELinBLUE]

The scenario where your computer restarts and enters the initialization interface may be caused by the following reasons:

Poor hard disk connection: Dust accumulation or loose connection prevents the system from reading the hard drive properly.

I have already used a air blower to blow any dust out. But if it were a loose connection surely the hard drive light would not be green

Hardware problems: The hard drive itself has physical failures (such as bad sectors).

Multiple drives all at once when just days before TOS didn't say anything was wrong with them?. Kind of the point of having a RAID array isn't it....

In addition, the F4-210 does not have a reset button. You can refer to Method B in this post:

viewtopic.php?t=423 Remove all hard drives, enter the initialization page, then reinsert the hard drives and reinstall the system.

Yeah sorry I have established that, weird that there is hole in the case and based on various posts on this forum it sounded like the reset but it seems not I'll try Method B again but I am pretty sure I tried that yesterday

[REBELinBLUE]

I have tried Method B with no luck, it still says No Hard drive detected and at no point does that change, each of the green lights for the drives light up as I plug them in but even if I reload the page it says no drive detected

[REBELinBLUE]

Instead of the 4 drives I had it in I tried an SSD, it detects it but during setup it gets to 50% and then just errors "Invalid Parameters, operation failed. Please restart your TNAS and start again." <edit> I tried with a different SSD and it worked, even in the hidden 5th slot.

[CursaYang]

It seems that this might be a hardware issue. Please send us some operation videos via the technical support email for our final confirmation. ([email protected]), we will conduct an analysis of it.

[REBELinBLUE]

I have ordered a powered SATA to USB adapter so I can test the drives tomorrow

[REBELinBLUE]

It seems that this might be a hardware issue. Please send us some operation videos via the technical support email for our final confirmation. ([email protected]), we will conduct an analysis of it.

So I have gotten a bit further

I noticed there was the extra 5th SATA connector, so I connected an SSD to that and was able to initialise it. I then shutdown and connected the hard drives and booted. TOS came up but when I looked at the disk settings it showed only a drive connected to slot 5. I realised I had not heard the noise you might expect when a hard drive is powered up.

I have connected the drives to my laptop with a powered SATA connector and it discovers them fine. I have not tried to scan them or anything as obviously I don't want to mess them up.

But the fact that my laptop is able to detect them and the TNAS unit is not makes me wonder if there is a power issue. The unit boots with the SSD connected to any of the SATA connectors so I don't think there is a problem with any of those.

I wonder if the power brick is failing and not providing enough power

[CursaYang]

You can try inserting one hard drive at a time to see if it's recognized, and then gradually increase the number of hard drives.

If you have a power adapter with similar or greater wattage, you can also try replacing it for testing.

[REBELinBLUE]

Tested the power adapter with a multimeter, the voltage at least is as expected

https://dropshare.rebelinblue.com/Whats ... VVV9K.jpeg

So yeah I will try one drive at a time and see if they are recognised