How to Replace Defective Drive in ReadyNAS 4220X

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CSmg wrote:

Can anyone point me to documentation that shows the steps to replace a defective drive or give clear direction based on their personal experiences?

 

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I always recommend hot-swapping the drive - that ensures that the OS "sees" the removal and reinsertion, and doesn't have to make assumptions on what it happening.

In this case I'd download the log zip (or use ssh) to see what is going on with the drives.  Looking at mdstat will give you some idea on whether a RAID group is still missing a drive.  Also look for indications of drive errors in the smart stats, system.log, kernel.log, etc.  It might not be drive 8 that failed to sync.

Personally I also test my drives in a Windows PC (using vendor tools) before adding them to the NAS.  That includes running the full ("long") non-destructive test, as well as a full write test.  Unfortunately, WD's dashboard utility no longer has the write zeros test - I have an older copy of their Lifeguard program that does.  Both tests have found OOB failed drives for me (and sometimes one has detected the failure, but not the other).

I've recommended NAS-purposed and enterprise-class drives for some years now - many consumer drives in this size range now use SMR technology, which is not a good choice for ReadyNAS.  Avoid current WD Red drive models, as they are all SMR.  Red Plus drives are fine, as are Ironwolf.