Running 8 Toshiba 4TB SATA drives. observed an error on Disk 4, photos below describe what I see.Questions:1) Do I need to replace the drive?2) If not, is there some other "fix" I should try first?3) I recall doing full rebuilds takes a very long time (on another ReadyNAS where I upgraded the drives), and also is "risky" for losing data. So am not keen on that... I think?I have 3 RN machines, this is the first time I've seen a disk "fail". I haven't tried rebooting the RN528X yet, that will be my next step but I expect the same result - I mean, if the disk is "bad" then it should still fail on reboot. Even if it comes back "good", I suppose I should now be skeptical of Disk 4 and replace it anyway???

jimk1963 wrote: Is it safe to just do this: 1) Power down NAS 2) Pull Disk 4 (bad drive) 3) Insert new Disk 4 (WD Red Plus or Ironwolf - presumably doesn't have to be 4TB but probably will stay with that) 4) Power on NAS This will work, but I generally advise people to hot-swap (pull disk and replace it with NAS running).

jimk1963 wrote: Thanks, will hot swap after backing everything up. Last question, any concern if I swap the 4TB bad drive with a larger one, say 16TB or so? Just looking online, it's more cost-effective to purchase a larger drive but I'm not sure if X-RAID (RAID 6 I think) has any qualms with this? Spec sheet says RN528X has 80TB disk capacity, so I'm nowhere near busting that limit. There is no known capacity limit - the 80 TB number was derived by the largest disks available at the time. That said, you would need to upgrade three more drives to the new size before you would see any increase in the volume size. Note it would only be one additional drive with single-redundancy XRAID (RAID-5).

It is possible, via SSH, to switch your unit from 8 drives in RAID6 to 7 in RAID5, but that does still require a re-sync and turning of XRAID, which limits future expansion. You may or may not be able to turn it back on after the conversion, there are definately cases where you can't due to "expanded volumes". During that re-sync, your data is at risk of another drive failure. And is that what you really want? If you have good periodic backup, it might be. But if you don't, maybe not.

If the drive comes already formatted for Windows, you'll either need to zero the drive using vendor tools on a PC (which is a useful step in verifying the drive is good before putting it in the NAS), remove any partitions with a PC, or format the drive in the NAS.

jimk1963 wrote: Meaning, do I need to inform the machine that I'm about to hot-swap, No, though I do agree with Sandshark's advice. Personally I run the full nondestructive Seatools test, followed by the full erase "advanced" test (which zeros the drive) before I hot-swap it. I have sometimes had drives that failed on of these tests, but passed the other.

RN528X Disk Error (1 of 8 drives) using X-Raid… what next?

19 Replies

jimk1963
Luminary
Dec 21, 2022
2nd of 3 pictures showing disk error...
- jimk1963
  Luminary
  Dec 21, 2022
  3rd of 3 pictures showing disk error.
  - jimk1963
    Luminary
    Dec 21, 2022
    After rebooting, now Disk 4 is just a blank slot (Volumes page under Settings)... Not sure what this means...
StephenB
Guru
Dec 21, 2022
jimk1963 wrote:

Questions:
1) Do I need to replace the drive?

Looks like it. There might be more information in the logs, but this looks like a usual disk failure. You could power down, connect the disk to a Windows PC (SATA or USB) and confirm. Though I don't think Toshiba has a test utility. Seatools or WD's dashboard software might be able to test it.

While you can still find them for sale, these are old drives - the current Toshiba models would be the N300 or the N300 Pro. You could also replace it with another enterprise class drive - or possibly a WD Red Plus/Pro or Ironwolf (regular or Pro).

jimk1963 wrote:

3) I recall doing full rebuilds takes a very long time (on another ReadyNAS where I upgraded the drives), and also is "risky" for losing data. So am not keen on that... I think?

The resync will take a little while - you have 32 TBs of raw disk space, and every sector will need to be either read or written. Hard to say exactly how long, but I would guess 24-48 hours for RAID-6.

But there really is no other option. Even if rebooting brought it back to life (unlikely) , would you still trust it?

Netgear does recommend making a backup first - and personally I always recommend having up to date backups for your NAS. RAID isn't enough to keep your data safe.

That said, you do have more protection than most, since you are running RAID-6. Even if a second disk were to fail in the middle of the resync, you should still avoid data loss.
- jimk1963
  Luminary
  Dec 21, 2022
  Is it safe to just do this:
  1) Power down NAS
  2) Pull Disk 4 (bad drive)
  3) Insert new Disk 4 (WD Red Plus or Ironwolf - presumably doesn't have to be 4TB but probably will stay with that)
  4) Power on NAS
  
  What happens on power-up? Will NAS automagically resync? System says 8.54TB is used and 13.26TB is free.
  
  Sounds like you're saying, prior to this, back up the entire NAS somewhere (One or both of my other 2 NAS drives I guess)?
  
  Thanks for the help!
  - StephenB
    Guru
    Dec 21, 2022
    jimk1963 wrote:
    
    Is it safe to just do this:
    
    1) Power down NAS
    
    2) Pull Disk 4 (bad drive)
    
    3) Insert new Disk 4 (WD Red Plus or Ironwolf - presumably doesn't have to be 4TB but probably will stay with that)
    
    4) Power on NAS
    
    This will work, but I generally advise people to hot-swap (pull disk and replace it with NAS running).

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RN528X Disk Error (1 of 8 drives) using X-Raid… what next?

19 Replies

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