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Forum Discussion
Corrupt file? Bad disk? Both?
MANY THANKS IN ADVANCE FOR ANY AND ALL ADVICE
I have a problem which came to light in the last couple of days. I installed a new version of Photoshop Elements and it decided I should do a backup of all my photos. My photos live on my ReadyNAS NV+. (I currently have 4 1 Tb drives in it).
YESTERDAY:
The backup copies the files from my NAS to a local HD. About 1/2 way through the backup (7xxx files in), the application hung while it said it was trying to write a file on the NAS (I'm guessing it is tried to write a "I backed this up" bit). I thought this was the application hanging until I found that the NAS was totally unresponsive (no browsing, no RAIDar). Ultimately, I pulled the plug on the NAS (ouch!). It booted and did its disk check - and came back telling me I had a LOT of ATA errors on one particular disk (all my other drives had 0... this one had 18,000) and advised me to get a new drive. It did a resync, too, after booting.
TODAY:
Boot up. Things LOOK OK... other than that I clearly have a drive going bad and I should replace it. Before going to the store for a new drive, I decide to run the backup again - figuring maybe the drive just HAPPENED to lock up at that point during the backup. Nope... the backup fails on the same file and locks the NAS again. So, I'm in the process of rebooting now. I've been to the store for my new drive (actually, got 4 figuring I can make the move to 2Tb drives while I'm at it).
QUESTIONS:
The file system check seems to have succeeded last night - and yet it appears I have a file that is corrupt enough that trying to write it completely hangs the NAS.
a) Has anyone else seen this?
b) Do you know of a way to check the coherence of the file system OTHER than the boot-time FS check (which is, BTW, SLOW!)
c) Any advice on handling it?
d) I'm pretty sure my next step (after getting the NAS back up fully) is to replace the bad drive and hope that fixes it... but anyone have a other / better suggestions?
I have a problem which came to light in the last couple of days. I installed a new version of Photoshop Elements and it decided I should do a backup of all my photos. My photos live on my ReadyNAS NV+. (I currently have 4 1 Tb drives in it).
YESTERDAY:
The backup copies the files from my NAS to a local HD. About 1/2 way through the backup (7xxx files in), the application hung while it said it was trying to write a file on the NAS (I'm guessing it is tried to write a "I backed this up" bit). I thought this was the application hanging until I found that the NAS was totally unresponsive (no browsing, no RAIDar). Ultimately, I pulled the plug on the NAS (ouch!). It booted and did its disk check - and came back telling me I had a LOT of ATA errors on one particular disk (all my other drives had 0... this one had 18,000) and advised me to get a new drive. It did a resync, too, after booting.
TODAY:
Boot up. Things LOOK OK... other than that I clearly have a drive going bad and I should replace it. Before going to the store for a new drive, I decide to run the backup again - figuring maybe the drive just HAPPENED to lock up at that point during the backup. Nope... the backup fails on the same file and locks the NAS again. So, I'm in the process of rebooting now. I've been to the store for my new drive (actually, got 4 figuring I can make the move to 2Tb drives while I'm at it).
QUESTIONS:
The file system check seems to have succeeded last night - and yet it appears I have a file that is corrupt enough that trying to write it completely hangs the NAS.
a) Has anyone else seen this?
b) Do you know of a way to check the coherence of the file system OTHER than the boot-time FS check (which is, BTW, SLOW!)
c) Any advice on handling it?
d) I'm pretty sure my next step (after getting the NAS back up fully) is to replace the bad drive and hope that fixes it... but anyone have a other / better suggestions?
11 Replies
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- You priority has got to be data preservation.
Replace the bad drive ASAP.
Backup the NAS.
Then you can expand the volume with your new disks.
Until you replace the disk I wouldn't speculate about other problems vandermerwe wrote: You priority has got to be data preservation.
Replace the bad drive ASAP.
Backup the NAS.
Then you can expand the volume with your new disks.
Until you replace the disk I wouldn't speculate about other problems
Thanks, and I agree. Waiting for the resync to finish then I'll get a replacement drive in there. Then I'll do a backup. (I think the last one took 5 days!)
What I'm worried about is that this file will simply continue to be bad... and I don't know which one it is or how to identify it other than running a piece of software that crashes the device.
So... any hints?- Presumably if the backup doesn't fail after replacing the disk then the file you are worried about was not the cause of the failure.
- OK... next step in the saga. Bought a replacement disk and installed it. It formatted and sync'd over night.
Everything looked stable when I woke up this a.m.. So, I tried to identify and examine the problematic file or files on the NAS. They are jpg's I have been managing with Photoshop Elements. I can guess at where the problem lies based on which files were successfully backed up the other day (just copied to a local HD) and where the backup process hung.
Looking at the suspect file in both PSe and through the file system, I could see the images. However, everything seemed to lock up when I deleted two of them. Couldn't see the NAS or navigate it for 30-60 secs. Then it came back and the files appeared to have been deleted.
THEN... and here's where it gets interesting... I decide things are dicey and I'll stop touching them for now. About 20 minutes later the NAS starts sending me alerts that Disk 1 has failed and that it is going to shut down to protect the data.
While it seems possible that the brand new disk HAS failed... it seems at least as possible that something else entirely is going on:
* Slot 1 has gone bad and any disk I put in there will appear to be corrupted
* There's some kind of corruption in the FS that the O/S can't handle
I'm leaning toward the latter because very specific files are involved... but I don't know enough about the way ReadyNAS stripes (or otherwise spreads) data about to know that it isn't just a function of what data happens to be on disk 1.
The NAS is currently shut down. Sandy is coming, so I'm not going to touch it for the moment for fear of being in the middle of something and losing power.
In the meantime, can anyone in the community or anyone at Netgear give me a hint here?
Is there any tool that could do a deep inspection of the file system?
Is it more likely a hardware problem? - What disks are you using? Can you check the SMART stats on the replacement disk?
Also, what firmware version is running on your NAS? StephenB wrote: What disks are you using? Can you check the SMART stats on the replacement disk?
Also, what firmware version is running on your NAS?
Both old and new disks are Seagate disks that are on the HCL.
I checked SMART stats on the new disk this a.m. - none of the same errors I had before. Looked OK.
Not sure what firmware - but I think I'm only 1 rev back (for the NV+).- Is the new one a Seagate ST2000DM001-9YN164?
StephenB wrote: Is the new one a Seagate ST2000DM001-9YN164?
The part before the dash is right.
The part after, I don't think so. (I only saw it when the NAS was up - and it isn't right now.
I believe it might be ST2000DM001-1CH164 (based on model + part number).
Any thoughts?- There's been a quite a few reports from folks having trouble with this family of drives, and some confusion on whether all part numbers of these drives had actually been certified.
viewtopic.php?t=65924&p=373718
If your seller would allow you to exchange for a different disk, you might consider going with a WD Red drive. StephenB wrote: There's been a quite a few reports from folks having trouble with this family of drives, and some confusion on whether all part numbers of these drives had actually been certified.
viewtopic.php?t=65924&p=373718
If your seller would allow you to exchange for a different disk, you might consider going with a WD Red drive.
That said, these problems started before the new drive was installed... so at some point I need to get to root cause....
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