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BJB's avatar
BJB
Aspirant
Jul 21, 2023
Solved

Disk 1 of 4 failed on RN424, degraded - Rebuild Steps?

StephenB 

Greetings!  You have helped me many times in the past and I have had many good years with my units.  Today I got the dreaded email that Disk in channel 1 changed state from online to failed on my RN424.  The light on that drive was red, and when I logged into the NAS the main page said "healthy" but degraded.

 

The log says Volume data health changed from Redundant to Degraded.

 

The NAS has powered down per its schedule as of now.  That also freaked me out until I realized that is the scheduled weekly shutdown!

 

My drive 1 and 2 are 10TB and 3 and 4 are 12TB

I am in the process of ordering another Seagate Ironwolf 10TBdrive same model and size of the one that failed. Although the model number varies a bit due to this being newer I assume? FWIW I had a ST10000VN0004 and now it is a ST10000VNA00. I think it relates to platter number and density but couldn't find definitively. I assume it is okay to use.  

 

Can you please tell me the correct way to rebuild?  My NAS is currently off. Just put the new drive in and turn on?  Or boot it up first and THEN take out the drive and replace?  Anything else I need to do?  For my home NAS unit this is a first for me.  How long should it take? Kind of scary...

 

I use it primarily for PC backups and I have another copy of those in the cloud. 

 

However there might be a few other files on there that are not on another backup.  Should I copy these somewhere before the rebuild or does that put stress on the remaining drives? Or can I copy during the rebuild or should I just let it rebuild first?

 

My NAS is not on the most current firmware so hopefully that is not an issue.

I think I am on 6.95 Hotfix 1.  

 

Thanks,

BJB

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


  • BJB wrote:

     

    I am in the process of ordering another Seagate Ironwolf 10TBdrive same model and size of the one that failed. Although the model number varies a bit due to this being newer I assume? FWIW I had a ST10000VN0004 and now it is a ST10000VNA00. I think it relates to platter number and density but couldn't find definitively. I assume it is okay to use.  

     


    It should be fine.

     


    BJB wrote:

     

    However there might be a few other files on there that are not on another backup.  Should I copy these somewhere before the rebuild or does that put stress on the remaining drives? Or can I copy during the rebuild or should I just let it rebuild first?

     


    You can copy those off first.

     

    Data blocks on the missing disk will be reconstructed on the fly from the others.  That is the same process that is done during the rebuild, but not as stressful because it uses a lot less data.

     


    BJB wrote:

    Today I got the dreaded email that Disk in channel 1 changed state from online to failed on my RN424.  The light on that drive was red, and when I logged into the NAS the main page said "healthy" but degraded.

     

    Can you please tell me the correct way to rebuild?  My NAS is currently off. Just put the new drive in and turn on?  Or boot it up first and THEN take out the drive and replace?  

     


    You can use either procedure - both hot swapping the drive when the NAS is running, or swapping when powered down will work.  The NAS detects the removal/insertion directly when hot-swapping, so there is no chance it will be confused.  On the other hand, if you were to accidently remove the wrong drive with the NAS running there would be a problem -so you need to be careful not to make that mistake.  That's not a concern with the NAS powered off (as long as correct drives are installed when you power up).  The NAS will still figure out what changed, as the new drive is blank/unformatted.

     

    Though since you have some files you want to back up, I suggest 

    • removing the failed drive while the NAS is powered down
    • booting up with bay 1 empty, and copying off the files
    • hot-insert the new disk into the empty bay.

    No chance of accidentally hot-removing one of the remaining drives, since you are only hot-inserting.

     

    Also, if you can connect the new disk to a PC (either SATA or with a USB adapter/dock) then I recommend testing it with Seatools before putting it into the NAS.  I generally run the full "long" test, and follow that up with the full "erase" test.  I've had a couple of new out-of-the-box disks that passed one of these tests and failed the other.  It will take some time (maybe two days to run both), but I like to be sure that the new disk is working ok before I put it into the NAS.  Don't format the drive in the PC - Seatools will find the drive and test it unformatted.

13 Replies


  • BJB wrote:

     

    I am in the process of ordering another Seagate Ironwolf 10TBdrive same model and size of the one that failed. Although the model number varies a bit due to this being newer I assume? FWIW I had a ST10000VN0004 and now it is a ST10000VNA00. I think it relates to platter number and density but couldn't find definitively. I assume it is okay to use.  

     


    It should be fine.

     


    BJB wrote:

     

    However there might be a few other files on there that are not on another backup.  Should I copy these somewhere before the rebuild or does that put stress on the remaining drives? Or can I copy during the rebuild or should I just let it rebuild first?

     


    You can copy those off first.

     

    Data blocks on the missing disk will be reconstructed on the fly from the others.  That is the same process that is done during the rebuild, but not as stressful because it uses a lot less data.

     


    BJB wrote:

    Today I got the dreaded email that Disk in channel 1 changed state from online to failed on my RN424.  The light on that drive was red, and when I logged into the NAS the main page said "healthy" but degraded.

     

    Can you please tell me the correct way to rebuild?  My NAS is currently off. Just put the new drive in and turn on?  Or boot it up first and THEN take out the drive and replace?  

     


    You can use either procedure - both hot swapping the drive when the NAS is running, or swapping when powered down will work.  The NAS detects the removal/insertion directly when hot-swapping, so there is no chance it will be confused.  On the other hand, if you were to accidently remove the wrong drive with the NAS running there would be a problem -so you need to be careful not to make that mistake.  That's not a concern with the NAS powered off (as long as correct drives are installed when you power up).  The NAS will still figure out what changed, as the new drive is blank/unformatted.

     

    Though since you have some files you want to back up, I suggest 

    • removing the failed drive while the NAS is powered down
    • booting up with bay 1 empty, and copying off the files
    • hot-insert the new disk into the empty bay.

    No chance of accidentally hot-removing one of the remaining drives, since you are only hot-inserting.

     

    Also, if you can connect the new disk to a PC (either SATA or with a USB adapter/dock) then I recommend testing it with Seatools before putting it into the NAS.  I generally run the full "long" test, and follow that up with the full "erase" test.  I've had a couple of new out-of-the-box disks that passed one of these tests and failed the other.  It will take some time (maybe two days to run both), but I like to be sure that the new disk is working ok before I put it into the NAS.  Don't format the drive in the PC - Seatools will find the drive and test it unformatted.

    • BJB's avatar
      BJB
      Aspirant

      StephenB 

       

      Thanks for that AWESOME step-by-step reply! This makes me more comfortable.


      I will definitely do the SeaTools test first.  I recently had a new WD Black regular PC drive fail to initialize in a PC.  Had to get another which worked fine.  Don't want that happening with the NAS!

       

      I have a USB3.0 SATA hard drive dock so will use that to run the tests.  In fact, I may just run it on a spare laptop so it doesn't keep my main PC occupied.  I want to make sure I run the correct tests. 

      Under SeaTools Advanced, I see Long Self Test which is what you recommend.  Under Erase, "Long" there is "Sanitize Overwrite", "Simple Overwrite", and "Write Same Erase"?  Which of these 3 long erase tests should I run?  

       

      I will be antsy waiting two days to bring my NAS back to life but this sounds like the smart move đŸ˜€  

       

      Will run the tests, then bootup the NAS with the bad drive REMOVED, copy those files to another drive, then hot-insert the new drive after testing. I am 100% sure which drive is bad as I have the log snip and email documenting it. Just need to do after having had enough coffee.

       

      You didn't mention the firmware so I assume I am okay with the version I am on.

      For now I have unplugged the NAS so it does not startup and do an incremental backups.  I don't see the need to wear the remaining 3 drives just in case....

       

      Thanks again!
      BJB

      • BJB's avatar
        BJB
        Aspirant

        I couldn't edit my last post....the extended tests have both Long Self test and Long Generic test.  Not sure which one is the right one to run for that either.  

         

        Thanks,

        BJB

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