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NAS Slow, Reboot Slow, Drive Light Blinking
My ReadyNAS 516 has been unreasonably slow lately. The system is not sharing files properly, seems to be accessing slow for both reading and writing, and even the web interface is slow. The drive a...
I would have also opted to replace Drive 6, if it were an option. However, Drive 2 was the one blinking incessently, and even though it had fewer errors, it was apparently the squeakiest wheel today. Further, the reboot NEVER finished. It hung at 94% for over 90 minutes.
I finally gave up on the reboot and powered down the ReadyNAS entirely a second time, replaced Drive 2, and rebooted. As advertised, it booted up in about 5 minutes, detected the degraded array, and immediately started the Rebuild Process. The system is now working substantially better, and even with the RAID rebuild running, it is turning out better performance than I was getting all this week. I can now send that drive back to WD, get the replacement, and then swap out drive 6 later on. (Strangely, drive 6 was the only drive that had been replaced once before. When the new drive 6 was put in, drive 6 started spewing errors after about a week. This makes me wonder if there is not a problem with the SATA controller or cabling, and that perhaps drive 6 is really OK.)
Lessons learned:
1) Don't assume that the system is working properly, just becasue the Web console shows all drives are green.
2) Don't assume that the drive with the most errors is the one with the biggest problem.
3) Ignore the data in the logs and just replace the drive that is blinking out of sync with everyone else.
4) Always have at least one spare drive on standby.
How's NETGEAR responsible for your multiple HDD failure? Do you think they invented RAID?
I do agree though that just showing all HDDs red in this situation can be quite confusing. In a sense, it's correct, they all have inactive volumes, but I'm sure there would a more user friendly way to show a dead RAID.
I do agree though that just showing all HDDs red in this situation can be quite confusing. In a sense, it's correct, they all have inactive volumes, but I'm sure there would a more user friendly way to show a dead RAID.
I never implied that NetGear was responsible for the drives. My point is simply this: A RAID6 array, by its very definition, is supposed to allow for up to two drives to completely fail within the array, and yet still retain full functionality (albeit not full performance). This is why companies purchase RAID solutions in the first place -- it is a known fact that hard drives WILL fail, it is only a matter of when. The RAID array is supposed to provide protection from this failure wiping out the data. In this case, we had ONE drive fail, and it was replaced and everything was starting to work normally once again.
My complaint about the ReadyNAS is the RAID implementation itself. What would cause the entire data volume to just "go away" in the middle of the night when usage is non-existent? Further, how can it present only a very cryptic error message, where your only option is to tear down and rebuild the array and volume, losing all data in the process? In effect, all redundancy was lost. This is no longer RAID, but should be classified as JBOD.
BtrieveBill wrote:
I never implied that NetGear was responsible for the drives.
I agree, I didn't see that in your post. Just understandable frustration, and wanting some explanation on the inactive volume status.
BtrieveBill wrote:
I didn't see that in your post either.What would cause the entire data volume to just "go away" in the middle of the night when usage is non-existent?
I don't know the cause of the "inactive volume" issue, but we do see it here fairly regularly. It's possibly a bug, but there could be some other problem the NAS found (or thought it found) with the array - perhaps something with the event counters???
It is possible that the array is intact and might be mountable by Netgear support.
BTW if you are the original purchaser and bought the NAS between 1 June 2014 and 31 May 2016 you have free chat support.
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