Ready for expansion (RN Pro Pioneer Edition)-Seeking Advice

winger13 wrote:
I already used this Warranty Checker. While it says warranty has expired, it does not state when warranty ran out. It is too bad my receipt does not state Seagate's warranty info. ReadyNAS' HCL still says 5 years for my disk, I may have looked at that when I bought.

If the Seagate tool says the disk is not covered by warranty anymore, then it is not. You wouldn't get a new replacement anyway, only a used disk that was recertified.

winger13 wrote:
To the drive - ATA has not increased in two days since it went from 0 to 12. Also, based on the three Seatool tests I ran, what are folks' assessment?

I'd like to see the SMART status on the drive.

If it is still out of the NAS, you can download acronis drive monitor - http://www.acronis.com/en-us/homecomput ... e-monitor/ (freeware, but requires registration). If it is back in the NAS you can see the SMART status from frontview.

StephenB - Disk is already back in the NAS. I will send the SMART status in a day or two when I get back to the machine. It is currently turned off.

mdgm - I would love to replace all the drives. Unfortunately, I just spent $ on two new 3TB's and unless Disk 2 is totally unusable, funds are not available for another upgrade for the remainder of this year : (

I thought I read somewhere on this forum that a small amount of ATA errors could be acceptable IF low amount and does not increase in number? I did a search but could not find it the other day.

The disk may be fine, but I would definitely suggest you make sure your backup is up to date.

If the count does continue to increase then it could be failing.

winger13 wrote:
...I thought I read somewhere on this forum that a small amount of ATA errors could be acceptable IF low amount and does not increase in number? I did a search but could not find it the other day.

There are several causes for ATA errors. Most are hardware related, but this is one of the few SMART errors that can be generated by software drivers in the computer (e.g. the ReadyNAS).

However, in your case the drive has all of a sudden generated a burst of errors - so firmware driver issues are not the cause. It might be ok, but it needs more investigation. Most drive failures also result in other errors (CRC errors on the interface, reallocated or pending sectors, etc). Though I did have one drive that started generating ATA errors with no other bad stats. I ended up replacing it.

Anyway, after you post the stats I will either followup with a suggestion to do another scrub, or a suggestion to replace the drive - depending on what I see.

You should certainly have an up-to-date backup. Even if you don't have enough backup space, you should back up critical files right away.

FYI a disk scrub on the 4.2.x firmware reads every sector of the data volume, and verifies that the RAID parity blocks are all correct. So it ensures that the data volume has full integrity, and as a side benefit acts as a drive diagnostic of sorts. I run them regularly every 16 weeks, others here run them more frequently. However, if the data volume is already known to be at risk, then you probably shouldn't run one.

StephenB wrote:
I'd like to see the SMART status on the drive. ....

Here you go, StephenB

Firmware: CC37 SMART Attribute Spin Up Time 0 Start Stop Count 4193 Reallocated Sector Count 0 Power On Hours 13539 Spin Retry Count 0 Power Cycle Count 1336 Runtime Bad Block 0 End-to-End Error 0 Reported Uncorrect 12 Command Timeout 0 High Fly Writes 0 Airflow Temperature Cel 24 Temperature Celsius 24 Current Pending Sector 0 Offline Uncorrectable 0 UDMA CRC Error Count 0 Head Flying Hours 145595096385947 Total LBAs Written 2567096699 Total LBAs Read 1162628944 ATA Error Count 12

StephenB wrote:

... However, in your case the drive has all of a sudden generated a burst of errors - so firmware driver issues are not the cause. It might be ok, but it needs more investigation. Most drive failures also result in other errors (CRC errors on the interface, reallocated or pending sectors, etc). Though I did have one drive that started generating ATA errors with no other bad stats. I ended up replacing it.

In this case, was it increasing ATA errors or one big burst like what I saw on mine (0 to 12 during the volume expansion due to adding the two new 3TB disks)

StephenB wrote:
...Anyway, after you post the stats I will either followup with a suggestion to do another scrub, or a suggestion to replace the drive - depending on what I see.

Thanks. I just posted the SMART+ results from my NAS

StephenB wrote:
.You should certainly have an up-to-date backup. Even if you don't have enough backup space, you should back up critical files right away.

Yes, backup is up-to-date (I think). So far, I back up to a 2TB ext drive using rsync, and I have not yet cross 2TB of data, yet. Closing in maybe within 6 months, just guessing.

StephenB wrote:

.FYI a disk scrub on the 4.2.x firmware reads every sector of the data volume, and verifies that the RAID parity blocks are all correct. So it ensures that the data volume has full integrity, and as a side benefit acts as a drive diagnostic of sorts. I run them regularly every 16 weeks, others here run them more frequently. However, if the data volume is already known to be at risk, then you probably shouldn't run one.

IF during the scrub, data volume integrity issue is found, what does the NAS software do? Since I am running dual redundancy, does this factor in what the NAS does to remedy a data volume issue?

Thanks for assistance.

Reported Uncorrect 12 ATA Error Count 12

These are the two concerning stats, and it is interesting that they match. It's difficult to get much real information on exactly what is being Reported as Uncorrect btw. If this were a newly purchased disk and if you were still in the return window I'd have suggested exchanging it. But that's not the case. Personally I wouldn't replace it yet, instead I would follow up with another scrub.

winger13 wrote:

StephenB wrote: ... However, in your case the drive has all of a sudden generated a burst of errors - so firmware driver issues are not the cause. It might be ok, but it needs more investigation. Most drive failures also result in other errors (CRC errors on the interface, reallocated or pending sectors, etc). Though I did have one drive that started generating ATA errors with no other bad stats. I ended up replacing it. In this case, was it increasing ATA errors or one big burst like what I saw on mine (0 to 12 during the volume expansion due to adding the two new 3TB disks)

It my case it was an ongoing issue, not a static event. The counts started rising, with a couple of new ATA errors generated every couple of days. Generally I retire disks that start behaving badly, even if I am not seeing data loss yet...

winger13 wrote:

StephenB wrote: FYI a disk scrub on the 4.2.x firmware reads every sector of the data volume, and verifies that the RAID parity blocks are all correct. So it ensures that the data volume has full integrity, and as a side benefit acts as a drive diagnostic of sorts. I run them regularly every 16 weeks, others here run them more frequently. However, if the data volume is already known to be at risk, then you probably shouldn't run one. IF during the scrub, data volume integrity issue is found, what does the NAS software do? Since I am running dual redundancy, does this factor in what the NAS does to remedy a data volume issue?

Netgear doesn't clearly say, so you do need to read between the lines a bit. You can get a better sense here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/So ... #Scrubbing

Basically, if there is an unreadable block, the normal process kicks in. Parity is used to reconstruct it, and the block is rewritten. If the write fails, the disk will reallocate the sector, keeping all the data intact. Too many bad sectors will cause the NAS (or the drive itself) to declare it has failed. That's one reason why an up-to-date backup is especially important if you have suspect disk(s).

If three or blocks can't be read from the same group (with dual redundancy), then the volume is corrupt, since it can't be corrected. That's a second reason for the up-to-date backup. I'm not sure exactly what the ReadyNAS does in that case. It could simply warn, or it make the volume inaccessible. My hope is that it simply warns.

If all the blocks are readable but the parity is inconsistent with the data, the the parity block is re-written (the feature is "disk scrubbing with auto parity fix") The system has no idea if the parity block is wrong or the data is wrong, so volume corruption potentially results. That's a third reason for the up-to-date backup. Though this scenario (a read succeeds but data is wrong) is generally not caused by hardware failure. Disks include error correcting codes with each block, which are designed to detect bad data (correcting if it can, reporting if it can't). The main cause here is a power glitch, where some cached writes simply didn't happen before the power failed. A UPS is the obvious solution btw, if you don't have one you should. A secondary cause is when the NAS crashes for some reason, again with writes cached in memory that didn't all occur.

StephenB wrote:

Reported Uncorrect 12 ATA Error Count 12 These are the two concerning stats, and it is interesting that they match. It's difficult to get much real information on exactly what is being Reported as Uncorrect btw. If this were a newly purchased disk and if you were still in the return window I'd have suggested exchanging it. But that's not the case. Personally I wouldn't replace it yet, instead I would follow up with another scrub.

I am a little unclear what the options on the NAS are.

Under Volumes|Volume Settings|Volume Maintenance tab, I see:
Disk Scrubbing with Auto Parity Fix
and
Online File System Consistency Check
both of which have schedules to run every X weeks at T time

1. Should I run both?
2. Can I force either one to run right now as opposed to on a schedule?

3. What is the relation between the above two functions and the following two options I see under the following:
System|Shutdown|
Perform volume scan on next boot. This process can take several minutes to more than an hour depending on disk capacity and volume content.
and
Check and fix quotas on next boot. This process can take several minutes to more than an hour depending on disk capacity and the number of files on your volume.

4. Should I be running either one of these also?

Disc Scrubbing you should consider scheduling to run perhaps every few months or so.

I'd run the Online Filesystem Consistency Check more regularly as this is comparatively fast. Best to run this at a time that you are not writing much to the NAS.

1. Yes you should run both.

2. I don't think so, however you can schedule it to run soon.

3. If there is a problem with the Online Filesystem Consistency Check it may be suggested to run the volume scan on next boot.

As for fixing quotas that is useful if you use quotas (e.g. for users or you use Time Machine) and you are getting errors about not having free space despite having unused quota and free space on the volume.

4. You shouldn't need to run the options in your 3rd question unless there is a problem.

mdgm wrote:
Disc Scrubbing you should consider scheduling to run perhaps every few months or so. I'd run the Online Filesystem Consistency Check more regularly as this is comparatively fast. Best to run this at a time that you are not writing much to the NAS. 1. Yes you should run both. ...

Thanks.
What exactly are:
Disk Scrubbing with Auto Parity Fix
and
Online File System Consistency Check ?

Examples would help.

When I research Disk Scrubbing, I see terms like "Resync". But, what does 'Resync' really mean and how would it possibly fix the error I am seeing:

Reported Uncorrect 12 ATA Error Count 12

Online File System Consistency - I find things that talk about file directories and such so this is related to how files are stored and referenced/indexed by the OS?