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Solved
ReadyNAS RN104 Remove Inactive Volumes
Disk 3 failed in my ReadyNAS 104. I replaced this with a new disk and it began rebuilding the array, however it then showed a failure on disk 1. Now there is an error "Remove inactive volumes to use ...
£49 later and this is solved. Netgear level 3 support managed to clone disk 1 to disk 3 in order to recover the data and, once this is done, I'll be running the box as 2 arrays of RAID 1.
Judging by the number of people who have had similar issues, this is a fairly common issue with these devices. Whilst Netgear's support is very good, as long as you're happy to pay for it of course, my faith in the product is shot to pieces and, as an IT provider, we will be steering clear of this product in future. The "failed" drive has been tested since its "failure" and is still to report a single bad sector.
£49 later and this is solved. Netgear level 3 support managed to clone disk 1 to disk 3 in order to recover the data and, once this is done, I'll be running the box as 2 arrays of RAID 1.
Judging by the number of people who have had similar issues, this is a fairly common issue with these devices. Whilst Netgear's support is very good, as long as you're happy to pay for it of course, my faith in the product is shot to pieces and, as an IT provider, we will be steering clear of this product in future. The "failed" drive has been tested since its "failure" and is still to report a single bad sector.
There are other problems than reallocated sectors that you can have with disks. There are things like current pending sectors, ATA errors etc.
If you have a copy of the logs you can look in smart_history.log to see the key changes in SMART values.Not all disk models are equally suited to use in RAID arrays. Some disks turn out to be more reliable models than others.
RAID-5 provides some protection against a single disk failure, but a single disk failing is not the only thing that can go wrong with a RAID array.
Backups are still vital if you value your data.
Some people don't like using RAID-5 in any use case now as they personally find the chances of losing their volume are greater than their appetite for risk. The higher the capacity of your disks the greater the chances of running into problems with multiple disks. Some value the storage capacity that RAID-5 provides and see the risk as acceptable because they can always restore from their regular backup if they need to.
Personally I use RAID-6 (provides some protection against two disk failures), but that's not a suitable RAID level for the RN104 as the performance hit is very great on that model.
Two RAID-1 volumes which you've chosen is also a good option. Still if your data is important please do backups. Important data shouldn't be stored on just the one device, no matter which device that is.
The RN104 is a cost-effective unit. Users of this product tend to value storage capacity more highly than redundancy.
There are things you can do to minimise your risk of running into problems. If you let me know your case number and/or send me your logs (see the Sending Logs link in my sig) that presumably you provided to support I may be able to make some suggestions.
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