"Reallocated sector count has increased" email notification

StephenB wrote:

-you can schedule a "Disk Scrubbing with Auto Parity Fix" through Frontview (select volumes, then the volume maintenance tab). This could also find more failures (since it will read everything). -If you still have 17 reallocated sectors, Seatools will likely pass. Disk manufacturers and customers often have different thresholds for replacement. Netgear usually suggests 50 reallocated sectors. Though once the number starts growing, I've found that the drive can degrade very quickly. -Since Seatools only runs on Windows, Seagate doesn't actually require you to run SeaTools. There are several failure codes you can manually enter during the RMA process, there is a list here: http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/supp ... codes.html. I have used 659DC7AE successfully. -Seagate will give you a refurbished "equivalent" drive, which might not be on the hardware HCL. They have been somewhat flexible with me - once I didn't feel that they sent me a comparable drive and they reviewed their inventory and gave me some other options. If you live in the US, use their advanced replacement procedure - the shipping costs are reasonable, and you get the drive much quicker. It is also reasonable to buy a new retail replacement, and keep the refurbished drive as a spare.

Thanks for the advice on the Advanced Replacement option, $9.95, shipped UPS second day air. I hope it is the same drive, or at least one on the ReadyNAS HCL.

Just an update. I have turn on the machine a few more times in the past couple of days. Each time, the system reported another few errors. I believe I am now up to about 26 or 27. It is not looking good for this drive.

I will consider getting a new drive and using the replacement as a spare. Any suggestions on make/model?

winger wrote:
I will consider getting a new drive and using the replacement as a spare. Any suggestions on make/model?

Other than the normal advice to stay with the HCL, not really. I see a lot of recommendations here for Hitachi, but don't own any myself.

Knock on wood, but my replacement drive arrived today and I am 50% into the estimated 4 hr 45 min resync process. So far, from searching for and asking questions here, to calling in to tech support, to getting the replacement ordered through warranty, to receiving the disk via UPS 2nd day to simply slipping the new (re-cerrtified) drive into the caddy then into the RNPP unit, to the automatic disk test and now the resync. Now, I am glad I paid the nice price for this machine.

Just a quick check of the three still-working drives. All average about 10 hours on time/day for the past 2 years 5 months. Is this one drive failure (at least starting to degrade quickly) out of four (identical model and purchased together) reasonable for this three-year warranty, non-enterprise drive?

If the average drive lasted 4 years, then you'd expect to see one failure in your NAS every year. So you are not doing too badly.

Update. The re-sync took almost exactly six hours instead of the estimated 4.75 hours. I am finally getting around to inputting data that's been piling up since I took the unit off line last week - I know I could have been running the unit the entire time I was waiting for the replacement drive, INCLUDING the time I hot swap the deteriorating drive with the replacement, but I'd rather be safe than sorry (with loss or corruption of any data). As noted above, overall, I've been happy with the whole replacement experience!

I am in process of re-formatting and wiping the three partitions of the old drive before I send it back to Seagate. The wipe of the one 927GB partition (do not know why the RNP unit partitioned this disk into three parts, of which the sizes were: 4095MB, 511MB, and 927GB) is supposed to take over nine hours.

The 3 partitions are OS (4095MB) Swap (511MB) and the main volume (927GB). The OS uses raid 1 across all disks so that you will have a functional OS as long as a single drive has not failed. The Swap Partition is used as part of the virtual memory of the ReadyNAS.