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Forum Discussion
Recovering from a failed expansion
How to Upgrade ReadyNAS drives and what to do when things go wrong!
I have two ReadyNAS devices – both are 6 bay – a ReadyNAS Pro 6 and a ReadyNAS Ultra 6 - both had 6x2Tb drives. I purchased the Ultra first – discovered it will not join a domain, so purchased a Pro which did – then discovered I could make the Ultra join a domain as an iSCSI target – but that is another story.
Both devices have been working happily for well over a year – but the Pro 6 was getting full and the Ultra 6 was sending me emails saying:
“Detected increasing uncorrectable errors on disk 5[WDC WD20EARS..] This often indicates an impending failure. Please be prepared to replace this disk to maintain data redundancy.”
I probably should have replaced the drive immediately but thought I’d buy 6 3TB drives to replace the 6x2Tb drives in the Pro 6 first – then use the Pro 6 drives in the Ultra 6 because they were better drives and this would fix the error. So I purchased 6x3Tb Seagate drives – ST3000NC000.
Upgrading the healthy ReadyNAS drives with bigger drives:
1. Log in to Frontview and update to the latest firmware – I have RAIDiator 4.2.25 – reboot it if it asks to – wait for it to reboot again.
2. DO NOT TURN OFF THE ReadyNAS - just pull out the first disk, put its replacement into the chassis – the NAS will report that the Volume C is unprotected and Frontview (if you leave it running as you do this process) will report that a disk has been removed.
3. Insert the replacement disk and wait a few minutes. At this point a couple of things can happen – either it will report that a new drive has been inserted and begin to resync – or it will just sit there. If it doesn’t start to resync within around 5 minutes – use FrontView to Shutdown and reboot device – upon restarting it will resync.
4. Re-syncing takes a good 5-6 hours – but I found my ReadyNAS was perfectly happy to let me use it normally whilst it re-built itself.
5. Upon completion the ReadyNAS reports that it is all done and that a reboot will create more space – I DID NOT reboot my ReadyNAS at this time – deciding to replace all 6 drives and reboot at the end to create the extra space
6. Repeat the steps above for each disk and if you are lucky – your ReadyNAS is now fully functioning with more space
When a Disk has an error – what to do – what not to do:
The steps above worked for me perfectly until I inserted Disk 5 – after re-syncing it gave a slightly different error message:
“Detected increasing ATA errors on disk 5[ST3000NC000] 33 times in the past 30 days. This often indicates an impending failure. Please be prepared to replace this disk to maintain data redundancy.
What I should have done was remove disk 5 immediately and taken the drive with the reported fault back to the shop and had it replaced – but I was impatient so I left disk 5 in thinking a few errors never hurt anyone – and I pulled out disk 6 and replaced it with the last of my 3Tb drives and let it resync overnight. The next morning I was greeted with a NAS claim it was in lifesupport mode – disk 5 declared DEAD and disk 6 declared SPARE – and the NAS not letting me see any of my files – at this point you’re realising that the 9Tb of data you have on this thing is potentially lost and this is not a feeling I relish – but ReadyNAS is a good product and this story has a happy ending!
I found that if I rebooted the NAS (either in Frontview or by power button) – it would try to resync again – and during the resync process the ReadyNAS was accessible – so my next step was to get some 3Tb drives into other PCs and start getting my data off – as this is a lot of data – it takes a while!! AS it turns out – it was not necessary – which is why I am documenting my story in the hope of saving someone else having to relive this nightmare.
How to Clone a Hard Drive bit by bit regardless of OS – for faulting HDDs and ReadyNAS drives
I found a piece of free software called BootMed which didn’t work quite the way it said it would but the outcome was good.
I found BootMed 1.1 on a torrent and downloaded the ISO – burned it to DVD – it is effectively a Ubuntu boot CD with some drive recovery tools on it.
1. Shut down and turn off the ReadyNAS
2. I took my faulty disk 5 out of the ReadyNAS and plugged it into a PC, plugged in a second new 3Tb drive – fired up the PC from the BootMed DVD
3. Run Test Disk -> Create (new log) -> identify the name of the drives (mine were different models so this worked well – you don’t want to copy the wrong way) – I presume SATA port 0 would be /dev/sda and SATA port 1 would be /dev/sdb – it was for me – but I am not a linux expert so if using identical drives – be careful.
4. Close Test Disk and Run Terminal
5. Type: sudo dd_rescue /dev/sda /dev/sdb
6. You get a bit of feedback as the drive sda is copied slowly to sdb – it took around 24 hours.
Once this process was complete – I screwed the new drive into the chassis – inserted into ReadyNAS bay 5, powered on the ReadyNAS – waited for 5-6 hours whilst it resynced and am happily here to tell you – it works!!
Dual Redundancy – might be worth considering!!
I have two ReadyNAS devices – both are 6 bay – a ReadyNAS Pro 6 and a ReadyNAS Ultra 6 - both had 6x2Tb drives. I purchased the Ultra first – discovered it will not join a domain, so purchased a Pro which did – then discovered I could make the Ultra join a domain as an iSCSI target – but that is another story.
Both devices have been working happily for well over a year – but the Pro 6 was getting full and the Ultra 6 was sending me emails saying:
“Detected increasing uncorrectable errors on disk 5[WDC WD20EARS..] This often indicates an impending failure. Please be prepared to replace this disk to maintain data redundancy.”
I probably should have replaced the drive immediately but thought I’d buy 6 3TB drives to replace the 6x2Tb drives in the Pro 6 first – then use the Pro 6 drives in the Ultra 6 because they were better drives and this would fix the error. So I purchased 6x3Tb Seagate drives – ST3000NC000.
Upgrading the healthy ReadyNAS drives with bigger drives:
1. Log in to Frontview and update to the latest firmware – I have RAIDiator 4.2.25 – reboot it if it asks to – wait for it to reboot again.
2. DO NOT TURN OFF THE ReadyNAS - just pull out the first disk, put its replacement into the chassis – the NAS will report that the Volume C is unprotected and Frontview (if you leave it running as you do this process) will report that a disk has been removed.
3. Insert the replacement disk and wait a few minutes. At this point a couple of things can happen – either it will report that a new drive has been inserted and begin to resync – or it will just sit there. If it doesn’t start to resync within around 5 minutes – use FrontView to Shutdown and reboot device – upon restarting it will resync.
4. Re-syncing takes a good 5-6 hours – but I found my ReadyNAS was perfectly happy to let me use it normally whilst it re-built itself.
5. Upon completion the ReadyNAS reports that it is all done and that a reboot will create more space – I DID NOT reboot my ReadyNAS at this time – deciding to replace all 6 drives and reboot at the end to create the extra space
6. Repeat the steps above for each disk and if you are lucky – your ReadyNAS is now fully functioning with more space
When a Disk has an error – what to do – what not to do:
The steps above worked for me perfectly until I inserted Disk 5 – after re-syncing it gave a slightly different error message:
“Detected increasing ATA errors on disk 5[ST3000NC000] 33 times in the past 30 days. This often indicates an impending failure. Please be prepared to replace this disk to maintain data redundancy.
What I should have done was remove disk 5 immediately and taken the drive with the reported fault back to the shop and had it replaced – but I was impatient so I left disk 5 in thinking a few errors never hurt anyone – and I pulled out disk 6 and replaced it with the last of my 3Tb drives and let it resync overnight. The next morning I was greeted with a NAS claim it was in lifesupport mode – disk 5 declared DEAD and disk 6 declared SPARE – and the NAS not letting me see any of my files – at this point you’re realising that the 9Tb of data you have on this thing is potentially lost and this is not a feeling I relish – but ReadyNAS is a good product and this story has a happy ending!
I found that if I rebooted the NAS (either in Frontview or by power button) – it would try to resync again – and during the resync process the ReadyNAS was accessible – so my next step was to get some 3Tb drives into other PCs and start getting my data off – as this is a lot of data – it takes a while!! AS it turns out – it was not necessary – which is why I am documenting my story in the hope of saving someone else having to relive this nightmare.
How to Clone a Hard Drive bit by bit regardless of OS – for faulting HDDs and ReadyNAS drives
I found a piece of free software called BootMed which didn’t work quite the way it said it would but the outcome was good.
I found BootMed 1.1 on a torrent and downloaded the ISO – burned it to DVD – it is effectively a Ubuntu boot CD with some drive recovery tools on it.
1. Shut down and turn off the ReadyNAS
2. I took my faulty disk 5 out of the ReadyNAS and plugged it into a PC, plugged in a second new 3Tb drive – fired up the PC from the BootMed DVD
3. Run Test Disk -> Create (new log) -> identify the name of the drives (mine were different models so this worked well – you don’t want to copy the wrong way) – I presume SATA port 0 would be /dev/sda and SATA port 1 would be /dev/sdb – it was for me – but I am not a linux expert so if using identical drives – be careful.
4. Close Test Disk and Run Terminal
5. Type: sudo dd_rescue /dev/sda /dev/sdb
6. You get a bit of feedback as the drive sda is copied slowly to sdb – it took around 24 hours.
Once this process was complete – I screwed the new drive into the chassis – inserted into ReadyNAS bay 5, powered on the ReadyNAS – waited for 5-6 hours whilst it resynced and am happily here to tell you – it works!!
Dual Redundancy – might be worth considering!!
1 Reply
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- If a disk has bad sectors, then cloning it can result in some errored files, or even file system corruption.
I'd suggest rebooting with a volume scan after the resync. That won't fix the errored files, but should ensure that the file system still has integrity.
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