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Remove inactive volumes to use the disk. Disk #1,2. troubleshooting
I had previously posted this thread Remove inactive volumes to use the disk. Disk #1,2,3,4. troubleshooting | NETGEAR Communities but I had to wait for replacement disks that i bought during th...
Given the 3rd disk does not show any signs of errors and is still not mounting (even if currently removed) should i try to swap/mode disk 4 to slot 3 to see if the problem is actually the slot?
Disk 3 has to be out-of-sync at this point, so you can just use it as a test disk.
Try powering down, and removing disks 1,2, and 4. Then put disk 3 in slot 1, and power up the NAS. If the NAS LCD panel indicates "no disks", then that points to the drive.
Then power down and move the disk back to slot 3 and try powering up again. If the disk shows up in slot 3 when it is the only drive, then that points to the power adapter.
Don't do anything more until you have your data backed up.
bizmate has backed up the data.
are the Defrag, Scrub, Balance, Disk Test etc options for the volumes documented somewhere?
See pages 52-57 in the software manual:
- The disk test just runs the long smartctl test on all detected drives.
- Balance does a BTRFS balance - hard to describe exactly what that means unless you have some understanding of the file system. But among other things, it will reclaim free space.
- Scrub does both a BTRFS scrub and a RAID scrub. Again, hard to describe exactly unless you delve into BTRFS and RAID. But it does access every sector in the data volume (on all disks) so it kind of doubles as a disk test.
- Defrag defrags files - not clear if this is necessary on linux file systems. Still, it does no harm.
Personally I schedule one of these tests each month (disk test, balance, scrub, then defrag). We should probably also talk about snapshot settings and getting your email alerts working at some point (after we get the main problem resolved).
where can i see the Disk Tests results?
The web ui just shows a pass/fail. If it does fail, there will be more details in the logs. Though sometimes running smartctl from ssh is useful, especially when there are UNC (uncorrectable) errors reported by the drives.
So the problem is not the disks, Disk 3 in slot one was detected so the disk is fine. Moved to slot 3 it is not detected and the system boots in safe mode on an ip different from the one i usually give. SSH not available and even if the Web Interface is displayed i cannot login with my credentials, nor with the root one you gave me for safe mode.
I find it crazy that the problem is the actual slot n3 and not sure what to do next at this point. Is there a secret safe mode password i can use to do more tests?
Moved to slot 3 it is not detected
AFAIK there is nothing you can do to fix that.
You could look for a used OS-6 ReadyNAS with four or more bays, and than migrate the disks to it.
Or live without bay 3 - getting two larger disks, and doing a factory default with those disks and maybe one of the originals in place. Then restore your data from the backup. Two 12 TB disks would give you the same capacity you have now.
Of course getting a new NAS from another vendor is another path.
I am not really using all this space. I could restore it so only 3 drives are used and have up to 8TB effectiver storage with RAID 5 ?
If so what steps should i take to do so?
- format the disks once mounted in bays 1,2,4?
- how do i get back all the folders, auth info, etc
- after i can just copy back the data added manually and run my backup scripts from my PCsbut i just want to make sure i dont loose all the configs so i can go back to use the NAS as a media server, file storage etc too. The closest thing i found in my current country is https://acdtech.mu/product/storage/ssd-sata/netgear-readynas-424-4-bay-diskless/ and if you do a bit of currency conversion I am sure you see it is too expensive for the unit.
I have also seen several second hand units on ebay uk but not sure when i will go there next. Not any time soonI could restore it so only 3 drives are used and have up to 8TB effectiver storage with RAID 5 ?
Yes to this.
but i just want to make sure i dont loose all the config
Normally you would do this with a factory default - then reconfigure the NAS and restore your data.
It is possible to shrink the array using ssh though. The gist is that you first shrink the file system down to 8 TB, and then you change the mdadm RAID mode.
Sandshark has experimented with this, and posted some results here:
It's not something I've tried, but perhaps he would be willing to post the needed commands for your situation.
That is, to reduce a 4x4TB degraded volume with a single RAID-5 group to 3x4TB.
Disk 3 in slot one was detected so the disk is fine. Moved to slot 3 it is not detected
I guess another possibilility is that there is an alignment issue with the tray.
You could try switching the drive to a different tray, and seeing if that changes the behavior.
I don't think this is at all likely, but maybe worth a try.
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