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Forum Discussion
Replacing 2 Drives
We have a ReadyNAS Duo 4 with 4 3TB drives in X-RAID. Drives 3 and 4 are reported as dead in the admin console. So my question is what is the correct way to replace the drives so as NOT to lose any d...
I turned the NAS back on and now dont see the volume but use to with 2 drives labeled as "dead". I read on here that you might be able to clone the dead drives to new drives, turn the NAS off and insert the new drives. I am cloning 1 old drive to a new drive now. With the volume not showing now, is there any hope? The data should still be on drive 1 and 2, right? My hope is to clone the new drives with the old drives data, insert and power on and this will start a resync.
Your procedure can work, if the cloning works. If one clone fails, you can clone the other drive.
But it is imperative that you have three working drives. Without that, your data are lost, or must be recovered with raid recover software if the two broken drives work "somewhat".
Please detail what is broken with your two broken drives!
I agree that more context on what led up to this failure would be helpful.
If your data is important to you, you are better off using a professional recovery service (though it is expensive) - especially if you don't know what you are doing (which appears to be the case here).
Cloning is only useful when the disks themselves have failed, but are still mostly readable. if you are cloning a failed drive, the clone won't be perfect (some data will be corrupted). So even if it works for you there usually will be file corruption that RAID cannot repair.
There are other failure modes when the drive(s) haven't failed, and cloning won't help at all in those cases.
If you do try cloning, make sure the NAS is powered down when you install the cloned drive. Also skip the system file check when you first boot the system. If it comes up, make a backup!
Without risking more damage by turning the NAS on to read word-for-word the details of what is wrong with the drives, i will recall what the log said - the drives were marked as "dead". When i looked in the log section of the admin console, drive 3 and 4 said the bad sectors were increased by 12 from the last count. So it sounds like bad sectors and in fact, when i clone drive 4, it reports bad blocks.
It started with a power outage that lasted longer than the battery on the UPS. After that, i could get to the data and drive 4 was marked as "dead" with bad sector errors in the log. Before i got the replacement 3TB drive, the NAS reported drive 2 was dead and if i hovered my mouse over the "volume" label of the admin console, it reported "drive is on life support. The following part i am recalling from memory so may not be worded right; Power off the NAS, reinsert the drives and power back on to see if this fixes the issue". It did but only for a short period of time. I could still get to the data. I got a replacement drive, when i looked at the NAS, it now said drive 3 and 4 are "dead" with the same bad sector errors for both drives. It also reported life support again so i turned off the NAS. Removed drive 4 and installed replacement drive. Turned the NAS on and now no volume seen. I turned off the NAS and strated to clone disk 4 to the new disk (which is still running).
I have worked in sysadmin for over 20 years. During that 20 years, i have worked on PC's (break/fix), designed networks and installed networks from the ground up, designed wireless networks, built branded servers (from hardware to software, linux and windows), administration of juniper, cisco, sonicwall etc routers and for the last 8 years run a computer business. So while i do have more than enough experience with many IT aspects, including RAID config's, i have dealt little with X-RAID2 and ReadyNAS devices. Hence my question on a forum where you are encouraged to go for help!
carnold5 wrote:
I have worked in sysadmin for over 20 years. During that 20 years, i have worked on PC's (break/fix), designed networks and installed networks from the ground up, designed wireless networks, built branded servers (from hardware to software, linux and windows), administration of juniper, cisco, sonicwall etc routers and for the last 8 years run a computer business. So while i do have more than enough experience with many IT aspects, including RAID config's, i have dealt little with X-RAID2 and ReadyNAS devices. Hence my question on a forum where you are encouraged to go for help!
Thanks for sharing your background - one challenge in helping out here is gauging the skill level of the poster seeking help.
Though the main issue is restoring the data volume, I am curious on the power fail. Was the NAS monitoring the UPS? If so, it should have done a clean shutdown.
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