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Forum Discussion
RN104 shutdown because disks exceed safe temperature
Hello, I'm using a RN104 at firmware level 6.10.3. The ReadyNAS is equipped with 4 times Hitachi HUA721010KLA330 1TB SATA drives, all 4 drives building one RAID5 X-RAID volume. Today the RN104 sh...
Hello again,
I spend some hours in testing this further. I placed the RN104 at my desk and was monitoring it through the web GUI and by sitting next to it.
I scheduled defrag and, as usual, defrag started up and 2 log entries were written that defrag was started.
The disk temperature went up to a maximum of 44°C for the inner 2 drives as long as defrag was running.
Defrag completed successfully after running for about 50-55 minutes.
When defrag completed, the interesting part started. Within 1-2 minutes after defrag completed, the temperature of the inner 2 disk drives increased up to 51/52°C! The fan speed was increased from 2730rpm to 3150rpm.
I logged in to the NAS using ssh and run smartctl. The values returned by smartctl matched the temperature of the disk drives shown in the performance window of the GUI. Seems to be the disk drives are reporting their temperature accurate.
I attached a text file including the complete smartctl output ... just in case someone can see more than I do.
The test confirms that this is not a fan problem but the temperature of the disk drives really goes up immediately after defrag completes - why ever.
Would replacing the disk drives the only option or does someone have another idea what's going on here and how to fix/ mitigate it?
Thanks and regards,
Holger
HolgerGT86 wrote:
Would replacing the disk drives the only option or does someone have another idea what's going on here and how to fix/ mitigate it?
Maybe first power down the NAS, and swap drive 1,2 and 3,4 (moving the inner drives to the outer slots). Then do a defrag and see if the heating problem stays with the slots, or moves with the drives. After that test, I'd power down the NAS and restore the drives to their original positions.
I would certainly consider replacing the drives. Enterprise-class (in my opinion) are overkill for the RN100 - it is limited by it's processor speed, not the disks. I suggest starting over - two WD30EFRX or two ST3000VN007 would cost a total of about $200 (current US prices) and would give you the same capacity you are using now. Then you'd have two slots for expansion (and if you like, you can put the drives in bay 1 and bay 4 to create more distance between then).
Avoid WD EFAX models between 2 TB and 6 TB - they are SMR technology, which IMO aren't great choices for RAID. The older EFRX line is fine. Ironwolf drives are also a good option. BTW, many desktop models are also not SMR, so I won't use them either.
StephenB wrote:
HolgerGT86 wrote:Would replacing the disk drives the only option or does someone have another idea what's going on here and how to fix/ mitigate it?
Maybe first power down the NAS, and swap drive 1,2 and 3,4 (moving the inner drives to the outer slots). Then do a defrag and see if the heating problem stays with the slots, or moves with the drives. After that test, I'd power down the NAS and restore the drives to their original positions.
I would certainly consider replacing the drives. Enterprise-class (in my opinion) are overkill for the RN100 - it is limited by it's processor speed, not the disks. I suggest starting over - two WD30EFRX or two ST3000VN007 would cost a total of about $200 (current US prices) and would give you the same capacity you are using now. Then you'd have two slots for expansion (and if you like, you can put the drives in bay 1 and bay 4 to create more distance between then).
Avoid WD EFAX models between 2 TB and 6 TB - they are SMR technology, which IMO aren't great choices for RAID. The older EFRX line is fine. Ironwolf drives are also a good option. BTW, many desktop models are also not SMR, so I won't use them either.
Hello StephenB,
many thanks for your response. I already moved the inner drives to the outer slots and vice versa. The RN104 came up fine in this configuration.
I'm using this type of enterprise drives because I received a bunch of them for free. Nevertheless, I'm thinking about replacing them. Thanks for providing recommendations. Besides this, I now left the front door open although I do not believe it will help. The outside air temperature is always about 15°C all the year and except the front door, nothing is blocking the air flow.
I believe in an internal disk drive cooling issue when they slow down after defrag completed. I don't know if they slow down their platter rotation speed and this is than reducing their cooling ... doesn't matter anymore. I turned off defrag already.
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