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Lots of bitrot errors, advice needed
My ReadyNAS is functioning for the most part, but recently I found out that idrive had not been backing it up for quite a while, months...so I fixed that and finally ended up re-backing up the whole ...
StephenBalready explained what a "pending sector" is. It is something declared by the drive itself, not the NAS, but is reported by the NAS in the SMART statistics and the log, as StephenB pointed out in your log. They also never go away. Unless you have replaced that drive since the time of the failure, then you absolutely do have a hardware problem with that drive. Removing and re-inserting the drive did not (could not) fix the real problem, and may well have caused or worsened the errors you are seeing.
Chances are what have been declared as bitrot errors aren't bitrot at all, but were caused by that bad drive. The consequence is the same -- you have corrupted data and it will only get worse until you get that drive out of the NAS.
It is things like this that make a NAS not a "set and forget" device. Many seem to think it is and don't check the log often. I check mine at least weekly and have scripts in my primary and backup that save the logs on the other unit daily so I can get to a recent log if the NAS fails in a way that makes getting the log impossible. In your case, it's unclear whether you could have kept the file errors from occurring had you realized at the time that the drive was failing and replaced instead of re-inserted it. Things like this are also the reason RAID is not backup. A RAID can fail in a way that makes data corrupt and/or unrecoverable.
wrote:
already explained what a "pending sector" is. It is something declared by the drive itself, not the NAS, but is reported by the NAS in the SMART statistics and the log, as pointed out in your log. They also never go away. Unless you have replaced that drive since the time of the failure, then you absolutely do have a hardware problem with that drive. Removing and re-inserting the drive did not (could not) fix the real problem, and may well have caused or worsened the errors you are seeing.
Chances are what have been declared as bitrot errors aren't bitrot at all, but were caused by that bad drive. The consequence is the same -- you have corrupted data and it will only get worse until you get that drive out of the NAS.
It is things like this that make a NAS not a "set and forget" device. Many seem to think it is and don't check the log often. I check mine at least weekly and have scripts in my primary and backup that save the logs on the other unit daily so I can get to a recent log if the NAS fails in a way that makes getting the log impossible. In your case, it's unclear whether you could have kept the file errors from occurring had you realized at the time that the drive was failing and replaced instead of re-inserted it. Things like this are also the reason RAID is not backup. A RAID can fail in a way that makes data corrupt and/or unrecoverable.
Just trying to determine what is best course of action to limp along with this ReadyNAS until I replace it with something else entirely. I don't really want to spend more money on this one. Probably should have pulled out drive#2 in 2023 when this came up but I was out of the country and at the time for an extended period an unable to access the hardware until I came back. I probably should have asked for advice here online so one of you gurus would help, but I saw some posts about resyncing it so that is what I tried to do. And 18 months later I thought the problem was gone..but apparently its not according to you guys...despite that I have no other errors other then the ones back in 2023 and the bit rot errors now suddenly. But two of you say so, I believe you.
I have removed enough data now and can move some more, so that that I think if I pull that drive, eventually it will resync the whole raid array and eventually become redundant again with only 3 drives instead of 4, but smaller volume size. Do I have that correct or will XRaid require me to get a new drive in order to have redundancy again? Even if I don't have redundancy, I am probably inclined to just let it live without redundancy...and without the drive you say is failing...to be safer that more corruption will not potentially occur. I have already moved mission critical files to a different file server solution entirely. It's basically functioning as a plex server now and if I lost all the content now..it would be annoying but not the end of the world. its not worth going out and spending $200 for a new drive to put in there.
its been working fine for 18 months as a plex server and basically I've had no usage problems with it at alll...just the bit rot errors showing up now out of the blue when I decided to re-back it all up to idrive and some older files that haven' been touched in a very long time were recopied over to idrive. I totally hear you though, that doesn't mean the drive is not risky to keep using and might corrupt more stuff. But anyway if it gets down to just using it as a plex server...then I don't really care as much if I lose it all now. I'm moving on from ReadyNAS anyway to a new solution from here forward...this is just a stop gap measure, might need to get through a year as plex server then I will sell the damn thing.
Regarding the pending sectors question, I still do not understand what that is, it has been mentioned here but I do not understand exactly what it is or why you can determine that the drive is failing from that jnfo. I'm not disagreeing, I'm just saying I don't see an explanation that I can use to understand what you seem to understand in order that I can come to the same conclusion. I will take your word for it and remove the drive, (shrug)...whatever...this is the third time this device has coughed up a failed drive... Raid is not for me in the future.
also where can I find the smart statistics you mentioned? I looked in the smart log, but I could find no errors there.
already explained what a "pending sector" is. It is something declared by the drive itself, not the NAS, but is reported by the NAS in the SMART statistics and the log, as pointed out in your log. They also never go away. Unless you have replaced that drive since the time of the failure, then you absolutely do have a hardware problem with that drive. Removing and re-inserting the drive did not (could not) fix the real problem, and may well have caused or worsened the errors you are seeing.
Chances are what have been declared as bitrot errors aren't bitrot at all, but were caused by that bad drive. The consequence is the same -- you have corrupted data and it will only get worse until you get that drive out of the NAS.
It is things like this that make a NAS not a "set and forget" device. Many seem to think it is and don't check the log often. I check mine at least weekly and have scripts in my primary and backup that save the logs on the other unit daily so I can get to a recent log if the NAS fails in a way that makes getting the log impossible. In your case, it's unclear whether you could have kept the file errors from occurring had you realized at the time that the drive was failing and replaced instead of re-inserted it. Things like this are also the reason RAID is not backup. A RAID can fail in a way that makes data corrupt and/or unrecoverable.
Just trying to determine what is best course of action to limp along with this ReadyNAS until I replace it with something else entirely. I don't really want to spend more money on this one. Probably should have pulled out drive#2 in 2023 when this came up but I was out of the country and at the time for an extended period an unable to access the hardware until I came back. I probably should have asked for advice here online so one of you gurus would help, but I saw some posts about resyncing it so that is what I tried to do. And 18 months later I thought the problem was gone..but apparently its not according to you guys...despite that I have no other errors other then the ones back in 2023 and the bit rot errors now suddenly. But two of you say so, I believe you.
I have removed enough data now and can move some more, so that that I think if I pull that drive, eventually it will resync the whole raid array and eventually become redundant again with only 3 drives instead of 4, but smaller volume size. Do I have that correct or will XRaid require me to get a new drive in order to have redundancy again? Even if I don't have redundancy, I am probably inclined to just let it live without redundancy...and without the drive you say is failing...to be safer that more corruption will not potentially occur. I have already moved mission critical files to a different file server solution entirely. It's basically functioning as a plex server now and if I lost all the content now..it would be annoying but not the end of the world. its not worth going out and spending $200 for a new drive to put in there.
its been working fine for 18 months as a plex server and basically I've had no usage problems with it at alll...just the bit rot errors showing up now out of the blue when I decided to re-back it all up to idrive and some older files that haven' been touched in a very long time were recopied over to idrive. I totally hear you though, that doesn't mean the drive is not risky to keep using and might corrupt more stuff. But anyway if it gets down to just using it as a plex server...then I don't really care as much if I lose it all now. I'm moving on from ReadyNAS anyway to a new solution from here forward...this is just a stop gap measure, might need to get through a year as plex server then I will sell the damn thing.
Regarding the pending sectors question, I still do not understand what that is, it has been mentioned here but I do not understand exactly what it is or why you can determine that the drive is failing from that jnfo. I'm not disagreeing, I'm just saying I don't see an explanation that I can use to understand what you seem to understand in order that I can come to the same conclusion. I will take your word for it and remove the drive, (shrug)...whatever...this is the third time this device has coughed up a failed drive... Raid is not for me in the future.
also where can I find the smart statistics you mentioned? I looked in the smart log, but I could find no errors there.
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