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shares missing after drive failure

coelacant
Aspirant

shares missing after drive failure

Hi there,
this is my first post. I have searched the forum archive, however I am still not sure what to do.

ReadyNAS Pro 6 [X-RAID2], 4 x 2TB Seagate drives

I frequently get this (on every drive as far as I can see)

"Detected increasing command timeouts[65543] on disk 2 [ST2000DL003-9VT166, XXXXXXXX]. This often indicates an impending failure. Please be prepared to replace this disk to maintain data redundancy."

What am I meant to do with that? Buy a new drive? According to seagate this drive is still under warranty, but they urge you not to send it in unless it fails the Seatools tests. The tests all come back ok. Seagate wouldn't give me a replacement. I can't just buy four drives every six months. This cannot be how it is meant to work, I am sure.

Then something new happened. The readynas reported "Disk failure detected." This drive is now genuinely broken. Only that seatools thinks that the drive is working.

What to do? Put the drive back in? Format it first? Throw it away?

I don't now how this readynas is meant to work, I can't buy a 2TB drive every 2 months because readynas thinks it's faulty, yet seatools says it's in perfect working order.

After seatools reported the drive to be ok, i put it back into the nas, and now it appears that i am missing volumes. I am also missing file protocols on the remaining shares, the log list is half empty (actually listing empty entries). May I mention that I had to recover the admin password as well, this info had also gone missing in the process.

What is going on? Do i have to SSH in to see what can be salvaged? I was hoping an advanced NAS wouldn't require such intervention.

Thank you for any ideas.
Message 1 of 6
StephenB
Guru

Re: shares missing after drive failure

Unfortunately there are lots of posts here from users who have had trouble with these drives.

What firmware is running on the drives? You might check with the seagate download finder to see if there is an update needed for yours (that requires drive serial number). That would be here: https://apps1.seagate.com/downloads/request.html

Also, when you reinstalled the drive was the NAS powered down?

You could enter an on-line support request with netgear to get their assistance in recovering your data.
Message 2 of 6
coelacant
Aspirant

Re: shares missing after drive failure

Thank you for the reply. The firmware versions on the drives are 2xCC32, CC3C and CC4B. I have entered the serial numbers in the above link, and strangely Seagate says all drives have the latest firmware and don't provide a download link for a firmware upgrade. I say all, but in fact the CC4B drive yields an upgrade, however I have a feeling it's the least important, as all the comments I read are about CC32 and CC3C.

I downloaded the upgrade to CC3D. I understand that the available upgrade is for firmware CC3C only, if this was true then there is no upgrade for two of my drives.
What about them? Will Seagate replace them? According to Seatools there is nothing wrong with them.

They say you should back up the disk before flashing the new firmware. How do you back up a drive that is part of a RAID array? Only thing I can think of is a clone.

After flashing the new firmware, does the drive need re-formatting?

Yes, I switched the NAS off before I took the disk out to check it with Seatools, then put it back in, and powered on.

Thanks for your hints. Yes, I will contact netgear in the hope they can assist me.
Message 3 of 6
StephenB
Guru

Re: shares missing after drive failure

I think I'd start with netgear support. If you are within 90 days of purchase you could use the phone support, not on-line. The more experiments you do the bigger the chance that your data will unrecoverable.

I keep backups of the full raid volume - as raid is not a guarantee that the data will remain intact. Though I have never lost data when upgrading drive firmware on a working drive.

On the other hand, if you can make a clone it is not a bad idea. Was the CC4B drive in slot 2?
Message 4 of 6
coelacant
Aspirant

Re: shares missing after drive failure

Here an update:

In my case, level 3 support went in over telnet and restored a number of shares I had removed, that included a missing share. So that's good.

Other problems were not solved or explained, like why the passwords were reset and AFP was no longer enabled, or the logs shortened (i.e. half missing).

Initially I was advised against upgrading the firmware on the seagate drives, but towards the end of the support case it was actually suggested, although I never did it.

Another thing I asked several times was, what do you do if you want to use something like Seagate's seatools? Do you remove the drive while the NAS is on? Do you format the drive before you put it back into the NAS? Whilst the NAS is on?

My take is:

  • Remove suspect drive whilst NAS is on

  • Check drive

  • Format drive (netgear supported didn't explicitly say, but kind of hinted that it would be a good idea)

  • Put drive back into NAS whilst NAS is on


On the plus side, I never had a problem again with these drives, no warnings or errors. Fingers crossed. I repeatedly asked what had caused it, and how to prevent it, and there were no answers. Crossing fingers is all I can do.
Message 5 of 6
StephenB
Guru

Re: shares missing after drive failure

coelacant wrote:
...
Another thing I asked several times was, what do you do if you want to use something like Seagate's seatools? Do you remove the drive while the NAS is on? Do you format the drive before you put it back into the NAS? Whilst the NAS is on?

My take is:

  • Remove suspect drive whilst NAS is on

  • Check drive

  • Format drive (netgear supported didn't explicitly say, but kind of hinted that it would be a good idea)

  • Put drive back into NAS whilst NAS is on
...

If the disk is ok, your process is needlessly stressing the array - if there is different drive that is failing you will lose your data.
That is because your method will wipe the suspect drive when you reinsert it, forcing a loss of redundancy until the array resyncs. (even if you skip the format step).

Seatools won't change the contents of the disk. So start with:

  • Remove suspect drive whilst NAS is OFF

  • Check drive (leaving the NAS OFF)

  • Put drive back into NAS

  • Power the NAS back on
Message 6 of 6
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