When inserting a new disk, the Health page temporarily displays the disk as "Dead"
This isn't really a big deal, but it gives a pretty bad impression.
I just inserted a new disk to replace my old dead one, and for a couple of minutes it said "Disk 1: Dead" while the screen on the NAS says "Testing". Before it started resyncing, I was pretty worried that the disk was DOA. It would probably be better to display something like "Disk 1: Testing..." on the Health page after the disk is inserted. That's what the screen on the NAS says, anyway.
Re: When inserting a new disk, the Health page temporarily displays the disk as "Dead"
Hi Hubro,
Welcome to the community!
Can you confirm if the disk you used is brand new or came from RMA? For us to check the status of this disk, I suggest that you run an OEM diagnostic tool by connecting the drive in your PC via SATA and run some tests (short and long). Once done, please let us know the result.
Re: When inserting a new disk, the Health page temporarily displays the disk as "Dead"
What? No, you missed the point. The disk is fine. I'm just reporting the fact that the ReadyNAS reported the disk as Dead for a couple of minutes right after it was inserted. The display of the NAS said it was testing the disk, and meanwhile the Health page said the disk was Dead. As soon as the testing was complete, it started resyncing the filesystem. Everything is working perfectly.
I'm just saying that it would probably be better if the Health page said something other than "Dead" after the disk is inserted, e.g. "Testing..."
Re: When inserting a new disk, the Health page temporarily displays the disk as "Dead"
Hi Hubro,
I'm sorry. The drive info under the health tab will change once the newly inserted drive finished the syncing process. I suggest that you check the logs tab or download the device logs to give you more accurate information about the status of the newly inserted drive.
Re: When inserting a new disk, the Health page temporarily displays the disk as "Dead"
I know that. How can you be misunderstanding me this thoroughly?
All I'm trying to do is suggest that you display something more correct and useful than "the disk is dead" under the Health page while the disk is being tested. It's a suggestion for an improvement, I'm not looking for help.
...The display of the NAS said it was testing the disk, and meanwhile the Health page said the disk was Dead. As soon as the testing was complete, it started resyncing the filesystem. Everything is working perfectly.
I'm just saying that it would probably be better if the Health page said something other than "Dead" after the disk is inserted, e.g. "Testing..."
FWIW, I agree. And this could result in someone removing the disk during testing (assuming it had failed the test).
I think there is a way to report it as a bug via support.netgear.com. I think we'd agree its not that high a priority, but it probably should be on their clean-up list.
It would be best that you post your suggestion to the Idea Exchange for Storage here. Give your post a kudos as well. The more kudos it gets, the more that it will get attention.
Re: When inserting a new disk, the Health page temporarily displays the disk as "Dead"
When you pop in a new disk in that ReadyNAS, it does some disk testing, as you noticed. During this time, we don't load the partition tables or add the disk to the RAID, As such, the disk is considered DEAD to the array until it can copy over partitions and add it to the RAID. All RAIDs must be added and redundant or the disk will show as dead. This is not likely to change ever. The disk test that it is going through is run through SMART itself, so we're waiting for it to come back and tell us the disk is okay. Until then, that disk is useless and constructively dead to your array. If you mistakenly place the wrong disk that you wanted to use in that slot, you can pull the disk during the testing phase and the X-RAID won't try to expand on that disk.
Re: When inserting a new disk, the Health page temporarily displays the disk as "Dead"
I realize that there is a good technical reason, but that still doesn't change the fact that reporting that the disk is "Dead" is absolutely wrong from the perspective of the user. A nervous or impatient user could trust the message and remove the disk while it's testing.
You should at least include a label on the health page that says something like:
NB: When you insert a new disk, the disk status on this page won't update until the disk test is complete. The disk test starts automatically when the disk is inserted and can take several minutes.
