Failed drive replaced in Pro Business, can't tell what's up.

[glashoppah]

I've had my Pro Business for years now.  I've moved from 6x500G to 6x1T to 6x2T over the years, and have always used Seagate Constellation ES.2 drives.  I have a drive failure about once every 18 months or so.  Each time it happens I recall not seeing enough info from the NAS to tell where the NAS is in the rebuild process, so I'm used to waiting days for the alarms to clear, but I had a recent failure and am getting nervous.

Drive had been getting progressively worse with increasing SMART errors.  I always keep a spare handy.  I am running XRAID-2.  Drive finally failed, so I replaced it.  The log shows the following messages after the failure and then after the replacement with the new drive:

I have waited over 10 days to see the alarms clear and the drive to go "normal" but no joy.  Drive is still showing "dead" in the volume and health displays, and front panel shows "Vol C degraded".  I don't want to reboot if it's busy, causing it to have to start over.  How long should this take, and how can I see updates on the rebuild status?

Thanks,

H.

[StephenB · Accepted solution]

You'd need to download them.

system.log, kernel.log, expansion.log, user.log are probably all places to look.

[vandermerwe]

Do you have a backup? Replacing a failed disk and the resultant resync can expose other problematic disks, you don't want to end up with a dual disk failure with single redundancy.  Are you using single or dual redundancy?

Did you test the disk before you put it in?

The volume tab should tell you if a resync is taking place or not, does it?  It should not take more than about 12 hours with 2 tb disks.

A reboot is usually advised if there  no evidence of the rebuild starting, but I would advise you to make sure you have a backup first.

[StephenB]

Usually hovering the mouse over the drive or volume icons gives you an indication of progress.  What firmware are you running?

There are drive failures that can disrupt the SATA interface, and cause the driver to shut it down. Though I'd have expected that to block detection of the new drive insertion.

I suggest rebooting (maybe shutting down, removing power for a bit, then restart).

If the resync doesn't start I would remove the drive and reinsert it (NAS running).

[glashoppah]

Disk is brand new, and according to the logs it was accepted and rebuilding begun by the OS.  I'm running dual-redundancy.

H.

[glashoppah]

Here is the volume display:

and the "Health" display:

I'm running v4.2.27 of RAIDiator. 

What's puzzled me is that, since the original log message saying the drive would be used to rebuild the array, there have been zero log messages concerning status of the drive or array.

H.

[glashoppah]

Another interesting data point - from the RAIDar app, which appears to think the third drive is good:

H.

[glashoppah]

OK - I threw caution to the wind and rebooted.  Not like it could get any worse.  And now that it's restarted, the rebuild has commenced (RAIDar display below after reboot).  So now my question becomes - why didn't it rebuild after the hot swap?

H.

[StephenB]

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@glashoppah wrote:

...So now my question becomes - why didn't it rebuild after the hot swap?...

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Hard to say, perhaps the logs would provide some clues.

If the rebuild completes ok, I'd just leave it as a tech mystery though.

[glashoppah]

In which log would I look for a clue?  It's definitely not in the log available from the GUI.

H.

[StephenB · Accepted solution]

You'd need to download them.

system.log, kernel.log, expansion.log, user.log are probably all places to look.