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Hello, I've been running a ReadyNAS Pro 2 with two 2TB WD red drives. I primarily use it as a backup and media server. I recently bought two 3TB drives (also red) to expand. Along the way I did something that in hindsight was probably not you bright, and likely due to the fact that I don't fully understand how the NAS works! Here's what I did (for this scenario 3A and 2B refer to the original drives, 3A and 3B to the new drives) 1. In an effort to back up the NAS before swapping drives, I took one of the new drives (3A) and hooked it as an external USB drive. The original plan was to then put drive 3B in the NAS (replacing 2B), and once confirmed synced with 2A, I would reformat 3A and replace 2A with it. 2. The first problem was that as an external drive, 3A only showed as 764GB. I removed it from its enclosure and put it as a secondary internal drive, reformatted it and verified 3TB of space. Then I ran a backup from the NAS to the now internal drive (3A). This ran well (albeit slowly) with the exception of a bunch of Plex files which did not copy, possibly because of file name length. 3. I removed 2B and replaced it with 3B and the syncing started. After it finished everything looked good, with 2A and 3B in the NAS. 4. I then replaced 2A with 3A (did not reformat first) with the thought that if I put in a disk with data already on it either it would just wipe it before syncing or at least ask if I wanted to reformat. However, this did not happen. Instead I got a message that "data volume will be rebuilt with volume 2," which I thought strange because volume 1 was already present and complete. I assumed that would be used as the basis for adding additional drives, not the other way around. Although perhaps it's just a poorly worded or translated easy of saying that disk 1 is the source to rebuild disk 2. 5. After some time I got a message that disk 2 was dead. Strange because it was new, and had no errors via SMART+. I removed that disk and the error message persisted even after rebooting. Yellow light on Raidar, flashing green light on the NAS. 6. Swapping the position of the drives did not help. May have made it worse.
At this point I'm at a loss. My hope is that I can start over, but before doing so I want to make sure I won't ruin the original disks (2A, 2B). Can I just put back in the original disks and try and reformat the new ones? Do I have to reset the NAS prior to doing this? How can I reformat the new drives to try again? Thanks to anyone making it through my post, and I hope it was clear enough to get some help.
With one old drive in, everything else (except for the few corrupted folders) seems to be working well - I can access all other files (at least the ones I tried), and can stream movies on Plex to my phone from both the drive and from an attached USB drive.
I'm not sure what the underlying issue is.
Options I see are
(a) try again on the new hard drive install/expansion. That might work, but some file corruption likely remains.
(b) format one of the 3 TB drives in a PC, and copy the data off the NAS to it. Then remove both 2 TB drives, and do a factory install with the remaining 3 TB drive. Reconfigure the NAS, install your apps, and restore the data from the copy. Then move the 3 TB drive from the PC to the NAS. This will take longer, but will ensure that everything is clean when you are done. You'd also preserve both of the 2 TB drives.
5. After some time I got a message that disk 2 was dead. Strange because it was new, and had no errors via SMART+. I removed that disk and the error message persisted even after rebooting. Yellow light on Raidar, flashing green light on the NAS.
If you still do have access to your data, then try reinserting disk 2 with the NAS running. It should attempt to add it to the array again.
If that fails, try connecting it to a Windows PC (via sata, since your enclosure can't handle the drive), and use the short test in WDC's lifeguard software to verify the drive. If that passes, then use the write test - the quick version is good enough to unformat the drive. Then try adding it more more time to the array.
Overall - the NAS will wipe drives before it adds them to the array. OS 6 systems will warn you if the drive is formatted, but OS 4.2 firmware will not.
When you say data do you mean on the 3TB drives or another copy elsewhere? If the 3TB drives then I'll have to check again by connecting them internally. If you mean a copy elsewhere then no, although I could probably rebuild if I had the time.
@bgg1 wrote: When I have one or both of the new drives in the NAS I cannot access anything.
Then power down, remove the drives, and go back to one of the 2 TB drives. Then boot up and see if the NAS works as it did before (with a degraded volume, since there is only one drive).
So I put in one of the original drives on its own and it seems to be working. Now what's the next step if I want to try expanding again to the larger drives?
@bgg1 wrote: So I put in one of the original drives on its own and it seems to be working. Now what's the next step if I want to try expanding again to the larger drives?
I'd recommend making sure you have an up-to-date backup first. That might be more important than usual here, because you've already run into issues.
If you have a backup, you can simply install both of the new drives and try a factory default. Then reconfigure the NAS and restore the data from the backup.
You can also try hot-inserting the first new drive (leaving the NAS running) and see if you have better luck with the resync this time.
I don't have a large enough drive at this point for a backup unless I try what got me into this mess on the first place. But assuming the original drives don't get harmed in this process, is that sufficient as a backup stand in? Do I have to reformat the new drive before inserting it? If so, what's the best way to do that?
I'm on my phone and accidentally tapped on accept answer, but I'm not done yet. Not sure if that can be reversed, but I'd appreciate further advice until I'm up and running with the new disks. Thanks
But assuming the original drives don't get harmed in this process, is that sufficient as a backup stand in?
you might confirm that the second original disk boots up ok if it is in the NAS by itself. Power down the NAS first, then swap the disks and see what happens.
I shut down and tried booting up with the 2nd of the original drives now in slot 1. Booted fine, and i can access the data, but frontview gives me the error message: Volume scan failed to run properly. I tried rebooting with volume scan set to run on reboot with same results.
UPDATE: One thing I just noticed on this second drive is that one of the folders in my media share is listed as NAME_data instead of just NAME, and in that folder is another folder e00, and in there are folders d00 through d03, each one with many approx 1MB .au files. I found one other folder that was renamed to X_dsta with empty folders e00>d00 insid, and one additional X_data folder found. My assumption is that these are folders that got corrupted somehow. I will check the 1st drive again to see if thhey are there too.
2nd UPDATE: I rebooted with the first drive again. Same three folders are corrupt. Now i have the volume scan error on this disk as well. But other than said three folders, everthing else seems to be there.
For what it's worth, I just looked at my e-mail and saw the following from today. These are from after inserting and scanning the old disks. (multiple e-mails)
***** File system check performed at Wed Jan 4 09:56:05 EST 2017 ***** fsck 1.42.12 (29-Aug-2014) /dev/c/c: recovering journal /dev/c/c: clean, 113518/30121984 files, 310788421/481951744 blocks fsck.ext4: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/c/c_2015_03_03_00_00 /dev/c/c_2015_03_03_00_00: The superblock could not be read or does not describe a valid ext2/ext3/ext4 filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2/ext3/ext4 filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock: e2fsck -b 8193 <device> or e2fsck -b 32768 <device>
***** File system check forced at Wed Jan 4 10:04:39 EST 2017 ***** fsck 1.42.12 (29-Aug-2014) e2fsck 1.42.12 (29-Aug-2014) Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes Pass 2: Checking directory structure Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity Pass 4: Checking reference counts Pass 5: Checking group summary information /dev/c/c: 113516/30121984 files (20.0% non-contiguous), 310786824/481951744 blocks e2fsck 1.42.12 (29-Aug-2014) ext2fs_open2: Bad magic number in super-block fsck.ext4: Superblock invalid, trying backup blocks...
fsck.ext4: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/c/c_2015_03_03_00_00
The superblock could not be read or does not describe a valid ext2/ext3/ext4 filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2/ext3/ext4 filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock: e2fsck -b 8193 <device> or e2fsck -b 32768 <device>
***** File system check performed at Wed Jan 4 10:26:35 EST 2017 ***** fsck 1.42.12 (29-Aug-2014) /dev/c/c: clean, 113239/30121984 files, 310803974/481951744 blocks
fsck.ext4: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/c/c_2015_03_03_00_00 /dev/c/c_2015_03_03_00_00: The superblock could not be read or does not describe a valid ext2/ext3/ext4 filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2/ext3/ext4 filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock: e2fsck -b 8193 <device> or e2fsck -b 32768 <device>
***** File system check forced at Wed Jan 4 10:32:47 EST 2017 ***** fsck 1.42.12 (29-Aug-2014) e2fsck 1.42.12 (29-Aug-2014) Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes Pass 2: Checking directory structure Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity Pass 4: Checking reference counts Pass 5: Checking group summary information /dev/c/c: 113237/30121984 files (19.9% non-contiguous), 310802803/481951744 blocks
e2fsck 1.42.12 (29-Aug-2014) ext2fs_open2: Bad magic number in super-block fsck.ext4: Superblock invalid, trying backup blocks... fsck.ext4: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/c/c_2015_03_03_00_00
The superblock could not be read or does not describe a valid ext2/ext3/ext4 filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2/ext3/ext4 filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock: e2fsck -b 8193 <device> or e2fsck -b 32768 <device>
With one old drive in, everything else (except for the few corrupted folders) seems to be working well - I can access all other files (at least the ones I tried), and can stream movies on Plex to my phone from both the drive and from an attached USB drive. So other than the disturbing message what is the issue? Is this a problem with the unit itself or with (all of) the drives? Should i put the 2nd old drive back in now or try a new drive again? And if it is a drive issue, is this something that a reformat can fix? On the positive side, all of the data (or most) can be reconstructed in some way or another once I round up all the old hard drives where some of it resides, but it will be a pain.
With one old drive in, everything else (except for the few corrupted folders) seems to be working well - I can access all other files (at least the ones I tried), and can stream movies on Plex to my phone from both the drive and from an attached USB drive.
I'm not sure what the underlying issue is.
Options I see are
(a) try again on the new hard drive install/expansion. That might work, but some file corruption likely remains.
(b) format one of the 3 TB drives in a PC, and copy the data off the NAS to it. Then remove both 2 TB drives, and do a factory install with the remaining 3 TB drive. Reconfigure the NAS, install your apps, and restore the data from the copy. Then move the 3 TB drive from the PC to the NAS. This will take longer, but will ensure that everything is clean when you are done. You'd also preserve both of the 2 TB drives.
Any harm in trying (a) first (other than potentially wasting time)? Also when you say that option (b) will preserve the 2TB drives, I assume that means with the current failed superblock (which I understand is not a good thing to have). Once I go through a clean install can I fix those 2TB drives and use them as additional internal storage or backup drives? Thanks again for all your help!
