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RN314 re-syncing even though sync completed
RN314 from 2014... came with 4x1TB Toshiba MG03ACA100 drives. Noisy as hell, and out of space. So, in process of upgrading to Seagate ST4000DM004 4TB drives. This is for personal use, so not "mission...
Thanks much StephenB and SandShark. A few hours on this forum with you guys is about 10x more helpful than poring over internet pages. Regarding the HDD choice made here:
- RN314 is for personal archival (photos, videos, work product) and is not a "real-time" NAS in my home network
- Archived info is duplicated across RN528X, RN212, RN314 and cloud storage (not all files, but many)
- RN528X and RN212 use Toshiba Enterprise-grade HDD's designed specifically for NAS (drives provided directly by Netgear)
- Am aware of NAS-specific drives like IronWolf, etc...
- Reasons I chose this drive:
- It's actually on Netgear's approved NAS drive list - do you find that surprising? I did
- With multiple back-ups, my fear of losing data isn't all that high; and with RAID5 I would hope that no more than 1 drive at a time would fail, such that I could recover from it in any event. Is this wrong-headed logic?
- Drives are on a very good sale, around ninety dollars each. For this old NAS, with only 1GbE ports and an Atom 2.1 GHz processor, I decided this would be a good "experimental" box to put to the test these complaints/concerns with SMR. If it fails, worst case I'm out a few hundred bucks
- Wanted lower noise. The 1TB Toshiba's are horrendous, got really tired of Woody Woodpecker all day long. Could have went with WD Reds, but in 30 years of PC ownership I've only had two HDD failures - both were WD. And the Reds also have this SMR issue, and they're more expensive for questionable gain
- Other than reliability worry, my only other worry is this weird issue with SMR writes. Unclear if these drives will exhibit serious write delays, that would kinda suck. I have 30 days to try out these drives, so we'll see
- One possibly silly thing I'm also doing is: (1) swapping out the 2GB DDR3 for a 4GB, and (2) swapping out the loud, crappy Delta fan for a Noctua A9 Flx (3-pin 92mm). More RAM probably does nothing but some have claimed a little "snappier" performance; the fan will definitely help, I've put Noctua's in the XS716E and other Netgear boxes that come with these sh#t Delta fans and they've worked spectacularly
If I'm trying to build a reliable, future-proof box, wouldn't even consider these drives. In fact, what I really want to do, and may do on one of these NAS boxes eventually, is move to enterprise-grade SSD. It's so damn expensive right now that I'm not willing to pull the trigger. But eventually that's the almost-holy grail - silent, ultra fast... it's just a question of reliability.
jimk1963 wrote:
- With multiple back-ups, my fear of losing data isn't all that high; and with RAID5 I would hope that no more than 1 drive at a time would fail, such that I could recover from it in any event. Is this wrong-headed logic?
Multiple backups of course should eliminate any need for data recovery. But depending on RAID redundancy alone (which you are not doing) is IMO a mistake. Some considerations are:
- Power surges (for instance nearby lightning strikes) can damage multiple disks (and UPS or surge protectors might not be enough to block the power surge). And of course there are other physical risks (fire, flood, theft).
- System crashes (and unclean shutdowns) can result in lost writes that can result in an out-of-sync array.
- Often disk issues are latent and don't show up until you later on try to read or write a sector. So the time window for "more than one drive at a time" can be quite long in practice. Scheduling disk tests (and scrubs) on a regular basis can reduce that window, so I recommend people do that.
- Disks are generally identical, are ordered and installed together, and are subject to identical loads under near-identical conditions. So it should be that surprising if they often tend to fail in rapid succession.
- The volume is unprotected during a disk replacement, and the resync requires reading every sector of the remaining disk. If those reads fail, then the RAID array fails and data is lost.
jimk1963 wrote:
- It's actually on Netgear's approved NAS drive list - do you find that surprising? I did
I know it is there, and it surprises me too.
jimk1963 wrote:
but in 30 years of PC ownership I've only had two HDD failures - both were WD.
Actually I had the opposite experience, and had a run of Seagate failures some years back. So I tend to stick with WD. Though one reason I've stayed with the CMR Reds is that I like the power consumption - which results in cooler temps than the comparable Seagates.
I don't use the SMR variants, and there is one WD Red CMR model that hasn't worked out that well for me (which is the WD60EFRX).
jimk1963 wrote:
- Other than reliability worry, my only other worry is this weird issue with SMR writes. Unclear if these drives will exhibit serious write delays, that would kinda suck. I have 30 days to try out these drives, so we'll see
Please follow up and let us know either way.
Yikes. I was unaware how delicate RAID arrays are - for example during a swap. That's pretty worrisome actually. Maybe I missed it, but in searching NTGR documents for upgrading the NAS, I only found the one universal document - and that simply walks through the mechanical process of hot-swapping a disk. Haven't read any NTGR info describing all these important issues you raise, or that I found the hard way, like the multi-day process of upgrading via one-disk-at-a-time swapping vs. wholesale copy/paste. Or the latent multi-disk failures that could be hiding. My RN528X has 8 disks in a RAID6 array. Is it more robust with this many disks and RAID6 or is it subject to these same issues entirely? Sounds like I should invest in a UPS, more cloud storage, scheduled "scrubs" (have to research) and I don't know what else... I've been naively assuming having RAID arrays are my best protection. Ugh. Ugh!
jimk1963 wrote:
My RN528X has 8 disks in a RAID6 array. Is it more robust with this many disks and RAID6 or is it subject to these same issues entirely?
RAID6 is dual-redundancy, so you are protected against routine failures of up to two disks. So the array remains protected when you replace a single disk. It is just as vulnerable to lost writes if the system were to crash.
Personally I've stayed with RAID-5, and depend on backups for recovery if the RAID array were to fail. Which hasn't happened to me yet.
jimk1963 wrote:
Sounds like I should invest in a UPS,
Yes, I would recommend that. A lot of data loss stories here began with power loss.
jimk1963 wrote:
more cloud storage
Options for disaster recovery include cloud backup, but also putting a NAS in a remote location (a trusted friend or family member), and rotating USB backups off-site (safe deposit box perhaps). I've gone with cloud backup myself (currently using CrashPlan). Sandshark has a remote NAS.
jimk1963 wrote:
scheduled "scrubs" (have to research)
The NAS has a several maintenance functions you can schedule on the volume settings wheel. I run each one once every three months myself. The disk test is the extended smart test, and it hopefully will uncover failing disks errors. The scrub does a couple of things, but one aspect that it does exercise the drives, so it functionally also doubles as a disk test.
Thanks StephenB, will work from your list. First up, a UPS. Thinking about this one, about two hundred dollars on amazon:
CyberPower CP1500PFCLCD PFC Sinewave UPS
1000W / 1500VA, 1445J surge, 6 battery backed/surge protected outlets, 6 surge protected outlets
Studying these, it seems nothing new has happened in the world of UPS in the last 20 years. Some of the models out there are literally 15 years old.
Biggest gripe: can't find any with more than one USB handshake port. I realize there's this NUT concept where ethernet-connected boxes can be relayed a message by the box that's USB-connected to the UPS, but that literally means that all networking gear in the chain, up to and including the router, have to be battery backed too or that NUT command is 100% useless. Correct me if I'm wrong. In my case, router sits in a different room, and the 2-story house has switches up and down, so there's no way I could keep an ETH network alive without sprinkling UPS's in (at least) 3 locations. What would be infiintely better: (1) multiple USB's with command capability (qty 3 or 4) with software that can handle that; or (2) a daisy chain connection option between NAS's that's specifically dedicated to UPS triggering.
Strategy with this UPS will be to USB-connect it to the big gun (RN528X), and leave the other 2 NAS's to die if/when the UPS battery runs out. My thinking here is that a UPS may shut down more "gracefully" than an unprotected wall outlet, meaning from a surge viewpoint. Obviously the non-USB connected NAS's are still going to suffer an ugly power cutoff. The UPS world doesn't leave me with much choice, unless I'm willing to buy a dedicated UPS w/ USB for each of the 3 NAS's. I guess I can look at that option instead, what a pain in the butt - all because these arcane boxes can't send a trigger message to more than one box in an event. Dumb.
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