I can't access my (very old) NAS and I noticed the 3rd HD light was off. The browser interface also wouldn't load and RAIDar wouldn't show the device. I rebooted the device and saw this in the logs:
Tue Dec 3 16:16:39 EST 2013 The paths for the shares listed below could not be found. Typically, this occurs when the NAS is unable to access the data volume. media files backup
Mon Dec 2 05:22:06 EST 2013 Disk fail event occurred on SATA channel 3. Please replace the failed disk as soon as possible. If this disk is used in a redundant volume (RAID level 1, 5, or X-RAID), that volume will be running in a degraded mode, and an additional disk failure may render that volume dead. Some disks may inadvertantly report failure. If you feel this is the case, rebooting the NAS device will automatically resync the disk to the RAID volume. If you get further failure messages, you should replace the disk immediately.
I put in a replacement hard drive and the sync didn't start (no flashing light 3). I rebooted and light 3 just comes on solid (that's all 4 lights showing solid green). The health page shows this:
Disk 1 Seagate ST3500641AS 465 GB, 43C / 109F, Write-cache ON, SMART+ OK Disk 2 Seagate ST3500641AS 465 GB, 45C / 113F, Write-cache ON, SMART+ OK Disk 3 Seagate ST500DM002-1BD142 465 GB, 38C / 100F, Write-cache ON, SMART+ Not present Disk 4 Seagate ST3500641AS 465 GB, 42C / 107F, Write-cache ON, SMART+ OK
How can the disk not be present if it sees it? The Volume Settings page also shows the new drive but the check box to 'include' it in the volume is greyed out and it says 0 MB available. I didn't see this specific drive on the HWCL but I'm not sure how comprehensive that list is. I can't seem to access the shares on the device (should I be able if 3 disks are intact?) so I'm obviously in freak-out mode a bit here 😕
Perhaps try cloning the old disk 3 using dd_rescue onto a new disk.
I'm not sure how to do that but I will investigate if no one can give me any other information about how the sync might work (or fail). I don't understand why the 3rd light is coming on solid green when it knows it's not part of the array. There's no way to manually force the sync or hard drive format (if that's the problem)?
If cloning the disk doesn't resolve the issue you may have to resort to restoring from backup (assuming you have one).
readysecure1985 wrote:
you could always use knoppix to clone the drive to a known good drive, and then place it back in the device. Keep in mind that the known good drive should be on the HCL. After successfully cloning with knoppix, you can then place the good drive in the NAS and power on. If all goes well, it will be as though the drive did not have any issues.
Here is a simple guide to quickly recover a failed drive using dd_rescue.
I often have to deal with pesky failed drives, so here is a quick simple guide how to achieve this with a free Linux Live CD and a PC with two SATA connections. I will be using a Knoppix 6.2 Live CD for this guide. Can be found at http://www.knoppix.net Using dd_rescue command allows you to copy data from one drive to another block for block. This is especially useful for recovering a failed drive. Often when a drive fails, the drive is still accessible, it has just surpassed the S.M.A.R.T. error threshold. dd_rescue allows you to ignore the bad sectors and continue cloning the bad drive to a new healthy drive.
1) Connect your old drive and new drive to your PC 2) Boot up using your Linux live CD 3) Launch a terminal window. 4) Run fdisk -l to make sure the system sees both of the hard drives. 5) Run hdparm -i /dev/sdx on both of the drives to find which drive is your source drive and which drive is your destination drive 6) Once you know which drive is which you can start the clone process.
dd_rescue /dev/sdx(source disk) /dev/sdx(destination drive) 7) You will see the process start, just keep an eye on it, it might take a few hours for the clone job to finish, depending on the size of the drive.
Once the process is complete, there will be no notification, the transfer will just stop and you will see the terminal prompt again.
If you see a lot of errors or see that there is no more data being shown as succxfer: it means the drive got marked faulty by the kernel. At this point reboot the system and make sure you know which drive is which again, as it is possible they lettering might switch. Run the dd-rescue command again but this time with -r option. This will start the cloning again but this time will start from the back of the drive and will make sure to get the data that has not been cloned yet.
If cloning the disk doesn't resolve the issue you may have to resort to restoring from backup (assuming you have one).
Yeah I will probably get to those procedures you outlined but what I'm trying to figure out is why the unit isn't responding to a new drive in that slot. The whole point of the unit was that if a drive went bad I could just stick in another 😞
I can access the web interface but it seems useless for this. Are the shares supposed to be accessible if the other 3 drives are assumed good or does it not let you until you resolve the 4th drive issue? I can't remember the raid level I had but it's the one that allows for 1 drive failure.
Most of the time RAID will protect you against a single disk failure, but that is not always the case. Other things can go wrong. That's one reason why backups are important.
When you see that "The paths... could not be found" it indicates that there is a problem. An easy thing to try is cloning the failed disk (if possible), though even if this works some data may be lost.
