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I had a whole series of error messages from one of the drives yesterday afternoon (both drives are under 3 years old) - as per the attached log screenshot. Today I did a disk check and it has come back told me that I have a disk failure - again as per the screen shot, but the main overview pages are telling me that everything is healthy and the disks are fine.
How can I tell if I have serious disk problem and a disk needs to be replaced?
I contacted the seller this morning to see if they'll replace the drive even before it fails.
You could also run the disk test (on the volume settings wheel). It will take a while (it reads every sector). There's a log entry when it completes (and you will get an email alert if those are configured). The alert/log entry will tell you if it failed - if it just says it finished, then it passed.
Seagate would also replace it if it is under warranty (with a recertified drive). I won't tell them (or the seller) that it hasn't failed yet though. "Failed" for disks is to some degree subjective. You are seeing a lot of errors, and many would say your drive has already failed.
I had a whole series of error messages from one of the drives yesterday afternoon (both drives are under 3 years old) - as per the attached log screenshot. Today I did a disk check and it has come back told me that I have a disk failure - again as per the screen shot, but the main overview pages are telling me that everything is healthy and the disks are fine.
How can I tell if I have serious disk problem and a disk needs to be replaced?
The sharp rise of ATA errors ( over 400 errors in about 30 minutes) is definitely concerning. One option (given the rather low cost of these drives) is to simply replace it, and be done with it.
FWIW, it's pretty common for the ReadyNAS screens to show that disks are healthy when in fact they aren't. Part of the puzzle is that there is often no bright line between working and failing. Netgear has higher thresholds (more tolerant of errors) than I personally do. I periodically look at the underlying SMART stats and make sure the disks are healthy.
Unfortunately, there are no common health thresholds for ATA, reallocated sectors and the like. Various vendors have their own thresholds in their disk diagnostics (Seatools in this case), but many people will pull disks with errors even if they pass those tests.
Thanks - I had checked back with the original purchase and saw the drives had a 3 yr warranty - I contacted the seller this morning to see if they'll replace the drive even before it fails.
I contacted the seller this morning to see if they'll replace the drive even before it fails.
You could also run the disk test (on the volume settings wheel). It will take a while (it reads every sector). There's a log entry when it completes (and you will get an email alert if those are configured). The alert/log entry will tell you if it failed - if it just says it finished, then it passed.
Seagate would also replace it if it is under warranty (with a recertified drive). I won't tell them (or the seller) that it hasn't failed yet though. "Failed" for disks is to some degree subjective. You are seeing a lot of errors, and many would say your drive has already failed.
Volume: Disk test failed on disk in channel 1, model ST4000VN008-2DR166, serial ZDH7GEW4.
...but the disk still shows as being ok on the main screens. Anyway, the seller got back to me and have agreed to replace the drive even without it having 'failed' per se. I've ordered a replacement and the failing drive will go back to them.
The lights on the NAS seem to show the disks (both) as ok and the web based software shows them both ok although the disk check shows a failure. Does that mean the disk has actually failed? And how do I know which disk has then failed? Is it a case of taking out a drive at a time and looking for the serial number quoted in the error log?
The lights on the NAS seem to show the disks (both) as ok and the web based software shows them both ok although the disk check shows a failure. Does that mean the disk has actually failed?
I'd say yes - I haven't had a case where the disk test failed on a good disk. You can confirm by connecting the disk to a Windows PC, and then running the vendor diags (seatools for seagate, dashboard for Western Digital). If you do that, run the full generic test. If that passes, then follow up with the full write-zeros/erase test.
FWIW, even if it does pass, you might not want to trust it. Personally I don't want flakey or marginal disks in my NAS.
And how do I know which disk has then failed? Is it a case of taking out a drive at a time and looking for the serial number quoted in the error log?
If you aren't certain, then power down the NAS, and check the serial numbers - you don't want to remove the wrong disk with the NAS running.
The failure message should include the channel (bay) number, and for this message the first bay is 1 (not 0). You can also cross-check this by looking at disk_info.log - which lists all the disks (including serial numbers) and their bay/channel. Though be careful - disk_info labels the first bay as 0, not 1.
You will see a degraded warning when you remove the drive - that is normal.
