NAS problems

[tebery]

Boy I do not have good luck with NAS's. I had a Buffalo NAS for about 14 months then it died, then switched to Netgear ReadyNAS+ and its stuck on 'Booting... Found Bad Disk 1" after about a year and a half.

I know there is a ReadyNAS forum, but thought I would ask here first.

I assume there is a bad drive, will it ever come back online? what should I look for in a replacement drive?

Thanks in advance

[ILoveC4]

Just buy a drive off the approved drives list on Negears site.

Sorry you're having bad luck, I love my ReadyNAS...

[tebery]

Thanks. I found the list last night. I drive came back on line after about 4 hours with one drive working

[dgbrown]

^ As you increase the # of drives vibration within the chassis becomes an issue with drive stability. Seagate and WD both have drives in the market now that attempt to address this to some extent.

Also, you should set up an email alert for drive smart errors. There's no reason you should be caught short with a drive failure. As the count of relocation sectors goes up you can predict a drive failure - the readynas will send an email as that metric changes. When you see the count increasing, go by a drive and swap it before it completely fails.

[tebery]

Thanks.

Would you recommend replacing both drives?

[dgbrown]

If you goto frontview and click status, and then smart for the drive that has not failed, look at the Reallocated Sector Count. Zero or a low # would be ok. If the number is high and/or climbing from day to day then it's time to replace it.

Replace the bad disk first. Pop the bad drive out. Remove the bad drive from the tray assembly and put the new drive into the now empty tray assembly. Put the new drive/tray back in the unit. It will likely take up to 24 hours for the RAID to re-mirror.

If you end up replacing the second drive too - do it ONLY AFTER the first drive you replace completes the mirroring process.

And set up those alerts

Any Q's let me know.

[ILoveC4]

dgbrown, what is a high number for Reallocated Sector Count?

[ILoveC4]

Just checked and mine are all at 0, but I would still be curious to hear what is a "high" number.

Thanks.

[tebery]

I ordered 2 1TB Western Dig drives from Newegg. I currently have (had) Seagate 500MB in the unit, I check Newegg to replace with the same model number and they were $32 each, with quite a few negative reviews. Hope the WD hold up.

[dgbrown]

Just checked and mine are all at 0, but I would still be curious to hear what is a "high" number.

Thanks.

I'd start being keeping an eye at anything over 20. After that it's the rate of change. There's going to be relocated sectors on a disk, when the frequency becomes fairly regular it's time to start making preparations for a replacement.

[CFUG]

I ordered 2 1TB Western Dig drives from Newegg. I currently have (had) Seagate 500MB in the unit, I check Newegg to replace with the same model number and they were $32 each, with quite a few negative reviews. Hope the WD hold up.

I run a number of data computers at work and have monitored HDD performance for over 6 years now. WDs fail more than Seagates and Maxtors bite the dust more than WD. All drives are worked equally and all are abused the same environmentally. All are also mounted vertically if you believe in the orientaion thing.