Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[MrBloke]

My DNS-345 has been running RAID5 across 3 x WD Red 3Ts since December 2014. 

The array silently crashed a few days ago: no reason was given in the scant logs, just "Volume_1 has crashed".

SMART testing tells me that the drives are all ok, but ScanDisk doesn't even show the volume, so no option to repair is offered.

Two questions therefore:
1. Can I recover the array without reformatting?  (I do have a backup).  Taking the disks out and running some Linux utility on a host PC is NOT an option at this stage.

2. What might have caused the volume failure?  (And if it's common behaviour, this NAS is going onto eBay or the trash).  I bought this NAS for reliable long-term storage.  A non-disk related failure in just 4 months is wholly unacceptable.

Thanks for any help,

Mark

[JavaLawyer]

Despite the SMART report, perhaps there is a bad HDD or  HDD-level data corruption.  Try powering down the device, remove one HDD and reboot and see how the DNS-345 behaves.  You can incrementally try this with all three HDDs with the hopes that one HDD is at fault and the array comes back as degraded with an option to rebuild.

[MrBloke]

Hi JavaLawyer,

Some great advice there.  Took the first drive out and bingo: rather than a crashed volume, I had a degraded volume (although shares were not available, my files seemed to be there).  Fiddled a little bit, then put the drive back in and the system tells me that it's rebuilding the volume.

So...looks like it was a dodgy disk but I'm wondering what caused the drive to misbehave in the first place?  Wondering if it's just a matter of time before the drive fails totally.

Will be keeping an eye on things over the next few days and weeks.

Thanks again,

Mark

[JavaLawyer]

Shwew!  Glad everything worked out for you.

If the HDD passed the SMART test, perhaps there was some form of data corruption in that particular HDD?  Hard to say. Now that everything is working okay I wouldn't muck with anything (if it's not broken, don't fix it!).  If in the future you ever run into a situation where you clearly identify a problematic HDD up front, I would recommend visiting the HDD manufacturer's website (WD in this case) and downloading a tool to run a diagnosis on the problematic HDD. Taking this one step further, I would use WD software to completely wipe the HDD back to the default factory state before putting the HDD back into the NAS.

[ivan]

Further to what JavaLawyer says above I would add that you do the full range of tests using the WD tools with the suspect drive mounted in a USB/SATA caddy and if there is the least suspicion of something not being right then return the drive (after wiping it) for replacement under warranty - suspect drives have no place in storage arrays. 

[malkie0831]

Sorry to hi-jack someone else's thread, but my DNS-345 has suffered the same issue this week. It is filled with 4 "TB WD Red's and only had about 1.5Tbytes of data loaded. I have removed all four discs and run the WD Lifeguard diagnostic program on all of them in extended mode, there are no errors on any of them. Now I'm going to have to invest in some recovery software to get my data back. Most of it is backed up, but there is always something missing! Very frustrating.

[FurryNutz]

Review this to see if anything helps:
http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=47326.0

Sorry to hi-jack someone else's thread, but my DNS-345 has suffered the same issue this week. It is filled with 4 "TB WD Red's and only had about 1.5Tbytes of data loaded. I have removed all four discs and run the WD Lifeguard diagnostic program on all of them in extended mode, there are no errors on any of them. Now I'm going to have to invest in some recovery software to get my data back. Most of it is backed up, but there is always something missing! Very frustrating.

[malkie0831]

Thanks FurryNutz, that post was my next port of call. My discs were in a Raid 5 set.

Now I need to get three of my 4 discs connected to my PC and see if there is anything that can be recovered.

My PC has a sata dock for a single drive built into the top cover, so I think I will get a dual USB 3.0 dock so I can connect two more. That will save me disturbing the sata and power connections inside my PC.

[FurryNutz]

Let us know how it goes...

[malkie0831]

As I type this my PC is reading the Data from 3 of my discs successfully.

My dual slot USB dock took longer to arrive than I would have liked, but it arrived today.

I slotted two discs into it, added a third in my SAYA bay on top of my PC and started up 'NAS Data Recovery'.

The there drives were easy to identify in the program, you have to tell it there is one drive missing, then it searches the discs and identifies the raid structure, which it did.

From there it 'mounts' the array and you can see the folders in an 'Explorer type' window, Without a License it just proved the file structure was there, you are not able to save anything.

So I bit the bullet and invested $99 in the license and then I could save everything so far. I have a 3 TByte drive as a data disc in my PC and have cleared space on there, I had less than 2 TBytes on the NAS.

The data is reading at about 25 to 30 Mbtyes per second, which is not rapid but not ridiculously slow.

Next questions are why and where next? The NAS was switched off for a couple of weeks and started up OK when I came home, then died without warning on a hot afternoon two weeks later. I can't believe the temperature was the issue as the log never even said it had set the fan to high.

I can't see I will ever trust the 345 again, but I don't know what to replace it with.

[FurryNutz]

I've had my 345 for a while now and have enjoyed it greatly. I don't run RAID however and have 4 different size drives in mine.

I don't think the 345 could be to blame for a crashed HDD. Anything could be possible when it comes ot HDD.

[malkie0831]

 I have only had my DNS 345 since last December and I was hoping for better than this. I have put 4 old desktop drives in it and all is working fine again.

I agree with you about crashed hard drives, I work in a business where our Customers regularly get bitten because they fail to back up their data, assuming that data on a hard drive will always be there!

All 4 of my WD RED 2TB drives all check out OK, no SMART errors and no surface errors. The data is clearly all there as I have recovered it. Each disc has three partitions on it (as they should have) and the DNS 345 is intended to be able to recover if a single disc fails. It seems to me the Raid Configuration has been corrupted somehow so the DNS 345 could not identify the Raid structure, and the only option it offers is to re-create the raid and format the discs again.

I have a second Share-centre, a DNS320L which I bought cheap soon after I finished setting up the 345, that has saved me a lot of heartache and I'm going to be fitting bigger discs to it so I can have a proper back-up strategy!

[FurryNutz]

What FW is currently loaded on the 345?

[malkie0831]

The 345 is running 1.04 firmware, dated 07/04/2014.

[ivan]

It sounds as if you have suffered from a read error on the PARITY stripe - those can kill a RAID 5 stone dead )see my comment on the topic 'Migrate to RAID 5 2 disks + 2' below this one for a little more detail,