I removed the top drive from my G-RAID enclosure and turned the enclosure on with just the bottom drive inside the enclosure - the G-RAID appears on my desktop and there’s a solid blue light on the bottom drive.
Then I removed the bottom drive from my G-RAID enclosure and turned the enclosure on with just the top drive inside the enclosure - the G-RAID appears on the desktop and there’s a solid blue light on the top drive.
But now when I have both drives inside the G-RAID enclosure and I turn the enclosure on, I get a solid red light on the top drive, a solid blue light on the bottom drive, and a solid red light on the G of the enclosure.
Got any advice? Thanks.
Hey CampMediaGuy,
No word from support; looks like you were left in the dust? Any luck with this issue? Same issue here.
Thanks.
Issue is due to RAID out of sync. There are two ways to fix it. Both ways recommend transferring any needed data off the unit before starting.
- Use the G-RAID configurator to rebuild the drive by selecting the device in the drop down with a D added.
- Use the configurator to configure the drives back to RAID0 and then back to RAID1 and erase the drive in Disk Utility starting over. Then transfer data back after.
Looks like your reply just helped get a response from WD. Yep, I had to transfer all data off my drives and then wipe them clean through Disk Utility.
Indeed it did. Thanks for the follow up. Glad you fixed your issues.
Have an inquiry about this scenario post-fix: Have you attempted/been able to remove or swap one of the two, either of the two, or both drives out of the housing successfully without seeing the dreaded red light reappear?
Thanks.
Hello Rydia,
Thank you for the response.
Coincidentally, we found some similar suggestions/information, and over the weekend used the G-Raid config software to rebuild the drive. We temporarily removed the red light from the inside and outside of the unit. However, we needed to ensure that the drives were cloning our content; otherwise for our purposes, the drives would still be not operating properly. So, we first ran a test backup, and then removed one of the drives and attempted to house it in a third party external housing to verify the contents. The drive would not read in the other housing, so we reinserted it in the G-Raid. Upon doing so the red light reappeared. Also, strangely enough, we had a few instances where the unit failed during the power up sequence before mounting any drives; which has never happened before (although this issue seems to have been temporary.)
Anyhow, two questions now arose after this situation:
1). How does one verify that the backup contents are identical on both drives if you are only able to interact with/Mac reads both drives as “1” disk.
- Do these drives commonly fail if removed from the housing?
Thank you.
One more thing; when using the G-Raid config software; is the “number of disks,” supposed to read “1,” or “2,” if both drives are inserted and configured to RAID1.
Hi - I would suggest…
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A good starting point is if you have 2 x 4gb drives installed, the capacity will show as 4gb (Raid1) as the data is mirrored across both drives. Really hope a drive doesn’t fail just because it is removed!
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Raid1 is considered to be 1 disk because data is mirrored. I wish it wasn’t because I’m having the same problem as you and I’d like to erase the failing drive as I don’t have a spare 3.9gb capacity to copy the data off.
Hi Clive,
Thanks for the suggestion. That definitely helps clarify some things. Quick follow up for you. Have you utilized the Raid config software with the drives configured in Raid1? If so, do you recall if during that process the software reads the drives as “1” or “2”?
Thanks in advance!
Hello again,
We had just got off the phone with support and feel as though the information we just received is incredibly helpful to others as we we’re not aware of this:
When configured in RAID1; removing one of the drives causes the red light to appear, notifying that the drives are “out of sync,” and not necessarily that the drives have failed in anyway. So if you have both drives mirrored and configured to RAID1, you should not remove the drives. If for whatever reason you do remove the drives, you need to run the “rebuild,” process via the G-Raid configure software to “re-sync,” the drives and remove the red light. One final thought, if you need to use the unit as more as a removable drive housing, the tech suggested you configure the drives to “JBOD,” instead and use a software to sync the drives if mirroring is desired.
Hope this helps, cheers.
Hello Rydia,
Having the same issues. I followed your instructions and got to the erase part and a failure message appeared in Disk Utility, the hard drive unmounted and will no longer mount.
Thanks, Jason
Did you lose any data when you Rebuilt it? or did it just run and fixed the issue and all data was intact? I am in the process of a 17 hour back up just in case and then I will hit rebuild
This is very frustrating. After experiencing the red light flashing on one drive, I rebuilt the drives using the configuration mode. So then I had two blue lights. I did a trial uploading data to the G-RAID. Then removed one drive and checked that the data was on the other drive. It was. Then I did the same on the other drive. The data was on it too. I put both drives back in the enclosure and the red light started blinking. I’m now rebuilding the unit and basically it takes for ever. My conclusion is that you should NEVER remove a drive, not ever. Maybe I should have bought the LaCie 2BIG which was also my first choice. Does support ever read these comments and do they have any opinion on this? Brian
There is a lot of good information in this post thank you all. I bought my G Tech 12TB USB device because I thought it would give me the best space at 6TB and an atuo backup option for my photography. I believe I should have done more research. The drives appear to be functioning properly. I have no idea if the backup or Raid 1 mirroring is happening. I don’t understand why there is not a software option from WD that allows to monitor and check, status, condition, and backup. It’s like a mystery you have no idea what’s going on and these drivers were supposedly built for content creators and professionals. This youtube video shows a user ejecting a drive in Raid 1 configuration to verify his backup then putting back in with basically no issues. How to configure your G-Technology G RAID hard drive! What is RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, and RAID 6 - YouTube which I believe based on this post is insane. I have a windows 10 system and at the beginning of using the drive, when my win 10 computer went to sleep it corrupted both drives all data was lost luckily i still had my backup that i used to copy to the drive when i first set it up. This happened numerous times until I figured out what was going on. Support wanted me to test the Raid in another system put the computer to sleep to see what would happen. I told him that was crazy after losing my drives numerous times. I do not believe support reads any of these posts.
I carried out the test twice just to make sure that the data that was copied, was on both discs. It was and really that’s all you can check. Both times I had to rebuild the discs. I’ll not touch them from now onwards. Only if I get a red light one. I’m also disappointed that you can’t monitor the discs, but I can live with that. It helps that I also have my data in the cloud, so it’s double. Thanks for replying, Brian
How long does it take to rebuilt ‘degraded’ drives? I have the same problem. After 12 hours, it seems stuck at 29%. It is a 4GB x 2 previously configured Raid 1 (and my intention again). Should I keep waiting or corrupt process and kill configurator and start again. Obviously I already gave up on the data so no risk per se to starting over unless killing app doesn’t allow configurator to see/mount drive again. Thanks in advance if anyone can chip in with their rebuild time experience.
Reply to self for benefit of group. Gave up on waiting for rebuild process. Went back to Rydia/WD advice above and did option 2 instead which took less than 5 min. Then set it up again as a Raid 1 Time Machine target. White light outside/double blue inside (will not be physically removing drives as noted in discussion).
Rydia/Western Digital advice:
" Issue is due to RAID out of sync. There are two ways to fix it. Both ways recommend transferring any needed data off the unit before starting.
- Use the G-RAID configurator to rebuild the drive by selecting the device in the drop down with a D added.
- Use the configurator to configure the drives back to RAID0 and then back to RAID1 and erase the drive in Disk Utility starting over. Then transfer data back after."
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Hi, The 12TB G-RAID is up and running now for about two weeks. I have it running Time Machine on my new MacPro with Thunderbolt connection. It works fine and I will never ever try to hot swap the drives which if I do will have them become out of sync and inoperable on RAID 1. My first line of back-up is in the cloud with 2TB self limitation. To allow the 2TB limit, I have a 5 dock ORICO docking station with two main 4TB Seagate HDD’s and a few smaller HDD’s. I will set less important outdated data on the HDD’s and keep relevant data on my MAC (4TB) and Cloud. I’m happy. By the way my new MacPro is 4 to 6 times faster than my old one which also makes me happy.
