I believe I have a failing hard drive and/or a failing enclosure. Correct course of action?

Hello,

First time poster here, but I believe you guys will probably be able to help me out.
So a couple of days ago I couldn’t connect to my MyBook Live Duo (4TB model in RAID1). The windows network share wouldn’t connect and I also could not access it through the web interface.I power cycled the device and could access it again for about an hour but then the connection was gone again. The enclosure was hooked up to my router (which is an ISP Motorolla one but I don’t know the make/product number) and is assigned a static IP address.

So yesterday, I connected the enclosure to a switch and hooked the switch up to my computer and I placed a computer fan on top of the enclosure just to rule out any overheating issues. By moving the device I had to boot it up again, I can connect to the web interface and to the share as well. this time it’s been running for a bit more than a day. I figured I’d run the diagnostic test, and both the short and full test end with a prompt stating drive B did not pass the test. In the storage tab of the interface both drives are still listed as status “good” but that has more to do with the RAID status as far as I can tell from the manual. Access to the network share and the web interface is still pretty slow. I’d upload the System Log to give more information but zip files aren’t supported. I tried copying the S.M.A.R.T. parameters in a text file but new users can’t upload files apparantely so If you need any more info I’ll have to copy paste it here.

On one drive I get this:

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status: (0x00) Offline data collection activity
was never started.
Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
Self-test execution status: ( 41) The self-test routine was interrupted
by the host with a hard or soft reset.

on the other I get this:

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status: (0x00) Offline data collection activity
was never started.
Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
Self-test execution status: ( 0) The previous self-test routine completed
without error or no self-test has ever
been run.

What I’m wanting to know is the correct course of action. I suppose one of the drives needs replacement and the device is working sluggish because of that drive. However I read that the MyBook Live Duo requires two of the exact same drives to be installed. I don’t believe I’m going to find a new more than 3 year old WD Green that matches the other one so that isn’t an option. I’m probably going to copy my files from the good drive to a backup drive using DiskInternals Linux Reader as stated in the debricking guide (I know it’s not bricked but I read about this software over there) so I at least have an extra backup. If the diagnostic test fails due to bad sectors, would there be an option to either try and repair them, or mark them so they aren’t used anymore?

All help is appreciated,

Kind regards, Joost

Hello,

Have you tried contacting support about this?

https://support.wdc.com/support/case.aspx?lang=en

Hey, thanks for the reply,

Yeah I used the “request support function” from the web interface of the NAS and it took me to the page you linked. I filled it in and submitted it. I didn’t get any confirmation mail but I’m not sure if you’re supposed to get one or not. Though I believe the warranty on the device is 3 years, which are already passed so I’m not sure of support is going to be able to help me out. I’ll see if I get a response and if what they propose is worth a shot or not.

In any case I figured I’d let you know that I already managed to copy my data to another drive using Ext2fsd, mounting it in read only mode. The data is also safe and well on the drives, just that that the B drive indeed has a “warning” status in CrystalDiskInfo due to reallocated sector count and some other parameters. I’m not entirely certain if the sluggish performance actually was because of the B drive as I could access it like normal on Windows, and a dropping network connection doesn’t seem related to a failing hard drive. Anyhow to test the enclosure I’d really have to get another drive and see if the enclosure can rebuild the RAID, however I noticed that WD doesn’t produce Green drives anymore, or at least my local retailer doesn’t have any anymore so that’s not an option.

I’ll see what support replies, and otherwise I’m probably just going to look for a new NAS, or at least a new enclosure and one new drive.