So last week I’m computing away and start copying a rather large file to my NAS. It goes to start and then nothing. Odd. So I try to goto the built in web management console and its down. I reboot the NAS and after a lengthy delay I now have alternating flashing blue rings. The good news I can mount the file systems and I can get to the management console. The management console says “Drive B Failed”.
Ah cool! My raid 1 config saved me from the wrath of my spouse for losing the only pictures of our infant 2nd son ( I swear sometimes I think about going back to film just because of that, but digress…) . Pictures are now safe and sound on another (albeit temporary) storage solution.
So the manual says “user serviceable drives” which I take to mean - you can swap in any old drive of equal or larger size and go. So I buy a nice new 1.5TB WD Green (newegg had a great price!) and drop it in. Thinking down the road the other drive will eventually fail and I’ll just upgrade it resulting in a bigger overall NAS (after completely rebuilding the array from scratch). Thing powers up fine (again after a bit of a delay) and I can reach the management console. I go to the initialize drive section and it sees a “replacement drive”. So I tell it to initialize and it says my data will be automatically rebuilt. I say Yup do it. I saw the page saying it was formatting and then another saying it was synchronizing. And there it sat… with swirling blue lights. Eventually the status page failed to refresh. After 12hrs of waiting (and no hard drive noises) I pulled the plug. Put the new 1.5TB drive into an external enclosure to verify that its a working drive and it is. I remove the partitions. Plop it back into the NAS and repeat the process of initializing and rebuilding of the array. And there it has sat for the last 36 hrs.
So now my question is does this solution require “special” matched drives that must go through the RMA process (even though I’m well past warranty)? Or does it just need a drive of the exact same size? or is something else wrong?
If the model of the drive is WDG2NC1000 , means it’s 1TB when it’s on raid 0 and 500 GB on raid 1…
So it’s always preferable to replace it with same model drive, same size and Green power drive…
Then it should rebuilt the array with no problem, and yes it may take few hours but not 36 though! but if it’s bigger drive it may not work and that can be related to the firmware written to the NAS enclosure.
And if you do buy same model drive, try not to interrupt the raid rebuilding process not to cause any corruption.
I have an MBWII (blue rings) and it is running RAID1 (mirrored). I had the “drive A failed” message a couple of weeks ago. I just replaced the 500GB WD5000AAJS with the nearest I could find, which was a WD5000AAKS. The manual says the rebuild should take about 5hours, but I just left it overnight and it was fine the next morning.
I concur with GMan2XS , I’ve had one of the 500GB drives go bad. I actually ordered a replacement directly from WD (same size, model, “color” (green) instead of risking getting something of a different SKU from the local computer shop. The rebuild must have taken several hours, but it finished overnight, and not a single byte of data was lost. I do have to say though that I had a fairly recent firmware installed on it (02.00.19)
Despite the drive failure RAID1 did its job and I was very satisfied.
If you go thru the maint web pages for the unit on the “General Setup” page there’s an option “Upgrade the System Firmware”. If you click on that it will do a check and tell you if there’s a newer one available and give you the choice of downloading & installing it. Takes about 30 minutes.
Well, my saga continues. I bought a matching 500GB drive (down to the model model number - WD5000AAKS). Drop it in as a replacement for the one that died. Turn the power on … aaaaaaaaand… Nothing. I can hear the drives spin up, an occassional head seek. But no blue lights. Nothing. System isn’t pingable and the built in web stuff isn’t responding.
Thought maybe the existing drive got corrupted as a result of the failed sync with the 1.5TB drive so I just took it out, dropped the new drive is slot a, and still nothing. I’m back to being at a loss as to what to do now.
Yeah, I have my data in a safe place. I just want to get it back up and running. I have two matching (and working) 500 gb drives. I was pretty sure the one that didn’t fail had become corrupted so I dropped it into an enclosure and deleted all the partitions and then dropped both drives back into the box. Same result as before deleting the partitions. No blue lights and just an occasional head seek.
I’m fairly linux savy, and I’m hoping what I saw when I put good drive into the enclosure isn’t what I think it was. Too me it looks as if the linux kernal and root file systems were on the disk!
How long did your Raid 1 rebuild take? I’ve got a MyBook World Editon on my desk right now that had a failed drive A. Got a replacement drive from WD and installed it according to the article 1464 and followed 1496 to get the array rebuilt.
This started at 6:30pm last night. It’s curently 8:30am the next morning and the blue rings are still spinning clockwise and the drive status still shows “synchronizing”. I know the article said “5 hours no matter how much was on the drive” but we’re over 14 hours at this point.
Is there anything I can check (log files or something) that will give me a clue if this rebuid is still working or if it’s failed?
Just looking at the drive right now, the blue rings are rotating much more slowly than they were. Does that mean anything?
