PR4100 - Raid profile missing or gone after drive replacement - all drives healthy but showing red led

Hi guys, I need some serieus help getting my

I have a 5 year old PR4100 with 4 x 2TB WD red’s. It was always configured in the default Raid1 setting. A week ago, my PR4100 showed a red led on the first drive. My files were still accessible and everything was working fine. When running a quick drive test, the dashboard showed that drive 3 was failing. This seemed a bit odd to me so I restarted the NAS.

After the restart, all drives show a red led on the system. My files and shares aren’t accessible anymore and it seems as if the drives aren’t mounted. The dashboard shows that I need to configure a raid volume again. I obviously don’t want to do this as this would wipe the drives. I normally had raid rebuild set on automatic but this function is now missing from the dashboard (see screenshot)

Running a full test again, the system says drive 3 should be replaced. Today I received a new, identical 2TB WD red HDD and replaced drive 3. I somehow hoped that this would magically start rebuilding the raid but the NAS just does…nothing. Doing another drive test, all drives appear healthy although all 4 drives have red led’s on the system.

I can still log in to the dashboard, have full acces to SSH but can’t acces files in any way. I think it has something to do with the raid configuration or profile missing.

I haven’t read or write any files to the HDD’s since the errors so I’m hoping all my very personal files on the nas aren’t damaged or gone in any way. But I have no idea how to go forward. Manually start rebuilding the raid from SSH? Retrieve or change the missing raid profile? Any help is very much appreciated!

root@MyCloudPR4100 ~ # cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [linear] [raid0] [raid1] [raid10] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] 
md0 : active raid1 sdd1[2] sdb1[1] sda1[0]
      2094080 blocks super 1.2 [4/3] [UUU_]
      bitmap: 0/1 pages [0KB], 65536KB chunk

Full kernel info:

output of mdadm --examine /dev/sd* in this pastebin: root@MyCloudPR4100 ~ # mdadm --examine /dev/sd*/dev/sda: MBR Magic : aa55 - Pastebin.com

Default as Raid 1; or raid 5?

Raid 1 is mirrored drives - - -so you should have had 2 volumes. In which case. . .recovery would be easy.

Raid 5 (more likely) is stripped drives. . .3 drives of data stripped across 4 drives. Sounds like the NAS is not recognizing the valid array with a single failed drive. . . . .which is very naughty. (I mean. . .this is why you have a Raid 5)

I believe the “not recognizing array” is the cause of the Red LED’s.

Not sure this will work. . … if you dig deeper into the “configure raid” options - - > See if it recognizes the raid volume and WANTS to do a manual rebuild with the fresh new drive. (If it doesn’t recognize a raid is present. . .you have a serious problem - → Then you are on a serious recovery path). Note that DRIVE ORDER is important. If you JUST replaced the bad drive; that’s fine. If swapped other drives around - - That’s not fine.

Thank you very much @NAS_user , your advice is very welcome.

The drives weren’t swapped around and the red Led’s where present even before I replaced the faulted one. Even though I replaced the faulty drive, the raid is not rebuilding and manual rebuild option isn’t present in the dashboard ui (see screenshot). All drives are now healthy

I know I can’t click ‘create new raid volume’ as this would wipe everything?

I have a usb to sata device. I tried to get into one of the hdd’s manually today on my Linux os. The hdd is mounted but I can’t acces or see files; I geuss because of the raid situation?
So if I would manually want to acces the hdd in linux, how would I do that?

Yeah, if it is Raid 5 (striped) I have no earthly idea how to fix this. MAYBE WD Tech support can help.

I think you basically need to mimic a linux raid controller. Probably pretty easy. . . once you have ALL four drives attached to a single system. (after all the data is striped across the drives)

The only help I can give is based upon this: My Cloud: Manual RAID Rebuild (wd.com)