Sentinel dx4000 drive failed and restoration process

Legacy Products WD Sentinel
1

Hi All,
I have a Sentinel dx4000 box with 4 drives each 2TB setup as RAID 5. About 4 days ago, one of the drives failed so I started copying my files to another NAS. During the copying process, I saw another error on the LCD screen - something like 0xd9 and the process stopped. So, I started restoration using the WD software (had the DVD, Phew!). Now, this process started for the past 3 days and still going. All I can see on the LCD screen is “Initializing OK searching …”. I am not sure how long I should expect this process to go and actually what is it doing? recreating the RAID 5? Anyone had similar experience so I can learn from?

How much price tag can you put on all your family and kids video and pictures for some years!! (plus all other data etc.) :frowning:

2

Sometimes it takes 5 hours, some times 5 days and sometimes after 5 days it fails. Searching does not sound right though.

So what did you do about the bad drive? If you need the data only thing you can do is wait I think

3

Thanks for reply. I took the bad drive out because I figured that way, the restoration process may force to rebuild the RAID 5.
The issue was that I can not get the “exact” match so that I could just buy another drive. Discontinued and I couldn’t get in Australia/no one supplied etc. so frustrating…
When I contacted the support, I said this is what I see on the LCD and they didn’t say that’s not a good sign (to get that message for 3 days!!) hopefully I understood my question.

4

If you did not do a diskpart clean on your 3 good drives, it is still probably trying to do a raid 5 with 4 drives. I think it would load, but then say you had a drive missing. But if you got the 0x9 that normally means all data is lost and you need to start over.

If you have data you need I recommend you google raid recovery and try one of those. They will run and let you see if you can see your data, then you pay ~$250 to copy the data

If you do not need any data, I think I would stop, clean the 3 drives with diskpart, do the middle step recreate, then do recover.

I could be wrong on the 0x9, but if you search here for that I think everyone started over.

Once you get it running there is a download that will allow you to use “any” drive and you could add a 4th if you like.

5

Hi
Do you happen to know that download which allows me to use any drive for my 4th drive?

I’m pretty much open to any suggestion at this point.
I can’t get into the box so how can I use diskpart, from a client desktop box?

6

you have to slave each drive in a pc with a cable or usb dock to run diskpart

software downloads>drive enabler

https://support.wdc.com/product.aspx?ID=1601&lang=en

7

Thanks a lot! I will be working on this path also -.

8

Hi,
does anyone know the link to the latest recovery iso? desperately trying to download from a link which I was given, but downloads fails all the time and I have no md5 file to know whether what I am downloading is ok.
the latest iso doesn’t seem to be publicly available (I don’t know why)

9

Your best bet is to Contatct WD support, but there are some links in threads here
here is one for panam I think
http://download.wdc.com/sentinel/PANAM_SvrRecovery_1_7_5_17.iso6
EMEA
http://download.wdc.com/sentinel/EMEA_SvrRecovery_1_7_5_17.iso8

But if you contact WD they have newer ones I think that will work with new hard drives. Also Chrome “may” work better than some versions of IE to download.

10

Thanks for reply Gramps

Someone from support has provided a link however it doesn’t work for me for some reasons … He is very efficient in getting back to me when I object that I can’t download the file but still doesn’t work…
The link is pointing to a version that is more recent to below so to your point there is a more recent version.
PS. My NAS is APAC edition although I’m not sure the differences when it come to regions. All I need to do is to retrieve my data.

11

If you need your data I think you should look at raid recovery software

12

Hi,
I tried that s/w and it doesn’t find my server. I think it’s because my server doesn’t even successfully start up. (stops with either bad drive or that 0xD9 error.
I can’t get the latest recovery ISO either. Still trying, though scary as I don’t want to make it worse than it is…

13

The only safe thing to try is that software. Of course it will not find your server. If it could find it you would not need it.

You need to attach the hard drives to the PC running that software. Either with 4 sata ports, 4 usb cables or usb docks, or perhaps two docks that hold two drives or any variation of the above to get all 4 drives spinning on the PC running the recovery software.

If you have questions with that software contact them.

And if you attach the hard drives to the pc and it says they need to be formatted, do not do that :slight_smile:
You might also explore a data recovery service

14

as always, thanks for reply. Looks like my homework for the next couple of days! :slight_smile:
But, I will try tonight.

15

Hi All,
I need to run the WD diagnostic tool on my existing drives - these drives were originally setup as RAID 5, then one of them failed and then a few other issues and to cut the story short, I need to now check and see whether those 3 remaining RAID 5 drives are ok. I was thinking to connect them one by one to a PC via one of those SATA to USB connector cables - here is my worry: if I connect them to the PC to run the tool (western digital) is there a risk that the OS will right something on it which may create a bigger disaster.

16

I would for sure not try that on a W8 or W10 PC