Volume 1 Failed mesage after RAID rebuild

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Hi Guys,

I hope I have not lost all my data as my backup drive died a few days ago and was getting replaced next payday.

What I Had:

I have a WD EX4 NAS with 4 x 4tb drives in it with an ENCRYPTED RAID 10 giving me 8 tb of space on one volume

with firmware 1.04.05

What happened:

I was wrighting a large file to the NAS when we had a power blink out, the NAS imediatley rebooted and then entered a

RAID rebuild mode, as I was wrighting a file to it at the time of the power blinkout I was not so suprised at the RAID rebuild. 30 hours later when the rebuild had finished all was well with the world and had full access to all my files.

which I access through mapped drives in windows explorer.

the next day and not having any problems reading or wrighting to the NAS, I logged onto the dashboard to discover that

in the Capacity Free box said 0.00 Mb Free and with that, thought OK I’ll give it a reboot.

Now the problem started !!!

After the reboot I got all 4 blue drive lights on, with the LED above the power button flashing red and a message in the

LCD Saying Volume 1 failed.

I logged onto the NAS Dashboard went to

‘Storage’ \ ‘RAID’ it said Raid Health - No configured volumes

‘Storage’ \ ‘Disk Status’ it said Disk Health - Healthy

The ‘storage’ \ ‘Disk Encryption’ option ( Where we go to mount an encryped volumes ) is not preasent, this feature is

only visable after you have encrypted a volume and mine has disapeared.

OH DEAR

I have a configeration back up file on my laptop that I saved from the NAS AFTER my last config and encryption of the

NAS

Should I import this file or will it cause more damage?

any help would be great as all our irriplacable photos are on the NAS and the backup died a few days ago

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Hi stubbzie, sorry to hear you’re having problems, on this case I recommend you to contact support first before trying to do anything else, they will guide you on the best options you have available. 

http://support.wdc.com/country/index.asp

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Thanks jubei04 for your reply, The good people at support spent a lot of time with me and there getting back to me

with some ideas. I dont think this is the end of the world. The volume is there albeit encrypted, the NAS just wont see it as encrypted and therefor dose not give me the “volume encryption” option in the storage area of the dashboard.

Putting emotion behind me, I am impressed with the WD support, they were genuinely concerned and within a few minuits had a number of people gathered around a remote session throwing ideas into the mix.

Im confident they will come up with somthing.

Ive had the EX4 for a while now with no Problems at all. The EX4 does have a few issues, but for what I use it for Its been

a very reliable machine. I’ll let you know how I go

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hope that they come up with something like you say :slight_smile:

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Thanks david

While looking around I found that there was a problem like this a while ago and fimeware 1.2.25 fixed it

Im confident it wont be long now. the volume is there the NAS is just having trouble finding it.

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I guys !

Since last thuesday i have EXACTLY the same problem you have. Just chance 2 x 1To RAID 1 in your sentences and you’ll have my case !

It happened just after i upgraded to 1.04.05 firmware and i tried to copy big video files.

I really hope they provide a fix quickly because i have critical financial data i cannot access any more at the moment !

If there’s anything i can do to speed up the process i’ll be happy to do it.

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I had the same problem as well a few days back.  I dont have my data encrypted and I’m not sure if any file was being backed up when I had a short power outage.  After the power was back, the EX4 power led was flashing/blinking red and I get the error message Volume Failure.  I’m on the latest FW.  

I opened a support tiket for 3 days now and no one got back to me so far!!!

I’m sure the data should be there somehow, but honestly speaking this is disturbing, I considered this system to be my main backup device, but when a simple power failure can do this type of damage I’m losing trust in this thing which I bought only 2 months ago.  I’m seriusly considering moving to Synology before I hit a real disaster, and if this problem was not solved, I’m pretty **bleep** sure I will dump the EX4 and move to Synology.  Though I will keep my four 2TB red drives :slight_smile:

-Gus

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Hi Guys

Im Sorry Ive not been back latley, not much to tell

Im sorry to hear theres more than me with this problem

WD are looking at my EX4 now and should be back with a fix soon I would imagin,

Probebly with a firmware upgrade

I think this has taken everyone out of left field. I can only speak for my own experance but

WD Suport has been very good so far and from the calls I have had from them they are

sitting up and noticing this one and acting quickly

Seriously, From my own experance, *** Full Kudo’s to support for the way they have handled this***

(Ya, I know, Im going to get a jolly good flaming for saying that)

Keep on trying to get through to support people. The more systems they know about, the better chance of a fix sooner.

I just rang them when it happened and told them to put me up the food chain. I think we have a lot of people’s attention

Stubbzie

2 Likes
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Hi stubbzie,

Thanks for the update.

I’m glad you are having better luck with support than me, and its probably good since it seems we have almost the same problem, so maybe the solution can be applied to several other cases.

I have just opened another case with WD support pointing to the first case number to get their attention further, though a simple acknowledgement from their side of the problem would have been good.

Nothing much to do now and will wait and update you if there is a major breakthrough :slight_smile:  But in the meantime my data is growing and left without proper backup!

-Gus

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This problem just hit me 5 days ago.  I guess I am nieve because I “upgraded” to the EX4 due to issues with the competitors in this space.  I had a failed drive so I paid for the expedited shipment of the replacement drive and when I received I assumed I could just push the drive in and be done… I just spent almost 2 full days obsessed with figuring out what went wrong.  This message chain is pretty close to my situation so I will just summarize:

  1. Drive Reported degraded, then failed after trying the basic recommended troubleshooting (you are warned that this must be done else you will pay for the replacement is nothing is wrong).

  2. Received replacement drive and inserted while online.

  3. Drive went into rebuild only to fail and I lost contact witht the GUI dashboard.

  4. I had to did a basic reset to get the EX4 online again and I found a healthy status with NO VOLUMES.

  5. I can see all of the security info and other settings (assuming stored in memory) but nothing works.

  6. There is not troubleshooting software for this and basically I am bricked right now.  Did log into SSH but found everything that this thread found → no mdadm.config, mdadm --examine --scan does show my volume and data out there but you cannot assemble or rebuild because it lost track of the RAID confi info (my simple description)

I had tens of thousands of family pictures and other very sensiitve family archives.  It took me months until my family “trusted” me that this device was the real thing and now I may have lost virtually all my family’s archives.  

I trried to call the support line but apparently it is just a 5x8 support option unless I pay for more.

I will wait until Monday to call the support line and will just nervously wait to see what options I have.  The irony of the situation is that I have been in a technology career for almost 25 years now and started to recommend this device to other family members and colleages.  I have quite a significant infuence on what I recommend and this situation has completely turned me off.  

The best I can do is at least update my Amazon review as this is where I hiave the most impact to warn others about my personal experiences.  

John - NYC

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Hi @stubzie!

I nearly have the same issues. Accidentally have a power failure to the drive and it start to rebuilding by itself with a red power LED and blue drive LED blinking. Is that a normal situation for the drive after power failure? However, I put more concern to my data in there since I put all my works and thesis data there and it’s about time to have an exam when suddenly this accident happen. How about the condition of the data after the drive rebuild it self? Can I expect that I can save my data or at least have access to it? I’m very worried about this problem.

Your information would be very valueable to me since the rebuilding time is very long and I cannot stay doing nothing and wait until it finish.

Thanks a lot!

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I too replaced a faulty disk, waited out a 20+ hour rebuild only to be met with a “healty” volume that is empty and cannot be written to.

root@EX4 Public # pwd
/mnt/HD/HD_a2/Public
root@EX4 Public # touch test
touch: test: Input/output error

Rebooted thinking perhaps it might help, and it just wanted to rebuild again.  Same result after another 20+ hours.

Not sure why I bother with raid 5 if the whole volume is going to be lost either way.