WD EX4100 NAS - 4 3TB drives - RAID 5 - Disk + S.M.A.R.T Failure - Advice Kindly Requested

Hi all… Basically, the Subject + the info below:

What a horrible thing to come home to after work today.

  • I noticed Drive #1 of 4 was red, not blue like it is supposed to be.
  • I logged into the NAS on my browser and saw that it said Drive 1 (A) Failed (B) was downgraded and had a temperature issue (C) too low ?!?!.
  • One of the notifications told me to do a disk test, which I performed, however, I was horrified when I got the results: both Disk 1 and Disk 4, did not pass a S.M.A.R.T check.
  • I then decided the best thing at the time to do was put it into hibernate, until I got better advice. I know I could have screwed things up doing that, but, it was the best decision at the time.

Last I recall, my total capacity due to RAID 5 was 8.89 TB and I had somewhere between 4TB - 5TB in free space when I shut here down.

Basically, I’m asking if this was you, what exact steps and order would you do to try to preserve your data?

However, if you care to provide any insight in regards the following additional questions I would be quite greatful, as well.
(1) Should I attempt to rebuild drive 1, with a new drive, first or attempt to pull drive 1 and/or drive 4 and fix any issues with the disk. It there are bad sectors on disk 4, for example, it wouldn’t rebuild anyway, correct?
(2) What happens if I can’t get 3TB red drives? Say, for example, I got a 4TB drive and replaced each drive when it failed (2,3 and 4) with that same size drive, when I replaced the fourth drive, would I get the added 3TBs by upgrading all drives from 3TB to 4TB?
(3) If I replace my drive in the future with another WD NAS, is there a way to essentially plug and play my existing drives, assuming I can rebuild the RAID after this mess?

Thank you so much in advance!

~ Jack

Hi jhhaze,

This issue can better addressed over the call, please contact us so we can troubleshoot the issue,

Moreover, you can refer to the link mentioned below.

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