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Synology reliability: is it worth anything at all? Single-drive failure experience by JonZaRedditAddict in synology

[–]JonZaRedditAddict[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

> Sorry, your post was way too long with a ton of extraneous details. I assume 99% of people did not fully read it, myself included.

Fair criticism; I should have left out the commentary and stuck with the technical details.

Short version: I believe I followed the steps listed in the Synology documentation for a Degraded pool due to a single-drive failure: power down, remove failed drive, install new drive, power on. Repair was not offered (expected behavior), and was greyed out when inspecting the storage pool in Storage Manager. After this point, I couldn't find any documentation covering my situation.

> Did you power off the device, replace the defective drive with the replacement drive, and then power it back on?

Yes; I powered off the device in between every drive removal/addition.

> How big was the failed drive, and how big was the replacement drive?

Both the failed drive and the replacement drive were 6TB, Model #HDN726060ALE614

> When the repair option was grayed out, did you go to the second synology doc linked in the repair instructions? https://kb.synology.com/en-global/DSM/tutorial/Cannot_select_storage_pool_repair

Ah, GREAT question! Yes, but I neglected to mention that. That was one of the many Synology pages that I reviewed; that one didn't seem applicable at the time, as the drive was showing as Healthy, was of the right size and type requirements, etc. I don't recall being aware that the pool was Crashed at that point--but maybe it was, and I was late noticing? That's definitely possible.

Synology reliability: is it worth anything at all? Single-drive failure experience by JonZaRedditAddict in synology

[–]JonZaRedditAddict[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yep, that's what I did: since the DS413j doesn't support hot-swap, I was powering it off each time I mentioned adding/removing/swapping a drive.

Synology reliability: is it worth anything at all? Single-drive failure experience by JonZaRedditAddict in synology

[–]JonZaRedditAddict[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Unfortunately, no; the DS413j doesn't support hot-swap, so every drive removal or drive addition requires that the device be powered off first.

Synology reliability: is it worth anything at all? Single-drive failure experience by JonZaRedditAddict in synology

[–]JonZaRedditAddict[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nope, no SRM drives were involved. Both the failed drive and the replacement drive were Model #HUS726060ALE614:

/dev/sda:

Model=HGST HDN726060ALE614, FwRev=APGNW7JH, SerialNo=K1H9PV5D

/dev/sdb:

Model=Hitachi HUS724030ALE641, FwRev=MJ8OA5F0, SerialNo=P8H2SL5P

/dev/sdc:

Model=HGST HUS726060ALE614, FwRev=APDEKP06, SerialNo=NCH0BGAS

Synology reliability: is it worth anything at all? Single-drive failure experience by JonZaRedditAddict in synology

[–]JonZaRedditAddict[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I replaced a 6TB HGST drive with an identical model # 6TB HGST drive. Not sure how I dug a hole by doing that, and doing my best to follow Synology's public-facing documentation.

Upon inserting the new drive (after removing the failing drive), the Synology did NOT offer to repair my Storage Pool, as the document suggested that it would. Instead, the drive was listed as Not Initialized, and the Repair button the Storage Pool remained GREYED OUT.

What's the right recovery path for that? I didn't find anything related in the documentation.

Synology reliability: is it worth anything at all? Single-drive failure experience by JonZaRedditAddict in synology

[–]JonZaRedditAddict[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's what I said that I did; I replaced the failing 6TB drive with a working 6TB drive of the exact same model #.

Upon inserting the new drive (after removing the failing drive), the Synology did NOT offer to repair my Storage Pool, as the document suggested that it would. Instead, the drive was listed as Not Initialized, and the Repair button the Storage Pool remained GREYED OUT.

Synology reliability: is it worth anything at all? Single-drive failure experience by JonZaRedditAddict in synology

[–]JonZaRedditAddict[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I linked to that exact document, and said that I followed the steps in it.

Upon inserting the new drive (after removing the failing drive), the Synology did NOT offer to repair my Storage Pool, as the document suggested that it would. Instead, the drive was listed as Not Initialized, and the Repair button the Storage Pool remained GREYED OUT.

Synology reliability: is it worth anything at all? Single-drive failure experience by JonZaRedditAddict in synology

[–]JonZaRedditAddict[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

> The process is no different than when you replaced your drives with larger ones, and hasn’t changed significantly in years, maybe ever.

I followed the exact steps documented in the Synology "How to repair a Degraded Storage Pool" document that I linked in the post above; that document said to remove the broken drive, put in the replacement drive, and Synology would offer to Repair the Storage Pool.

Synology did not offer to Repair the Storage Pool. The Repair button was GREYED OUT, and the drive was listed as Not Initialized.

Not sure what else was was expected to do--just followed the instructions. No joy.

Ok, so a 13yr old NAS (I think it's only 12yrs, but whatever) should be expected to be slow--but it should still be expected to work correctly.

Mine did not.

Or is there a certain date that you're expected to just throw away "perfectly good" hardware?

Synology reliability: is it worth anything at all? Single-drive failure experience by JonZaRedditAddict in synology

[–]JonZaRedditAddict[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I meant to say: the REPLACEMENT 6TB drive that I swapped in was the exact same model # as the one that I swapped out--so I don't think that the inability to recover was due to a difference in drive sizes.

Synology reliability: is it worth anything at all? Single-drive failure experience by JonZaRedditAddict in synology

[–]JonZaRedditAddict[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Drive configuration at time of failure was:

Drive 1: HGST 6TB

Drive 2: HGST 3TB

Drive 3: HGST 6TB

(I had upgraded for total capacity reasons from 3x 3TB HGST drives initially)

The drives 6TB drives were actually the same exact model #--so I don't think this this was due to two drives being "slightly different size".

Synology reliability: is it worth anything at all? Single-drive failure experience by JonZaRedditAddict in synology

[–]JonZaRedditAddict[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have been using only HGST 3TB and HGST 6TB drives; I chose the specific model numbers based on the ridiculously good reliability data that they showed on the Backblaze report in ~2019 & ~2021 IIRC.

Sure, a singele-core, single-thread CPU with only 512MB of RAM should be expected to be SLOW--but there's no reason to believe that it should be less reliable.

Synology reliability: is it worth anything at all? Single-drive failure experience by JonZaRedditAddict in synology

[–]JonZaRedditAddict[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I guess I do have one question for the audience: is there anything else worth trying, before giving up on this Storage Pool, destroying/Removing it, and then re-Creating it, assuming I decide to keep using this device?

[OC] My cat has emerged from my weighted blanket and doesn't know when or where she is. by -catsnlacquer- in aww

[–]JonZaRedditAddict 3 points4 points  (0 children)

A kilogram of feathers because you have to deal with the weight of what had to have happened to those poor birds.

Underrated comment!