Synology Drive Degredation

snips86x · 16 Dec 2019 at 22:54

I've just had my NAS beeping at me as one of my drives has degraded. Unfortunatley, my external backup drive has packed up too, so I can't backup before I attempt to repair it.

Can i repair without loosing data or am I better off backing it up first? The latter means I'll have to keep it powered down until I can afford to replace it...probably January now.

Armageus · 16 Dec 2019 at 23:16

If it's irreplaceable data like family photos then get that backup first.

Otherwise:
If it's raid 5/shr then I wouldn't without a backup.
If raid 1/10/shr2 then yes in all likelihood it will probably be fine.

snips86x · 17 Dec 2019 at 08:08

Thanks dude. I'll check the partition when I get home from work as I set it up 4 years ago and haven't touched it since.

Should there me maint tasks I should be running periodically?

peige · 17 Dec 2019 at 08:51

Which Diskstation is it and which version of raid is it using (synologys own?)

When I replaced a drive all you did was take out the old one and put the new one in, follow the wizard to repair. All really easy tbh

bimbleuk · 17 Dec 2019 at 09:02

snips86x said:
Thanks dude. I'll check the partition when I get home from work as I set it up 4 years ago and haven't touched it since.

Should there me maint tasks I should be running periodically?

Not a Synology but my NAS runs a data scrub once a month and also runs a S.M.A.R.T HDD check and will forward an alert on errors.

snips86x · 17 Dec 2019 at 09:03

peige said:
Which Diskstation is it and which version of raid is it using (synologys own?)

When I replaced a drive all you did was take out the old one and put the new one in, follow the wizard to repair. All really easy tbh

2 Bay but will have to check the model. I'm more worried about loosing data TBH, more so given my backup drive has failed :/

snow patrol · 17 Dec 2019 at 09:39

i've had an 8 bay synology for probs around 7-8 years and in that time all the original drives have, one at a time, died and resulted in the beeping and me having to replace them. I've got the 2 drive backup option and have had no problem simply popping a new drive in and rebuilding.

Btw, so far (touch wood!) none of the replacement drives have died. It started with 8 seagate 3tb drives and now they're all wd reds

peige · 17 Dec 2019 at 10:02

As long as you've gone for Synologys raid it will be simple as, only danger you have is the second drive failing right now.

I upgraded a 4 bay a couple of weeks back by turning off, swapping over a drive and turning on again, rebuild. Repeat 4 times. Took overnight each time to rebuild the data back and was a breeze.

snips86x · 17 Dec 2019 at 10:06

peige said:
Which Diskstation is it and which version of raid is it using (synologys own?)

When I replaced a drive all you did was take out the old one and put the new one in, follow the wizard to repair. All really easy tbh

I believe it sthe Synology DS218j and I think I used their own file system - drives are mirrored.

snow patrol said:
i've had an 8 bay synology for probs around 7-8 years and in that time all the original drives have, one at a time, died and resulted in the beeping and me having to replace them. I've got the 2 drive backup option and have had no problem simply popping a new drive in and rebuilding.

Btw, so far (touch wood!) none of the replacement drives have died. It started with 8 seagate 3tb drives and now they're all wd reds

Yup, I bought WD Reds on purpose as I know Seagate have always has issues with their drives. To be fair, it's been running like this for best part of 5 years so I can't really complain, it's just inconvenient. I still can't do anything until end of Jan though.

Avalon · 18 Dec 2019 at 14:03

snips86x said:
I believe it sthe Synology DS218j and I think I used their own file system - drives are mirrored.

Yup, I bought WD Reds on purpose as I know Seagate have always has issues with their drives. To be fair, it's been running like this for best part of 5 years so I can't really complain, it's just inconvenient. I still can't do anything until end of Jan though.

Based on what you have said it seems you haven’t got a backup, redundancy is not a substitute for having an actual backup. Also as to the point about Seagate, WD’s failure rate isn’t that much different in my personal experience, both have had some disastrous generations of drives with stupid issues (WD Green head parking issues anyone?) and when something does go wrong, WD have a nasty habit of sending out refurbed drives that are DOA/fail stress testing.

snips86x · 18 Dec 2019 at 14:33

Avalon said:
Based on what you have said it seems you haven’t got a backup, redundancy is not a substitute for having an actual backup. Also as to the point about Seagate, WD’s failure rate isn’t that much different in my personal experience, both have had some disastrous generations of drives with stupid issues (WD Green head parking issues anyone?) and when something does go wrong, WD have a nasty habit of sending out refurbed drives that are DOA/fail stress testing.

Well I did have a backup, but that drive failed as well. I'm well aware that redundancy doesn't replace backups also.
Still can't be fixed until Jan though, so will stay powered off.