Faulty Disk Synology NAS - Options

Housey

Housey

Housey

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21 Feb 2006
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Seems I have a faulty hard disk in my 4 bay Synology NAS DS410j. It has become problomatic over the last few weeks and the light and testing indicates disk 4 is dying. I have the device in RAID 5 and all backed up, but I was wondering can I remove the faulty disk and rebuild it with 3 disks only and then add a replacement disk at a later date?

I am nowhere near the capacity of the disks (4 x 2TB less RAID 5) so don't really need 4, but wondered will RAID 5 allow me to remove 1 and then rebuild or remount the device into a 3 drive config whilst maintaining all my files if reducing the overall capacity acordingly?
 
No you can't do this. You can add disks and grow the array but you cannot shrink it, got to start from scratch.
I'd personally just take it offline or run it degraded (depending on what's on it) till the replacement arrives. When you grow an array you're unprotected anyway.
 
Thanks for this, couple of questions. I shall pop over to 'the shop' tomorrow thats open and buy a new 2TB replacement, perhaps 2 for a backup. Can I take the suspect drive offline tonight or is it simply better to power it down, replace with the new one, reboot and let it rebuilt itself?
 
oh and another.

If I have all the content I need backed up, which I do, could I remove the crunched drive and rebuild it from scratch with 3 drives instead?
 
Is it out of warranty? If it isn't there's no need to get another drive, just carry on and then stick the RMA replacement in. Doesn't really matter how you do it, straight swap or removing it first.

Yes you can rebuild from scratch with 3 disks.
 
It is still within Warranty so will RMA it and also shall buy a spare tomorrow just in case, useful to have a spare for such occasions I feel.
 
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