NAS drive throwing errors - replace all or just one

Hodders

Hodders

Hodders

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I have a Synology 4 drive NAS.

One of the drives is starting to throw some occasional warnings suggesting some bad sectors.

The data is backed up on about 3 different places so that's sorted.

But given all the drives are about 8 years old, I'm guessing if one is failing, then the others might not be to far behind.

Thoughts?

I really don't want to buy 4 6TB drives at the mo as the prices seem crazy. But Equally, don't want to have to rebuild the NAS if two drives totally fail in quick succession.
 
I would definitely replace them all, given their age. But how you do it depends on what RAID you've used. If it's RAID 5 or 6 then replacing them one at a time will stress the remaining drives and could cause multiple failures. If it's RAID 10 then it's not such a worry as only one other drive is involved and it's a straightforward read operation.

If you're open to s/h drives then a Wanted post in the MM could be worthwhile.
 
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Replace the currently failed drive, and as soon as you can afford it/find a good deal order another drive (either to use as a cold spare, or to replace another drive and retain that as a spare).

Worth bearing in mind that even new drives can fail (and arguably fall into the bathtub curve of being more likely to fail early), so I definitely wouldn't replace all in one go (you are often best to stagger purchases to ensure you get different batches/production dates to avoid potential manufacturing issues).


Also worth considering higher capacity drives e.g. order an 8TB or 10TB as a replacement, and then another, until you've replaced them all. If you are going through the "pain" of a rebuild, you can include a capacity increase at the same time. Compare price per GB rather than just price - the mid range capacities often offer better £/GB than the smaller (e.g. older tech) or larger (cutting edge capacity)
 
IMO it depends how much hassle it would be to restore everything if more failed & how this compares to the cost of new drives.

If it's all backed up properly, and it's not an issue if it doesn't work for a few days whilst you source new drives & rebuild/restore, then just replace the bad drive & let it keep going & replace any further failures as/when they happen. If it's going to be a pain to be without it for a few days if another fails in the near future, then get them all replaced.

8 years is pretty good for a drive, but the likelyhood is, if they've lasted that long, they'll probably last a while longer.
 
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