ReadyNAS NV+ HD upgrade failed after 4th drive

[kuoman]

I started upgrading four 500GB HD to four 1TB HD last Monday.
Followed the instruction provided by many existing topic - swap one HD at a time and wait until it is fully sync and proceed with next HD.
I started from drive 4 and work my way toward drive 1. After drive 2, I did the same, pull out drive 1, NV+ shows drive failed, put in new drive, NV+ shows drive added. then I went to sleep.
Next morning (about 7 hours later) the system is OFF (I never had this with previous 3 HD), so I power it back on. I got the following message:
Booting....
Checking FS: 1%

From RAIDar, it was showing resyncing 1% 2 hours and 13minutes, so I went out and got home around 4pm (7 hours later), no progress was made, still at 1%. I did several power cycle (I know I shouldn't but panic)
I pulled out drive 1 and ran Western Digital test (both quick and extended tests), but result PASSED.
Then I put drive 1 back in the NV+ and I still got the same message, so I tried upgrade firmware to 4.1.8 using USB and afterward I am still seeing 1% from the front LED on NV+

I am now backing up all the content to my local PC and thinking maybe I should wipe all four HDs and start from new.

I would like some suggestion/comment for the following:
- do a fully backup (will take several hours, I have about 400GB of data)
- run western digital test tool on ALL 4 hard drive
- reformat the HD on PC (????)
- put all drives back in NV+ and setup as new device

Any comments/suggestions are appreciated.

[kuoman]

I forgot to add, the new HD is
Western Digital RE4 WD1003FBYX 1TB, it is on the HCL

[mdgm]

- do a fully backup (will take several hours, I have about 400GB of data)
- run western digital test tool on ALL 4 hard drive
- reformat the HD on PC (????)
- put all drives back in NV+ and setup as new device

Don't reformat the drives using the PC, but rather if anything delete the partitions on the disks. You'd probably find doing a factory default (wipes all data, settings, everything) would be enough.

When you set it up again as a new device make sure the unit is running 4.1.7 or later (it should be running 4.1.8 after a factory default if the USB Boot Recovery was successful). If not, update the firmware and do another factory default.

[kuoman]

Thank you mdgm

As of now, only drive 2-4 are installed, I am still copying all the data (5 hours and 43minutes to go), I guess I will have to do the WD testing tool tomorrow on all the new HD. Will post in a day or two with progress.

Just wondering, what could be possible cause for this? Maybe I should wait longer for drive 1 to resync? Like over 24 hours?

[mdgm]

Open a support case and send them the logs zip file when requested.

[Qinghong.he]

Maybe one of your WD disk 2,3,4 has error, so the resync proecess is hang.
Did you test the WD disk 2,3,4?

[kuoman]

I am still trying to copy as much data off drive 2 ~ 4. I will start test all HD using WD tools and if afterward I am still having issue, I will open a ticket. Hopefully I won't have to go that route

[kuoman]

By the way. Western Digital Diag Tool has the following test
- quick test
- extended test
- write zeros

I will do extended test but should I perform write zeros?

[mdgm]

Write zeroes would wipe the disk overwriting it with zeroes. If your data is not backed up definitely don't do that.

[kuoman]

Write zeroes would wipe the disk overwriting it with zeroes. If your data is not backed up definitely don't do that.

Thank you. I have backup as much data as I need, going to start WD extended test. I was searching on the forum but didn't find anything that tell me how to reset all my HD to new but keep all my network setting and user setting (ie. share profiles). Is there such a thing or I have to do factory reset and start from beginning?

[StephenB]

You can backup the configuration to a PC from Frontview, and then restore it after the factory reset. You do need to be careful to re-install any add-ons you use before you restore the config file.

You do this from System / Config Backup

Of course you still need to restore the files in the shares from backups.

[kuoman]

After spending few days testing the HD, finally found the HD that was causing problem.
Lesson learned: test ALL HD before you swap out your old ones.

[PapaBear]

You dodged one when you were able to back up your data. As one who has lost all his data in the past (joined the lost data club decades ago), you now know why we beat the drum of maintaining a current and complete backup. Never ever trust your data to one device be that device be a single HD or a single NAS.

I know that backing up to external devices is a PITA, especially with today's larger arrays, but you survived what could easily have been a disaster. If you can see your way in the future, add another NAS to your setup and then back up NAS to NAS. I finally got to that point two years ago and enjoy the comfort of a nightly automatic backup of all 2.4TB of data. (I also do a periodic external backup to a WD Passport of all my critical/important data, all but the videos and music, which then goes offsite in case of a disaster). A current and complete backup gives you a lot of leeway when working with problems.