Disk Failure Detected...

[imlucid]

Looks like I may have spoken too soon as I just read I have another disk failure event...

Kevin

[imlucid]

Now I've had my third, this time on disk 3 (previously it was 4, then 6). All of these are the same Seagate drives. Disk 1&2 are Hitachi and have yet to report failure. Did the shutdown, pull and reseat and drive reports fine, no Smart errors and is resyncing.

[mdgm]

The disk could still be failing/dead. I would suggest backing up your data, then powering down and running the "Test Disks" boot option: http://home.bott.ca/webserver/?p=252

[imlucid]

The disk could still be failing/dead. I would suggest backing up your data, then powering down and running the "Test Disks" boot option: http://home.bott.ca/webserver/?p=252

Thanks mdgm, I'll give that a shot tonight. I've run it through the various standard boot tests available through the Web UI but haven't tried this yet...

Kevin

[CitizenPlain]

I just had another one yesterday during a half-terabyte file copy to the RAID. Disk 1 this time (previously 5 & 2, as described earlier by me in this thread) with the same Seagate ST2000DL003-9VT166 drives.

Haven't had a chance to run Seatools or report to Netgear support yet. Was able to pull the drive and it resynced without issue as before. Only seems to happen when I'm copying data to the drive -- that is to say, it'll sit there running without issue or do periodic Time Machine backups, but at some point during a large file transfer, I get a disk failure.

I'll try running the Test Disk option that mdgm describes now as well.

[evanhatesspam]

First bootup of six of these new 2TB drives in an Ultra 6 Plus, and already one, disk #4, is declared "dead", only 1% into the first xraid2 resync.

Hard disk #1: Seagate, Seagate ST2000DL003-9VT166, 5YD17K5Z, CC32
Hard disk #2: Seagate, Seagate ST2000DL003-9VT166, 5YD1ZELB, CC32
Hard disk #3: Seagate, Seagate ST2000DL003-9VT166, 5YD1YR60, CC32
Hard disk #4: Seagate, Seagate ST2000DL003-9VT166, 5YD1JQ7Y, CC32
Hard disk #5: Seagate, Seagate ST2000DL003-9VT166, 5YD1QM9A, CC32
Hard disk #6: Seagate, Seagate ST2000DL003-9VT166, 5YD1Z766, CC32

Oy.

[mdgm]

It happens. A courier drops the disks or there's some manufacturing defect or something else. There's a whole range of possible causes. Disks can and do fail at any time.

[CitizenPlain]

I ran the full boot menu disk check last night. It was done by the morning. No error messages, abnormal SMART info, or anything obvious in the logs/health. Is there a particular file it puts the logs from the boot menu disk check in the complete log ZIP file? Guess the next steps woulds till be Seatools and contacting Netgear support?

[evanhatesspam]

I'd buy the perspective that those with issues in this thread are just seeing the odd bad disk here or there, but the full story seems to show otherwise: disks aren't actually bad, but are errantly being flagged as bad for some reason. Sounds like a bug to me, at the OS or FW level. My next steps is likely to be like CitizenPlain's latest post: run a full (perhaps overkill considering the downtime it requires!) disk-check from the boot menu. I bet there will be no issues found. Then what? Wait until the next likely false-positive drive failure?

I run an R&D lab datacenter with hundreds of SATA, SCSI, and FC hard-drives. Drives do die. This issue sniffs of a code bug somewhere to me.

[imlucid]

Its especially troublesome that all reports have been with Seagate ST2000DL003-9VT166 model drives. Which leads me to think its a firmware issue with these drives?

I'll run the full disk check tonight on mine but expect the same results as CitizenPlain.

Kevin

[bluewomble]

Yes, it does seem a problem with these drives specifically.

I've had 3 'failures', all while doing large file transfers.

Since then , I have run the ReadyNAS's own extended disk test and run the SeaTools long drive test on all 6 drives... no problems have yet been found with _any_ of the disks.

I've done an OS reinstall at the request of the Netgear support guys and since then (touch wood) everything has been running normally... I might try doing some more large file transfers to see if I can stress the system though.

These don't feel like normal disk failures to me... feels more like a firmware / software bug in either the disks or the NAS (or the combination of the two).

[CitizenPlain]

Yeah. I'm with Kevin & BlueWombie. Doesn't seem like a regular failure to me either and we've all got the same setup (Ultra 6 Plus and the same drives.) The drive keep working just fine and without errors after they're reinserted and checked.

Are you guys also all using OSX? I wondered if it was some sort of weird conflict with doing a file transfer and Time Machine trying to back up at the same time. I thought I observed that on my second failure earlier (was using the machine when the drive died -- other two times I wasn't in the room when I got the alert), but I can't tell if it was coincidental or not.

[imlucid]

Yes, it does seem a problem with these drives specifically.

I've had 3 'failures', all while doing large file transfers.

Since then , I have run the ReadyNAS's own extended disk test and run the SeaTools long drive test on all 6 drives... no problems have yet been found with _any_ of the disks.

I've done an OS reinstall at the request of the Netgear support guys and since then (touch wood) everything has been running normally... I might try doing some more large file transfers to see if I can stress the system though.

These don't feel like normal disk failures to me... feels more like a firmware / software bug in either the disks or the NAS (or the combination of the two).

Just curious, what mechanism are you using to do the large file transfers?

I'm using cifs and afp shares at home but my mirrored NAS backed up 7TB via rsync and haven't had a single issue on it (same exact setup as the one that has had 3 failures, 4 Seagate drives, 2 Hitachi).

The CIFS share I use as a mount for iTunes and download TV Shows and Movies into it, the AFP mount I use for FCP editing, mostly read only as I have a local scratch disk.

Kevin

[imlucid]

Yeah. I'm with Kevin & BlueWombie. Doesn't seem like a regular failure to me either and we've all got the same setup (Ultra 6 Plus and the same drives.) The drive keep working just fine and without errors after they're reinserted and checked.

Are you guys also all using OSX? I wondered if it was some sort of weird conflict with doing a file transfer and Time Machine trying to back up at the same time. I thought I observed that on my second failure earlier (was using the machine when the drive died -- other two times I wasn't in the room when I got the alert), but I can't tell if it was coincidental or not.

I'm using OSX (Leopard and SnowLeopard).

I do have Time Machine backups set up to this NAS as well (but not to my mirrored backup NAS)... I have no idea if TM was trying to run at the time but have seen TM errors.

Kevin

[bluewomble]

I'm also using Macs (running Snow Leopard).. I have 4 machines all doing time machine backups and I'm using afp to connect to the macs and rsync to another nas... I have an Ultra 6 rather than a 6 Plus, but otherwise the same.