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[Mikester]

Hi,

I originally was using a DNS-323 (FW: 1.09) in RAID 1 with the following drives:

L:  1.5TB Western Digital Caviar Green WD15EADS 5900 RPM
R:  1.5TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31500341AS

I noticed one day that the Left drive light was never blinking when the unit was being accessed, so I logged onto the DNS and noticed that my Raid 1 was degraded.  I had it set to notifiy via email when this happens, but did not get an email even though it is configured properly.

I am not sure how long it has been in this state, could have been days or months.

Anyway, I removed the WD Drive as this one was showing as having a problem, I had it reformated on antoher machine and decided to put back in the DNS to Resync and rebuild the Array.

This initially worked and all seemed good.  A couple days later, I checked and noticed a degraded array again.  (still no email notification).  Even though Emails work for successful rebuilds etc.  Anyway...

I thought perhaps this might be a bad drive, so I RMA'd the drive with WD and received a newly MFG'd drive, same capacity and model #.  Re-inserted in the DNS and resynced/rebuilt the array.   Again after a day had the same degradation issue show up.

At this point, I knew it was not a faulty drive, so I suspected perhaps the DNS-323 was starting to fail, so I thought hey great time to upgrade to the newer DNS-325 (FW: 1.02).  So I did.

I backup my data through two separate drives, so I was not concerned about data loss.  So with the new DNS-325, I wanted to start fresh.  I reformated both drives the older Seagate and New WD Green into a RAID 1 setup and recopied the data back onto the new array.

Seemed to work fine.   A couple days later, get the same message of degraded array and notice that again the WD drive is not responsive and dropping out of the array. (again no email notification, yes it's configured correctly)  Does not seem possible to be a bad drive anymore, nor is it the DNS as I now have a new DNS-325.

My question(s):

(1) Is there an issue with the WD Caviar Green WD15EADS drives in these DNS's (323/325)?  I see that the larger 2 TB WD20EADS is on the list of tested drives, these are essentially the same drives just different capacities.

(2) Is there a problem with me mixing hard-drive speeds? IE WD's 5900 rpm and Seagates 7200 rpm, is this causing a RAID 1 Sync issue?

My next thought is change from a RAID 1 setup to a Standard setup with internal backup One-Drive to the other hoping this will correct the constant dropping of the WD Green drive.  But I wonder if this is a waste of time if there are issues with the WD15EADS drives in these NAS's.

BTW:  The DNS -325 is used for storing my family digital media (Pictures/Music/Video) and any files I want accessible on our network.   I have a backup plan in place so data loss is not a huge factor, but I do prefer to have the DNS to have two drives that are synced in some capacity as this is the family media hub.

Sorry for the long post, just trying to detail my situation.

Thoughts?

[JavaLawyer]

It's always best to use the same make and model for HDDs in the same RAID array. I'm glad that you maintain a separate physical backup apart from your RAID-1 array, as RAID provides redundancy, but is not a backup in the true sense.

That said, I believe the WD15EADS is an Advanced format disk (AFD) and the ST31500341AS is not. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. I'm just grasping here, but I'm wondering if mixing AFD and non-AFD in the same RAID array can cause issues. Just a thought. We'll need some clarification on this issue from D-Link or user experience to verify or refute.  

[Mikester]

That said, I believe the WD15EADS is an Advanced format disk (AFD) and the ST31500341AS is not.

Thanks for the response, to my knowledge the WD15EADS is NOT an AFD, this practice was started with the EARS model numbers.  In fact, I originally had both the WD15EADS and WD15EARS in the original DNS-323, but was concerned about mixing those two even though they were both WD Green drives.

[JavaLawyer]

Just a thought.

I knew the Seagate drive wasn't AFD, wasn't sure about the WD. I'm still interested in learning whether mixing AFD/non-AFD is problematic though.

[kimnach]

Did you ever cycle the power to the DNS?  I ask this because I found that whenever the power is cycled on my 323, the RAID is degraded (one of the HDD LEDs is flashing and the web interface indicates such).  I continue to cycle the power until it works.

When my 500GB drives (matched) showed degraded status, I purchased a pair of 2TB drives and installed those.  I setup the 323 as RAID-1, powered down (I did the swap in my office), moved the drive over to the utility area of my basement, powered it on, and discovered that it was "degraded."  I cycled the power and the system was working fine for the last six months.  Then, this past weekend, I accidentally pulled the power cord from the UPS (its cord was next to the router which I was replacing).  When I plugged it back in and it booted, it was degraded.  It took a number of power cycles to finally boot properly.

[Mikester]

Did you ever cycle the power to the DNS?

Yes, when I cycled the power, it would start a rebuild using the WD15EADS drive, this would go until completion and show a success.  After a couple hours, I would get a degradation message again, with the WD15EADS drive showing a failure.

I have resigned myself to the fact that the WD15EADS is not compatible with this unit (or as least in RAID 1 with the other Seagate Drive).  I picked up a Seagate ST3151500341AS (same as the other drive) and rebuilt the RAID 1 array.  All seems good (at least over the past few hours).  So hopefully this cures the problem.

Now I have an extra DNS-323 to use as backup. 

-Mike