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[arcanus]

i bought a dns-321 and 2x2tb drives from seagate 2 months ago.  i installed the 1.03 build 9 firmware.  formatted the drives as raid 1 with ext3 and copied over about 100gb of my music collection.  the box was left running the entire time and i accessed it to listen to music.  i wanted to make sure the drives weren't going to die on me immediately.

2 days ago i decided it was time to test recovery before proceeding.  i opened the front of box and used a lever in back to pop out drive 1.  i waited a few minutes, but received no message.  i reinserted the drive.  at this point, i should've tried to access it from a computer, but i didn't.  i shut it down and removed drive 1 again.  when i turned on the power, this time i was treated to a drive failure messages in my inbox.

i shutdown the unit and replaced drive 1.  i powered it up and logged in as the admin.  i went to the advanced > raid tab.  i had auto-rebuild disabled.  i clicked on manual rebuild.  the synchronization timer said it would take 30,000+ minutes and wound down to about 1,500.  i left it alone and eventually went to bed.

the next day, i was treated to messages saying, "Volume_1 HDD rebuild is done."  i went logged in and went to the raid tab.  it said that i still had over 300 minutes before synchronization is complete.

here is the problem...
it's another day later and it still says it needs 300+ minutes to complete synchronization.  it seems to be stuck.  i cannot access the box from any computer because when i look at the users, there is no mount point for my users.  i keep getting the rebuild is done message periodically (usually 2 at a time).  i do not have the option to rebuild again as it's still syncing.  i ran a quick diagnostic on the drive i popped out and it returned with a pass.

here are some things i tried while it's been in this state:
--update firmware to 1.03 build 12.
--shutdown unit and manually power it on.
--restart unit.

it always boots up and tells me there's 300+ minutes to complete synchronization.

i could shutdown, remove drive 1, boot, shutdown, reinsert, rebuild again.  i'd rather not since i expect rebuild to succeed when i tell it to do so!

suggestions???

-tony

[gunrunnerjohn]

It used to be that the new drive required formatting outside the box to remove any data, but I thought that was fixed.  It might help to pull the drive, format it with the Seagate utilities, then insert it again.

I'd also do it with power off, I don't think hot plugging is supported, which could be part of the issue.

[arcanus]

hm... when i first got the nas and plugged the drives in, i went through the setup to format it.  i'd expect it to format it for me.  it would be really inconvenient for most people to format their new drives with a unix partition.  my server doesn't have sata.  i'd have to plug it into one of my other computers and dig up my fedora discs.

i only did the hot plug once.  that may be the root cause of this problem though.  last night i did properly shut down the unit and removed the drive.  after receiving the failure, i shut it down again before reinserting it.  i started the process of manually rebuilding the drive.  i'm back to periodically receiving emails that the rebuild is done while it tells me there are 300+ minutes left in the sync process.

also, while it's "syncing", the lights on the front of unit blink a lot so it seems like it's doing something.  i'm just not sure what that something is...

[arcanus]

i remember a review a read a while back where the reviewer had a problem with recovering from a raid 1 failure.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30521/75/1/2/

there is a link to a solution from the d-link website that says the new drive must be blank.

http://www.dlink.com/support/faq/?prod_id=2797&question=dns-323

i guess i'll go with wiping the drive tonight.  will post results.

[gunrunnerjohn]

Blank is how the Seagate write diagnostic will leave it, that's why I recommended it.  I thought they fixed that bug, apparently not.

[arcanus]

i'm still having problems with this!!

i downloaded and installed disc wizard and seatools from the seagate site.  i ran disc wizard to remove the partition and reformat.  it finished formatting in less than 5 seconds.  it must have performed a quick format by deleting the partition table and not an actual format.  the drive was put back into the dns-321.

i was informed that i had a new drive.  i let the unit format and sync.  same syncing issue where it constantly tells me it needs 300+ minutes to (never) finish syncing.

i shut down the unit and removed the drive.  i put it back into my desktop and used the disk manager in xp to format and overwrite the sectors.  this took about probably close to 10 hours.  when it was finished, i ran seatools.  it failed the SMART test, but so did my desktop's seagate hd as well as the seagate external.  then i ran the 2 shorter diagnostics on all the drives.  they all passed.  i did not run the long tests on any of them.

after the tests, i put it back into the dns-321.  i was informed once again that it had a new drive and that it needed to be formatted before syncing.  i let it do that and also enabled auto-rebuild.  in the end, same problem.

anyone else experience this???
-tony

[arcanus]

since email support never wrote me back and they're supposed to have 24 hour support, i called.

someone actually answered.  i stumped level 1 and 2 support.  level 3 support isn't available until tomorrow so i'll call back after work.  will post again when i have more info.

[grogs]

Did I read this right: "it failed the SMART test"!

Which test failed?

If you are seeing S.M.A.R.T. errors due to 'Reallocated Sector Count' for example then I would expect the Seatools long tests to fail.

It really sounds like you have a faulty drive.

[gunrunnerjohn]

Hence my recommendation to test the drives independently. 

[arcanus]

when i ran seatools, it showed my desktop's hard drive, the hard drive i had in the nas, and my external usb drive.  they're all seagates.

i ran SMART from seatool on each drive _separately_.  each returned a failure; however, running the other diagnostics on each drive returned a pass on each.  this includes the really long, extended diagnostics from seatools.

i've spent 2 hours a piece with 2 different product specialists (the people past tier 3 support).

they are completely stumped with my problem.

it got to the point where they only solution they could offer me was remove 1 drive and reformat the one left in the unit.  after that i put the second drive in and formatted that for raid 1.  i'm currently not experiencing my sync problem, but i'm going to simulating another drive failure this weekend (without) pulling out the drive while the unit is still on.

even if i don't get my sync problem, i am leaning heavily toward returning the dns-321 and buying something else.  i can't use a unit that may or may not finish a rebuild in the future.  the data i had on there was a copy and only a small fraction of my music collection.  the idea is to house all of my music on there and free up space on my computers.  if i can't rebuild in the future and i need to find some place to store over a TB of music before reformatting the drives, i'm going to really pissed.  if i lose the data, that's hundreds of lost hours ripping thousands of cds and records.  i need something that is reliable.  maybe i received a detective unit.  maybe i damaged it when i did a hot eject.  i don't think my hard drives are bad if they all passed all of the diagnostics.

i've looked at other 2-bay nas, but most of them don't support 2TB drives (or at least i haven't seen their firmware updates that specifically say they do), have really slow transfer rates, only support FAT format, or are super expensive.  does anyone have any suggestions?

thanks.

[Ryder]

@arcanus,

This will not solve the problem with your unit, but it is the solution I use to protect valuable data. I install a drive in another PC that is capable of housing all the data on the NAS box. (I currently have 2x1 TB drives in the NAS in a RAID 1 config, and a 1 TB drive in a PC down the hallway in another room). When I add anything to the NAS I always add it to the backup drive first, then let an FTP utility copy it to the NAS box twice daily on a schedule. I also make sure that the PC with the backup drive is on a separate UPS or surge bar, preferably on a different wall outlet and the outlet is on a different breaker in the house. Then I am relatively assured that I will have a good backup in case something happens to the NAS itself, or if a surge takes out an older breaker, or anything of that nature. I also burn a disc with the important bits on it weekly. I know this is not an absolutely ideal way to protect valuable data, I am working on using this same system but having the NAS in a good friend's house in a different province than I'm living in.

I know it does sound like overkill, but I do have some very valuable data that I absolutely cannot afford to lose. And although having the NAS is good, in case 1 of the drives fail, it is really not enough protection. If the NAS itself does something nasty to 1 drive, it will probably do it to both. Or, if a power spike hits the UPS with the NAS attached and somehow makes it past the surge protection, it will probably take out the whole NAS too. Having a NAS only insures that you are protected against a drive failure, and very little else.

So, when it comes time to update my firmware, first I make a disc of the important data, I then flash the NAS and reset it to factory defaults. And then, if necessary as it has been in the past, format both drives in the NAS itself. Then I copy all the data back off the storage drive in the PC that holds it.

Then if I ever encounter a problem like you are having, the likelihood of losing anything very important, or thousands of hours worth of work, is maybe 1%. And once I have a NAS in a friend's house about 1500 miles from my location, it is virtually zero.

Just my thoughts about your problem and a solution to making your data loss almost impossible. Hope it helps you in some small way.

Ryder

[gunrunnerjohn]

I have my DNS-323 RAID-1 data synchronized with my DNS-321 RAID-1 data periodically with a late night run.  They are also on different UPS boxes and locations.

Just because you're paranoid, that doesn't mean they're not out to get you!