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[rfhusband]

One month ago I bought a second DNS-323 (I'll call it unit B), updated the firmware to 1.08, and filled it with two 1.5 TB drives (Seagate 7200 32MB SATA) to be used as RAID1 devices. Formatting went smoothly. Transferring all the data from my first DNS-323 (unit A, with mirrored 750 GB drives) went smoothly, although it took days. The new unit has been running flawlessly for a month until yesterday when I suddenly get the following error message when trying to get into configuration:
   "The hard drives have been installed incorrectly. Please shut down the system and swap hard drive locations."

I am uneasy about pulling the drives in case on reinsertion the DNS-323 decides it wants to reformat them. Is this a known problem with a non-destructive solution?

BTW, The timing of this is a little scary since today I was planning to reformat unit A as a JBOD to use as an offsite backup to unit B. Guess that'll have to wait. Also, I noticed two other threads relating to this error message but elected to start a new one as they were for an older firmware level and seemed to be related to initial setup. Any help would be greatly appreciated. - Bob

[gunrunnerjohn]

I've never heard of that!  Did some joker swap them to screw with you?

I label the drives in my units as left & right when I install them.  That way when I want to take them out for whatever reason, I am sure they're going back in the right slots.

[rfhusband]

Very funny. No the device hasn't been touched by anyone. I neglected to mention that I successfully logged in to device configuration about 30 minutes before this happened. Also, the data is still accessible from Windows Explorer so the drives don't seem to be corrupted.

[gunrunnerjohn]

Well, I'd get the data off ****to and then start trying to fix it.  See my signature.

[rfhusband]

The original data is still on unit A so I'm not worried about data loss. Sounds like you have pulled drives out of DNS-323s and then put them back in before. Can that be done without it trying to reformat?

If so, one thought I had was to swap the drives between units A and B (both are FW 1.08) to see if it's the chassis that's having the problem. That would put both copies of the data at risk, though. What do you think of this idea:
1. Remove both drives from A (two time 750 GB)
2. Take one of the 1.5 TB drives from unit B and install it in unit A. Power it up so that A thinks it has one half of a RAID1 set. Then power down, transfer the second drive from B to A and power up again.

[gunrunnerjohn]

I have taken both of the drives out of my RAID-1 DNS-323 running 1.08 and tried different drives as a test.  I then put the originals back in and there was no reformat involved.  It did think about synchronization for quite a while, but it ended up being happy with the drives.

[rfhusband]

This evening I will first try pulling the drives from unit B, do a hard reset, and reinstall firmware 1.08, followed by returning the drives to their current locations. I'm not sure I am ready to try the DNS-323 unit swap yet. I'll update this thread with my results... Thanks for your comments.

[fordem]

If I'm right you'll find that no matter which bay you put the drives in, you'll get the same message - I believe it's caused by some sort of corruption in the flash memory of the DNS-323 (the unit stores the drive serial numbers in flash in an attempt to track them if configured for RAID1).

There are a couple of different things you could try - especially since you have the data backed up.

Start with a reset to default - in theory the unit should power up and detect the drive configuration and rewrite it to flash.

[rfhusband]

I'm back with an update. Right after the previous post I had to dismantle my set up for a move and took until today to face dealing with this obscure problem. I hooked up Unit B to find nothing had changed: drives are still visible from Windows but unable to enter the configuration menu due to the "Swap drives"  message. Therefore, also unable to get to the menu to perform the reset to factory defaults. I decided I might as well reformat the drives since they contained data now two years out of date. I was able to get past the "Swap drives" error  message which came up immediately after logging in (and then  provided no path to the regular menus) by manually entering  this URL:

  http://192.168.1.65/web/formatHD/raid_wizard4.asp?id=163006 

Presto! I arrived at the format drives page, got all excited and started the reformat process before I realized I could have instead gone to the Tools/System menu and tried Fordem's idea above of reset to default. Hopefully there will be no next time but I'll try to keep this in mind if there is.

Next steps taken:
1. Format ran successfully
2. Just to be sure I then did the Restore to Factory Default Settings step, too. Logged out and back in and am no longer receiving the Swap Drive error message.
3. Ran scan disk (/Tools/Disk Tools) just to be sure there was nothing flaky about the drives.
4. Restarted the DNS-323 Unit B and confirmed disk space visible from within Windows
5. Copied a 1.5 GB video file to Unit B and then tried running it to confirm successful copy.

This completes the task of overcoming the Swap Drives glitch.

Now to get ready for the original task of moving the big drives to Unit A:
6. Powered down Unit B and pulled both drives to test theory both drives can be removed and then reinserted without losing disk contents. I labelled them L and R to ensure they will be returned to their correct slots.
7. Powered up Unit B without drives and logged in to configuration menus and run "Reset to factory settings"
8. Powered off Unit B and reinserted the drives
9. Powered up Unit B and confirmed disk is still accessible and the test video is still present and accessible.
10. Having confirmed the disks can be moved in pairs without data loss next step is to back up data on Unit A to B. This step took several days last time so I will end this post at this point and return once the swap is complete. Wish me luck!

[fordem]

There's also a reset "pin switch" on the back of the unit that would have done the job.

[rfhusband]

Hi Fordem, I didn't realize the reset button on the back provides the same functionality as the menu item "Reset to Factory Default Settings". Doh! Thanks for letting me know.

[rfhusband]

What fun! Finished copying Unit A to B. Powered down both and popped out the drives (labelling each as L and R). Moved the two 1.5 TB drives to Unit A, powered up, and logged onto the device. Everything looks good and Status page correctly shows these two drives. Next accessed drive contents using Windows Explorer. Loaded a video file and it played successfully. So far so good.

Next, installed the two 750 MB drives into unit B. Powered up, logged into the device, and get presented with the disk configuration screen asing questions about how I want these drives formatted. Uh-oh, that isn't what I expected, although I am planning to reformat these Raid 1 units to JBOD. I proceed to select JBOD, formatting begins after a couple of warnings about loss of data.

About 5 minutes into formatting an error appears on screen (Hard Drive(s) Formatting Failure. (Error Code:2)) and the drive on the right now has a pink LED. Things I've tried without success:
 - Reseating the drives
 - Running reset from the admin menu
 - Pressing the hardware reset button
 - Swapping left and right drive bays - the pink light follows the drive from one side to the other

Still have the undocumented pink status light and am wondering if I have fried the drive. Arggh! Anyone else been successful getting this pink light to turn back to blue?

[rfhusband]

Another post suggested pulling the good drive and attempting to format just the drive with the "pink LED" error. I have successfully done that (good suggestion), reinstalled the drive which was fine and now it won't format past 7% before giving an error code of 1, 2, or 121. I have also upgraded the firmware to 1.09 (too many mixed reviews about 1.10) and tried formatting again but same results. Maybe it really is end of the road for these drives in this enclosure... Any other ideas?

Thanks,

Bob

[fordem]

Try putting the "failing" drive in to PC and run the drive manufacturers diagnostics (should be available from the website) on it - if it passes use Windows fdisk or diskpart to remove any partitions and then reinstall in the NAS and try formatting again.

[rfhusband]

Followed your suggestion Fordem. The drive passes Seagate's trouble shooting instructions. Just to be sure I set up a partition and successfully did a full format of the drive. I also loaded a huge video file on the drive and successfully got it to play back with no issues. Actually, I did all this twice because the first time I put it back in the DNS-323 and attempted to reformat it there I had forgotten to reset to manufacturers default settings. So I then did it all again including the DNS-323 reset. Both times it prompted to reformat the drive, got to 7%, and then failed with the same error as above (error code 2). I have moved it back to the computer and it formatted again without problem.

Looks like there is something about this drive which the DNS-323 just doesn't like. Do you agree it's time to buy another disk?