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[kilokahn]

I had a drive die on me yesterday, amber lamps the whole magilla.  I am using a Hitahi Deskstar 1TB drive, they were running fine for awhile.  It happens...

So I took out the drive on the left (don't know which is the failed drive) and then placed the drive that was in the right into the left slot.  Then I placed the new drive that came out new from the box in the right slot.

First, I thought it would auto update the drives but it doesn't seem to want to do that at all.  It just prompts that the right drive needs formatted, which is fine.  Once I go through the process of clicking OK each time I get an error:

Hard Drive(s) Formatting Failure. (Error Code:107).

So I put the other drive (that had content) in the left side and tried.  Same error as above.

Please note all 3 drives in use were the exact same brand, model and type bought at the same time.

Any help would be wonderful!

Thanks,

Chris

[kilokahn]

Since there was no replies I took it upon myself to do some tinerking, I followed the steps in this post to get the RAID working (see last post): http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=11903.msg73510#msg73510

The good news is the RAID looks to be working:
   
Volume Name:    Volume_1
Volume Type:    RAID 1
Sync Time Remaining:    Completed
Total Hard Drive Capacity:    981858 MB
Used Space:    833231 MB
Unused Space:    148626 MB

The bad news is that I can't scandisk to test the drives and every time I log in it wants me to format one of the drives...

Ideas?

P.S. The blue light is constantly blinking now.  Not amber like last time.

[ivan]

The drive that failed should be indicated by it's light.  If you had both lights indicating a failed drive then you have other problems as well.

The following is taken from the manual.
Drive Lights:
These lights will be solid BLUE when drives are connected but inactive. The lights will blink when the drives are being accessed, formatted or synchronized. They will illuminate AMBER if a drive has failed.

I am wondering if you actually removed the failed drive or was there other problems and, in fact, the drive is OK.

[fordem]

Folks on here are users just like you, with jobs, and lives - there's no one here who is paid by D-Link to hang around and answer questions as soon as you ask them, so, when using a forum, patience is a necessity - the information you seek is available in the manual, in this forum and in D-Links FAQ, and had those instructions been followed, you would not be in the situation you're in

Essentially you identify the failed drive - either from the LEDs, the status page or the email you told the DNS-323 to send you - you power down, remove the failed drive and replace with a new one, power the system back up and log in, at which point the system will prompt you to format the new drive, and then reboot, after which it resyncs.

As a result of your tinkering, you now need to backup your data, reformat the array, and restore the data.

Good luck.

[Newbie06]

Umm...forgive me, but shouldn't you have placed the new drive on the left, and keep the current drive on the right to format and rebuild the array properly?

User manual....

[fordem]

The new "replacement" drive needs to go wherever the old "failed" drive is - not right, not left, but wherever the "failed" drive is.

Think about it this way and you can't go wrong - you are replacing a failed drive, so that is exactly what you do, remove the failed drive and replace it with a new one.

[kilokahn]

That's a darn good question, see, that is a big IDK.  I have no idea which drive you HAVE to swap.  Both amber lights were blinking.  So maybe it was FFP having an issue?  I honestly don't know.  I do know that my blue light on the left side is completely dead, has been for awhile.  Anyone know how to replace them?

Now why would I have to get 2 new drives and build again?  Why couldn't I just put 1 good drive in and then the other drive be a blank and let it format it?

Seems kinda silly I have to reformat them both.

[kilokahn]

When both amber lights were blinking I would do a scan disk and it would immediately fail and I'd have to reboot it.

[Newbie06]

The new "replacement" drive needs to go wherever the old "failed" drive is - not right, not left, but wherever the "failed" drive is.

Think about it this way and you can't go wrong - you are replacing[/i] a failed drive, so that is exactly what you do, remove the failed drive and replace[/i] it with a new one.

Sounds practical, but I swapped my drives when one failed and the DNS still wanted to rebuild the array on the new drive.

[fordem]

Sounds practical, but I swapped my drives when one failed and the DNS still wanted to rebuild the array on the new drive.

Not quite - go back reread your post.

So I took out the drive on the left (don't know which is the failed drive) and then placed the drive that was in the right into the left slot.  Then I placed the new drive that came out new from the box in the right slot.

Does my post say anything about moving a drive from one slot to the other?

The DNS-323 tracks the drives in the slots by serial number - if you power the unit off and swap them from left to right and power it back up, it knows, and it will tell you they have been swapped and tell you to put them back.

When you swap stuff around like you did, you run the risk of the unit formatting the wrong drive and losing the data.

[kilokahn]

So what you are suggesting then is me to take the new drive with all the data on it, throw it in a Linux box and then format the remaining drives in the NAS as a fresh RAID 1 and copy the contents back over?  I guess that'll work...

[fordem]

So what you are suggesting then is me to take the new drive with all the data on it, throw it in a Linux box and then format the remaining drives in the NAS as a fresh RAID 1 and copy the contents back over?  I guess that'll work...

Was that in reply to my post?  I'm beginning to think we don't speak/write the same language - you appear to have a good command of english, so I'm guessing you are fluent in it, so it has to be a comprehension issue rather than a language barrier.

Here's what I posted ...

you now need to backup your data, reformat the array, and restore the data.

I don't see anything about moving drives to linux boxes there - so why you think I suggested it is beyond me - in fact, I see no post in this thread suggesting that.

Also - the unit has only two drives - if you remove one to put it in a linux box, that leaves one remaining, and the unit will not let you reformat and create a RAID array unless it has two drives in it.

Assuming that you have three drives of the required capacity, you could use that approach, but I would make sure that you can access the data using the linux box before reformatting anything.

One last thing - I don't know if this hasn't occurred to you yet - so let me make a statement on it - swapping drives in a RAID array is NOT a good idea, RAID systems track the drives, they know when you swap them, they don't like it, it can lead to data loss.

This is not peculiar to the DNS-323, ALL RAID systems do this - some more advanced (and more expensive) RAID systems do allow you to swap drives, but it is NOT, repeat NOT a recommended practice.

[kilokahn]

Maybe you misunderstood what I said...

Since I have 3 drives all with the exact same data in them now I would take 2 drives, put them in, format them to RAID 1 and then COPY all of the data back to them via Linux because those 2 drives would be BLANK in the RAID 1.  Understand now?