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[achilles2k]

Hi all

I have had my NAS for a few months now. Been working OK. This weekend the two drive lights have started flashing continuously - thrashing the drives (which themselves are remarkably quiet) and the fan is constantly on -often at full speed and sounding like a jet airplane taking off.

I can access the drives (set as RAID1) and all the data on them.

I have disabled P2P - no change.

I have blocked the port - no change.

I turned off my laptop - no change. 

I disconnected the LAN cable - no change. 

I did a H/W reset - no change. (except killing my drive mapping etc.)

I have searched high and low for a solution.

Question, if I may please - How do I find out what is causing the disk thrashing? 

This is driving me nuts! 

TIA

[achilles2k]

Update:
The drives are identical Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB WD20EARX (on the compatibility list).

This unit is H/W ver: A2 and F/W ver: 2.02

I know there is a F/W update to 2.03 but from what I have read over the past couple of days that is unlikely to solve the issue.

Thanks. . .

[ivan]

First thing make sure you have an up to date tested backup of the data on your drives!

Next, switch the unit off and unplug the power cable then remove one of the drives, put it in a USB/SATA caddy or use a USB/sata adapter.

Get a copy of the WD disk test tools [data lifeguard diagnostics - either the windows or dos version, depending on your needs] and use that to test the drive.

If the drive passes the tests put it to one side - after marking it with which slot it came from - then do the same with the second drive.  If that also passes the tests we then have to check your NAS for potential problems.

[achilles2k]

Thanks for the response.

I just the NAS running overnight and it seems to have fixed itself 

While I am happy that it appears to be stable again, I would like to know what the issue was.

*Question: Is there any way to see what traffic is bouncing around inside the NAS?

I couldn't find anything in the LOG to say what it was actually doing when it was thrashing away.

Fingers crossed. . .

[ivan]

To answer your question, in general no.  That being said it is possible with some software but that means changing the firmware as well - not the sort of thing individuals are encouraged to do.

As to why, it sounds as if one of the disks has some flaky sections and the disk firmware went into repositioning mode - moving the questionable sectors to the reserve sectors - which triggered a rebuild of the raid array for some reason, hence my advice of testing the drives.  That type of problem shows up on a full SMART test, the 'reallocated sector value' numbers.

[achilles2k]

Thanks again Ivan.

I will kick off a full SMART test now and then go to bed. . . (past my bedtime anyway)

Cheers.

[nestolea]

What kind of NAS do you have?
Could it be that the device just performed some kind of housekeeping? Or that it was indexing the files?

[ivan]

I have assumed that achilles2k has a standard, unmodified DNS-320 and in that case the only 'housekeeping' would be being done by the drive firmware which usually means endeavouring to read bad sectors and moving them to some of the spare sectors.  These are only rather 'simple' NAS units after all.

[achilles2k]

ivan is correct -standard DNS-320.

SMART test ran OK - both drives passed. No bad sectors or errors of any kind. So whatever it was doing will remain a mystery.

Thanks for the input from everyone. No need to waste anymore time on this one.

Cheers

[magnus33]

Reflash the last firmware.

I noticed it goes alittle nuts now and then and needs to be redone for some reason.