Drive SMART status to be taken seriously

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Drive SMART status to be taken seriously

Post by James Steele »

I'm assuming that's so. I finally enabled the email notification feature of a 7TB array made up of seven 1TB spinners that a client gave me a couple years ago. I got a notice that the Seagate drive in slot 2 failed SMART status. Rather than chance it, I'm taking it seriously and a replacement WD Black arrived today.

The RAID is configured Level 5 (?) I believe, so I can just pull the bad drive, put in the new one, and the RAID will format and rebuild the data automatically.

I don't know how much advance warning SMART failure typically gives you, but I decided to be sensible. Although the RAID can withstand a failure of one drive and continue to work until that drive is replaced. TWO failing at the same time though and you're hosed.
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Re: Drive SMART status to be taken seriously

Post by mikehalloran »

Absolutely—take those notifications seriously. By the time it fails SMART, the drive is past being long gone. You've seen my screen shots of bad drives that hosed systems but still passed. Scary.

In a NAS array, I would use WD Red over Black since that's what they are made for. Reds have extra heavy duty bearings and running much cooler. It was a Seagate engineer who turned me onto them. The drive speed isn't that important as it's the RAID array that's giving you what you need.

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Re: Drive SMART status to be taken seriously

Post by James Steele »

mikehalloran wrote:Absolutely—take those notifications seriously. By the time it fails SMART, the drive is past being long gone. You've seen my screen shots of bad drives that hosed systems but still passed. Scary.

In a NAS array, I would use WD Red over Black since that's what they are made for. Reds have extra heavy duty bearings and running much cooler. It was a Seagate engineer who turned me onto them. The drive speed isn't that important as it's the RAID array that's giving you what you need.
I have to ask... what does NAS stand for? This RAID box was given to me by a client. I'm sure many of the drives are getting old. Too late about the WD Red unfortunately. I already ordered a Black and just installed it. I got it for $49 with free shipping. The RAID is currently rebuilding the data on the drive. I guess in the future I'll go with Reds.

At some point I want to put projects on an SSD and my sample library on another and relegate the RAID to being one big Time Machine disk for backups, as it does have some minor fan noise when it's running and is not as quiet as my MacPro.
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Re: Drive SMART status to be taken seriously

Post by mikehalloran »

James Steele wrote:
mikehalloran wrote:Absolutely—take those notifications seriously. By the time it fails SMART, the drive is past being long gone. You've seen my screen shots of bad drives that hosed systems but still passed. Scary.

In a NAS array, I would use WD Red over Black since that's what they are made for. Reds have extra heavy duty bearings and running much cooler. It was a Seagate engineer who turned me onto them. The drive speed isn't that important as it's the RAID array that's giving you what you need.
I have to ask... what does NAS stand for? This RAID box was given to me by a client. I'm sure many of the drives are getting old. Too late about the WD Red unfortunately. I already ordered a Black and just installed it. I got it for $49 with free shipping. The RAID is currently rebuilding the data on the drive. I guess in the future I'll go with Reds.

At some point I want to put projects on an SSD and my sample library on another and relegate the RAID to being one big Time Machine disk for backups, as it does have some minor fan noise when it's running and is not as quiet as my MacPro.
NAS is network-attached storage. It is designed to run 24/7 so that you can access your data anytime from anywhere. These Red drives are designed to run cool in such configurations. I looked up NAS when you bought that unit how long ago, now?

There are single drive storage systems nowadays thanks to huge drives but originally, the only way to get this capacity and reliability was to group a number of 1T drives into RAID arrays of 4 or more drives.

I’d leave the Black alone but future drives should be Red. Amazon has them in the Buy Box for $63 but they’re available for less elsewhere.
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Drive SMART status to be taken seriously

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I didn't buy that this RAID. Was given to me. This is the second replacement drive I put in it. The first just had outright failed. I didn't see the SMART indication on it because I didn't have that feature turned on. So a few days ago, the email notice alerted me to SMART not passing on another drive... no other indication before that... so I ordered the second WD Black drive on Amazon a few days ago.

This is actually a WD1002FBYS model where previous replacement was WD1001FALS. For all I know this thing was refurbished or bulk because it came in a padded pouch and not the retail box. Which wouldn't bother me, however, it just failed about 60% or so into rebuilding. I was in the other room and I heard a loud beep tone and came in and the rebuild failed.

AFAIK, you do not format the drive prior to installing in the array. You just power the enclosure down, replace the failing drive, and then power it back up and boot the Mac. The web based interface shows me rebuild progress until the data on the drive is rebuilt by the RAID. Last drive replacement I had to do worked fine just like that. I just powered rebooted the Mac, and the rebuilding process on the new drive has started over again. I hope this time it proceeds normally. Now I'm concerned there's an issue with the "cheap" replacement drive. Ugh.
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Re: Drive SMART status to be taken seriously

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Hmmm... while RAID is rebuilding the replaced disk (it's at 10% now) I was perusing the documentation and perhaps it found a bad sector during the rebuild. Here's what it says:
System - Enable Continue Rebuilding on error: Bad sectors can cause a RAID rebuild to stop. This option will ignore bad sector reading and let the rebuild process continue. This can cause data inconsistency in the future. By enabling this option it is recommended to view the Event log and look for HDD bad sector events. If bad sectors are found, it is then recommended that the HDD with bad sectors be fixed then reconnect the HDD back to the HBA
So, in theory I could tell it to proceed with the rebuild even if it encounters bad sectors, but I don't want "data inconsistency in the future." So it says that they recommend "the HDD with bad sectors be fixed" then reconnected to the array.

I'm wondering what they mean by "fixed?" Only way I can imagine is put the drive in a different Mac and format it, hoping the format operation marks the bad sectors, and then try reinstalling and rebuilding? I'm guessing when you put a RAW drive in a RAID 5 array, there's no provision for mapping bad sectors? Ugh. I'm imagining if it failed rebuild the first time it will fail again... and take me 2 more hours to find out.
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Re: Drive SMART status to be taken seriously

Post by James Steele »

I don't imagine it would do anything to go ahead and have it rebuild the disk (ignoring errors) and then run Disk Utility on the RAID itself and "Repair?" Ugh. I never wanted to be an IT geek. Seems like this *free* RAID box that was given to me might prove to be more of a headache than it's worth.
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Re: Drive SMART status to be taken seriously

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James Steele wrote:Hmmm... while RAID is rebuilding the replaced disk (it's at 10% now) I was perusing the documentation and perhaps it found a bad sector during the rebuild. Here's what it says:
System - Enable Continue Rebuilding on error: Bad sectors can cause a RAID rebuild to stop. This option will ignore bad sector reading and let the rebuild process continue. This can cause data inconsistency in the future. By enabling this option it is recommended to view the Event log and look for HDD bad sector events. If bad sectors are found, it is then recommended that the HDD with bad sectors be fixed then reconnect the HDD back to the HBA
So, in theory I could tell it to proceed with the rebuild even if it encounters bad sectors, but I don't want "data inconsistency in the future." So it says that they recommend "the HDD with bad sectors be fixed" then reconnected to the array.

I'm wondering what they mean by "fixed?" Only way I can imagine is put the drive in a different Mac and format it, hoping the format operation marks the bad sectors, and then try reinstalling and rebuilding? I'm guessing when you put a RAW drive in a RAID 5 array, there's no provision for mapping bad sectors? Ugh. I'm imagining if it failed rebuild the first time it will fail again... and take me 2 more hours to find out.
James,
Unfortunately, in this case, "fixed" means replaced. Back in the day, we use to be able to mark sectors as bad so that the o/s wouldn't try to use them. But now days, especially in an array, a drive with bad sectors is a failure waiting to happen. See if you can RMA the bad drive, but I would get a Red like Mike suggested.

Good luck!
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Drive SMART status to be taken seriously

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guitardood wrote:James,
Unfortunately, in this case, "fixed" means replaced. Back in the day, we use to be able to mark sectors as bad so that the o/s wouldn't try to use them. But now days, especially in an array, a drive with bad sectors is a failure waiting to happen. See if you can RMA the bad drive, but I would get a Red like Mike suggested.

Good luck!
Ugh! Well I guess I'll have to contact the seller via Amazon. I don't know if they'll take a return as I'd bet that if I had simply put it directly in my Mac and formatted it, the OS would have mapped bad sectors and no big deal. I'll see if they'll take it back because it wouldn't rebuild in a RAID. I suppose worst comes to worst I could put it in my office Mac and format it and just have another drive available. Definitely get the Red next time.

Anyway, I'm attempting the rebuild one more time. The drive is about 56% or so through so maybe I'll get lucky and the failure was a fluke or because I was doing something else on the Mac at the time.
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Re: Drive SMART status to be taken seriously

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P.S. My understanding was that nearly all drives have bad sectors but they're mapped out when they leave the manufacturer. Or if the OS finds them they're marked as bad and it's not that big a deal? Perhaps the manufacturing process has improved to the point that they can make them with zero bad sectors today, but that seems surprising.
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Re: Drive SMART status to be taken seriously

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Dammit! Failed rebuild AGAIN! Ridiculous thing is I'm actually better off putting the disc that failed the SMART back in until I can get another drive as there is on redundancy right now with the RAID 5. One more disc fails and it's toast. Ugh. :( Guess I'll contact the Amazon seller. :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:
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Re: Drive SMART status to be taken seriously

Post by mikehalloran »

Disk Utility doing a low level format writing to zeros will remap the drive by writing to the firmware. This takes a number of hours. That it is necessary on a “new” drive is a bad sign.

RAID 5 is extremely sensitive to this.
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Re: Drive SMART status to be taken seriously

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I probably won't go that route, but just so I know, how do you that in Disk Utility (in Sierra)?

I'm frustrated, I tried putting the drive that was failing SMART status check back into the enclosure to at least have a modicum of redundancy for a while, and it won't even be mounted by the RAID now. The disc is just offline. I'm guessing maybe the RAID controller won't even allow you to add a drive back that fails SMART. It's not like I really know what I'm doing here.

I did notice that when I created the RAID, I created it out of seven 1TB drives. There was actually an 8th physical drive that was not connected. Not even sure why. I tried connecting that drive in hopes that it was good and would rebuild, but it seems that the RAID recognizes a drive that has been previously used in an earlier RAID configuration and the drive appears in the web interface for the RAID as "legacy" and will not be accepted to rebuild. I'm thinking I might put that drive in my office Mac, format it, then try to use it. I hate having to keep throwing money at this. Have not yet contacted the seller of the "new" drive.

At this point, I'm almost ready to just chuck the whole thing right now. Maybe I ought to just pull the RAID card and look for a new backup method. Perhaps replace the RAID card with USB3 card and get one of those devices that let you drop a RAW drive in and treat them like removable media and do periodic backups to those? The RAID enclosure is noisy with the fan. Maybe it's time to ditch it. Just hate having to pour more money into this. If FW800 is adequate for backup perhaps I can find a docking station that's FW800 and won't have to give up a PCIe slot.

Sorry for all this thinking out loud. Time to seriously rethink my drive strategy. Good thing is though that I was able to backup my DP projects from the RAID to a different drive, so if it kicks the bucket I'll have my projects. Bad thing is my Sample libraries are on the RAID also and that's not 100% backed up right now.
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Re: Drive SMART status to be taken seriously

Post by mikehalloran »

If replacing it, see an earlier thread where I suggested Time Machine on a My Cloud or a Time Capsule over Ethernet.
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Re: Drive SMART status to be taken seriously

Post by James Steele »

I just noticed that this "new" drive I got on Amazon says it was manufactured in 2010 on the sticker on it. 7 years old? Do they have that much of an inventory backlog or have I been snookered?
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