Raid 5 error - "Not active"

[petur]

well, they usually respond very fast. Try MSN/skype....

[Kalab]

I have now been contacted by support, who suggested replacing the original hard drive, not a great solution as surely that wouldn't be an option if the hard drive had failed. I will try that when I get home, but I am not convinced that this will resolve the 'not active' error for the RAID array.

As for Telnet access, I will have to configure my router to forward Telnet to the NAS. I have tried this previously with FTP and I have yet to get it to work properly so that i can connect to my NAS using FTP. The complication is the horrible Thomson router (Bebox) provided by my ISP, Bethere. Their support had to Telnet into this router previously in an attempt to get it to work. No I have the hassle of trying to forward Telnet traffic to the NAS. Why can't the 409's firmware have a recover option? Why can't I be sent a list of troubleshooting commands to run internally using a Telnet session?

[petur]

Version 3.1.0 will soon be available for the TS-x09 series, and that has a recover function.
edit: sorry, that info was incorrect, see post by Jason below

Getting telnet or SSH to work is much easier as it is a single port to forward. FTP is more tricky (command + data ports)


good luck!

[QNAPJason]

Hi,
Only the TS-509 Pro and TS-809 Pro in the x09 series will support the RAID Recovery function.

Regards,

Jason

[Kalab]

I tried replacing the new (1TB) drive in slot 3 with the original (250GB) drive, but as I thought, there is no change, no matter which disk is in use. I got the following status:

–Physical Disks

Drive 1 SAMSUNG HD103UJ 1AA0 931.51 GB Ready Scan now Good
Drive 2 SAMSUNG HD103UJ 1AA0 931.51 GB Ready Scan now Good
Drive 3 SAMSUNG SP2504C VT10 0 MB Ready Scan now ---
Drive 4 -- -- No Disk Scan now ---

–Logical Volumes

Single Disk: Drive 4 -- -- Invalid
RAID 5 Disk Volume: Drive 1 2 3 -- -- Not active

I have now also managed to forward the correct ports in my router (SSH = 22 and Telnet = 13131) so my NAS can be accessed from the Internet. I just hope that support manage to sort out arranging a Telnet/SSH session to fix it now. I can live with a few days downtime, I won't be able to live with being told to look for a data recovery company...

[Kalab]

After trying to upgrade my smallest drive again, I have a "not active" status for my RAID 5 array yet again. This is rubbish! Yet again I have to contact support and get them to login to fix it. Why doesn't this simple operation work properly? How can I depend on this NAS when it appears to be so flakey?

Disk Model Capacity Status Bad Blocks Scan SMART Information
Drive 1 SAMSUNG HD103UJ 1AA0 931.51 GB Ready Scan now Good
Drive 2 SAMSUNG HD103UJ 1AA0 931.51 GB Ready Scan now Good
Drive 3 SAMSUNG HD103UJ 1AA0 931.51 GB Ready Scan now Good

Volume Total Size Free Size Status
RAID 5 Disk Volume: Drive 1 2 3 -- -- Not active

[Kalab]

QNAP support, despite two attempts have now told me that they cannot recover the RAID, stating that 'something' is wrong with the 2nd drive. No explanation, no troubleshooting, just 'sorry can't fix it'. The support incident number is QA0727014550 I believe.

It is inexcusable! The RAID expansion didn't work as advertised both times I tried it. Now I have discovered that the last synchronised backup that I did to a USB hard drive also didn't work properly and wiped most of the directories that I had backed up.

QNAP haven't even bothered to suggest data recovery, much less pay for it. Bad support partnered with a bad product. Has anybody managed to successfully expand a RAID array? Do I have a dud unit or something? I am really a bit shocked that not only the software doesn't work as it should, but the end result of support's intervention is 'sorry, can't fix it'. Why doesn't the 409 have a recover option like the 509? Was this feature properly tested? There ha to be more that can be done. Does anybody on this board have any ideas?

[fribse]

I've used the 409, going from a single drive, to raid-1 to raid-5 to expansion of raid-5 with RAID certified drives.
Never seen an issue, except one, when going from single drive to raid-5 on a firmware 1.x, I didn't do a backup of the mysql database, and I lost a database, much to my regret, the rest of the data wasn't lost.

Raid is not backup, the instructions clearly states to do backup, I know how you feel, I've tried the almost identical scenario on a HP-SAN to about $120.000, and I got the same message from HP, even though the drives were all original HP drives.
Data recovery is VERY expensive, and you will never get anything like that paid for by others, if your backup isn't correct, it's your problem for not testing it, before starting the procedure, and not doing an extra backup just to be sure

Pull the drive that's defective, mount it in a PC, and do a test with the disk-producers own test software.

[Kalab]

Yes, I should have tested the backup, but a simple disk to disk backup over USB should not be too challeging these days for any system. Why did the RAID expansion fail both times that I have tried it? There are quite a few other posts on this board about similar issues. Also there is the issue that after drive replacement, clicking on 'expand' (for the RAID to expand into the new available space) results in nothing happenging. I have seen that too.

Support should try a bit harder, don't you think? Has anybody got a technical and helpful reply for me, maybe with a test or procedure that I can run to try to get the RAID array active again?

[Don]

Kalab,

Have you tested the drives as fribse suggested? If there is a bad drive there is nothing that QNAP can do about it. Hard drives fail, even new ones. Have you run any smart tests? Any errors in the log?

[Kalab]

I haven't tried testing the disk in another box. As I only have two drives of the original 3 of my RAID 5 left in the NAS, I don't want to pull the drive until I get the RAID working again. I have run a bad blocks scan and a SMART test in teh NAS software and both came back fine, no errors. The RAID didn't break remember, all I wanted to do was upgrade drive 3, not even drive 2 and yet that didn't work. What does that have to do with drive 2? If it was going to fail, it would have done so before the expansion, surely? It reports no errors inthe GUI now either. QNAP support have not specified what they think is wrong with Drive 2 and frankly, I have no faith in them right now.

[fribse]

The internal tests are not that thorough. It will test the surface for most errors, but not timing and bus errors.
These errors will only be found by dedicated software from the disk manufacturer.
Most of the software you download from the manufacturers can do a 'non-destructive' test.
Copying between two disks, especially one that is so slow (USB) compared to SATA, can be challenging, I've seen problems in Windows, Netware, Linux due to USB speed, and 'clever' caching to speed things up.
And backup is an art of it's own, files that are locked etc.
As QNAP can't test the drive, there's only one person that can, and the question is whether you trust that person to not wreck the remaining part of the data.
There is also some articles on the forum about how to get data out of the 409's filesystem, though I've never tried it myself.