"Disk SMART Information: Good" but "Test result: read failure" - kind of sending me mixed signals here....!!

[peanutismint]

Should I be concerned about the health of a 4TB WD Red drive I have in my NAS? It's about 5 years old and recently a few errors have been popping up on my NAS:



In the latest test it finished saying "Completed: read failure (Rapid test)", but then above it still says "Disk SMART information: Good".

Should I be concerned? And if you think I should think about swapping it out for another drive, what's the procedure for backing up my data and then copying to a new drive?

FYI I have a Qnap TS-231 with a 4TB WD Red drive in each bay; no fancy RAID stuff going on, just both disks with my data split over them.

[dolbyman]

due to no "fancy" raid stuff..you need to be prepared to restore from backups at any time (disk failure) ...so just wait and see and if the drive failes swap and restore

[peanutismint]

Ok, so now how do I back up JUST that potentially problematic drive? Because when I put the second 4TB drive in my NAS instead of two separate drives showing up it just kind of 'combined' them into one drive....? OR, can I just back up everything on my new drive and then backup the failing drive to the new drive?? Because I have ~8TB storage in total but probably only about 5TB of actual data spread across the two drives...

[dolbyman]

If you combined the drives into one (probably pooled single drives ..as all other solutiions would need to be done from the setup of the unit ..like spanning jbod or raid0)

Then you need to setup your entire atorage from scratch upon single drive failure..there is no single swap on any of these ...

[peanutismint]

Not sure what you mean by “from the setup of the unit” - do you mean if I had started with both disks instead of adding the second one when my storage was running low? And is there any way to check what kind of system it’s set up as, pooled vs jbod etc?

Also, so you’re saying essentially I’d need to find a separate ~5TB of space to back up the entire contents of my system and then replace the faulty drive and start again with both drives from scratch?

[dolbyman]

I mean you can only setup mentioned options from scratch ..not afterwards

Only way to do a combined pool/volume with an established single drive, is pooled single drives

But it doesn't matter ..as said, the whole pool/volume dies upon single disk failure with any of the options

[peanutismint]

Okay thanks, I think I understand but I guess I better start looking into making sure all my data is backed up in the event that this drive dies. That’s kind of disappointing to think that an expensive drive from a reputable, well-known manufacturer would only have a lifespan of 5 to 6 years, when I have older drives in external enclosures that are still going strong…! They don’t make them like they used to, I guess…

[dolbyman]

5-6 years is a good average ...it's mechanical drives that have to maintain incredible precision...

For easy maintenance (swap on defect) of said drives , you need to look at "fancy" things like raid

[peanutismint]

I appreciate that idea but honestly I’m kind of against the notion that basic home users should ever have to do anything fancy/complicated like raid or even use terms like “maintenance“ when all they want to do is access their data. It’s crazy to me that it’s become second nature to suggest that the only way to do that is to spend TWICE the amount on hard drives that you normally would otherwise, just in case one were to fail. I sometimes think manufacturers think every home user is a network Sysadmin…! But that’s just me.

[dolbyman]

Has nothing to do with manufacturers..you need plan B,C,etc in all parts of life

Your own home:
Smoke detectors, sprinklers, insurance and copies of all ypur important papers in a second locations

Or would you say that housebilders nowadays should make disasters disappear?

[peanutismint]

You're confusing protection with access. I'm aware it's important to have backups of backups etc, but if one of those backups fails it's important to have an easy and inexpensive way to restore it.

[dolbyman]

" Backups of Backups" is what people call backups of NAS that are the actually primary storage (at that point they are not backups anymore)

Also be aware...you only lose 50% on storage on 2 bay units (raid1) ..if you do raid5 or raid6 on more bays it's n-1 or n-2 respectively (doesn't replace backups)

Your data ..your responsibility

[peanutismint]

Yeah so that's kind of my point.... I had 4TB, I ran out of space so I bought another 4TB. In their world, I should still only have 4TB of storage with redundancy (if I understand Raid 1...). Which is totally bonkers to me. No thanks, I'd rather have the struggle of constantly backing up data!

[dawsonkm]

I had a 4tb erfx recently die. It got kicked out of raid array and it couldnt complete a short read test. All the smart values were good. It was 4 or 5 years old. It could not been seen in an external dock. It was toast. There was little warning.

[peanutismint]

Thanks for the heads-up. I'm currently backing up the important files on that drive and then I guess I'll run it into the ground.