TS-563 does not find bays 4 and 5

[GuillaumeA]

Hello,

I I recently bought off an auction site a QNAP TS-563 unit. I bought from Amazon a bunch of new x300 5Tb drives, and a compatible memory stick.
I unpacked everything, put all of the drives in all of the caddies, installed the new memory stick, and booted up the NAS.

I then saw that only three out of 5 LEDs were on. During RAID build-up I could only create a 3-disk array (RAID 0, 1 or 5).

I tried the following:
- Replacing the memory stick with the original 2 Gb, to no avail.
- Swapping around the disks and the caddies. With any configuration only bays 1 to 3 work.
- Resetting the unit (inserting a pin for 10 seconds, or doing a factory reset from the GUI).
- Creating a ticket in QNAP's system (so far I am still waiting for an answer).

Does any one know of a workaround to make my RAID work with the full 5 disks, or shall I ask for an out-of-warranty repair ? Or send the unit back to the sender and hope for a refund ?

Thank you,

Regards,

Guillaume.

[storageman]

What firmware was on it?
Did you try booting without drives, then after the beep see if a disk will work in slot 4/5.

[GuillaumeA]

What firmware was on it?
Did you try booting without drives, then after the beep see if a disk will work in slot 4/5.

Thank you for your quick reply.

I have updated to the latest available firmware (I think 4.3.4.0675 is the latest).

I will try to do the booting method you describe. I will boot without drives and try to plug disks in bays 4 and 5.

[GuillaumeA]

Hello.

I did the test advised:
I start without any disk, and wait for the long beep (after a couple of minutes).
I then plug in the disks in bays 4 and 5. When I do so I get a green LED for a few seconds then they go dark. The LEDs on other bays stay on. The longest I could get was with only the disk in bay 4, for roughly 30-40 seconds.

I also tried to switch back to the original memory stick, without success.

[P3R]

There have been a number of reports on disk backplanes failing with the TS-X63 models. It's a terrible thought but maybe that's the reason the NAS was sold...

Unfortunately Qnap spare parts are usually very expensive. Please contact Qnap support for help with additional toubleshooting and/or pricing.

[GuillaumeA]

Thank you. This is a sad thing to get a DOA product. I will do as advised and contact QNAP for a quotation.

Thank you all for your help.

[OneCD]

Also suggest you investigate whether the auction site you purchased through offers a warranty on sold items. Maybe the seller will be required to fix this?

[MrVideo]

Also suggest you investigate whether the auction site you purchased through offers a warranty on sold items. Maybe the seller will be required to fix this?

Or, send the product back and get a refund.

[GuillaumeA]

Thank you for this advice. I will see through the end of my ticket with QNAP support (their conditions on warranty don't leave me much hope though), and in the meantime start a refund procedure.

This is sad the TS-563 seemed to be a pretty good appliance, with many capabilities. I'll try to find a suitable replacement for these hard drives I bought then.

[phil_teds]

This model is a known issue. i managed 2 x T563 at work and they both failed with bay 4 and 5
If i removed bay 5
then, bay 4 detected but it is not worth to keep it running with production environment
just over 2 years and i was not able to claim warranty from qnap
crappy qnap

[tessierp]

I realize this is old however, the same thing happened to me right after I received a firmware update, BAY 4 and 5 would no longer work together. I had to remove BAY 4 for BAY 5 to work or remove BAY 5 for BAY 4 to work. I tried to let the NAS rebuild itself with BAY 5 having a disk, when it was done, I inserted BAY 4 and it rebuilt itself after 14 hours and after it was done, the same thing happened, BAY 4 and 5 together would cause both to disconnect and try and reconnect. I initially thought that my NAS Drives were going bad, drives I purchased on November 2020 so I went and purchased two brand new drives and the same thing happened.

This is a bad engineering design, a flaw. Either it is planed obsolescence or they had a serious flaw and they didn't recall the units for repair. Either way, I did contact QNAP regarding this and they first tried to charge me 330$ USD to get it repaired. I argued that made no sense as it was almost the price I paid for the brand new unit back in July 2016. Then they lowered the price to 250$ USD and still said no. Why should I pay for what is an obvious flaw they should have recalled all units and fix the issue. It is preposterous for them to even suggest I pay that much for an engineering flaw. What worries me the most given how it happened to me is that it could be planed obsolescence.

One thing is for sure, I'm going to be staying away from QNAP. I know people who owned and still owning Synology and I had one myself that I sold to someone that is still running and they are almost 10 years old. Synology have their flaws too and not sure just how well they would respond if I had a similar issue with a Synology unit. All that to say this makes me think long and hard about buying a commercial off the shelf unit like this. Perhaps I should build my own TrueNAS system or something simpler like a UNRAID system. Personally, I'm going to stay away from QNAP.

UPDATE :

QNAP last response was :

*******

Hello Patrick,

Many thanks for your reply. Please note your QNAP out of warranty. We are offering to repair your unit and provided a discount on the price for the repair, however the unit is out of warranty and there is a cost for the repair.

From your reply you do not wish to proceed with the repair so I have set the ticket to close.

Many thanks for contacting QNAP support, if you should require any assistance in the future with any other issues please do not hesitate to contact us again. Should you wish to proceed with the repair (for a cost) please reply and I will open the RMA for you.

********

To which I replied :

********

Just for the sake of explaining myself again, here goes. Yes the unit is out of warranty but this is an ENGINEERING FLAW, something that QNAP should have addressed by recalling all units and fixing the issue. Again, my example being, even OUT OF WARRANTY CARS with engineering defects are the responsibility of the manufacturer. QNAP is not taking its responsibilities regarding this FLAW. If you do research on this issue, I am not the only one reporting issues with BAY 4 and 5. Given how this can be repeated and is a consistent problem affecting those two drive bays, this points to an ENGINEERING DESIGN FLAW. This is outside of the scope of a warranty. This means QNAP has not taken its responsibilities and sold me a unit that was basically a "time bomb" waiting to happen which is now affecting my ability to get access to my data. It means QNAP is totally unreliable and irresponsible as a company and does not care about their customers.

********

Anyway, just updating you guys if ever you end up seeing this and thinking of buying one of those TS-X53 models, beware. This is a problem others have had, this is a design flaw and QNAP is not interested in fixing the issue. Do yourself a favor and look at your options.