NSA325: Internal volume degraded - repair not available/reachable (RAID1)

Paolo DeF

Dears, I have a NSA325v2, configured in RAID1. Lately, volume status has become "degraded".
The storage/volume management page takes a very long time lo load (dozens of minutes).
Even after I reach the page, it stays in "Please wait" (for hours...). I cannot even try to repair or resynch the RAID.
See below.


Can you please suggest how to proceed?
Thanks a lot!
Paolo

Mijzelf

That looks strange, indeed. But I think the right disk is dead. HD0 is waked up regularly, also by 'normal' daemons.

###############################

#              HD0 awaked by nfsd  !        #

###############################

while HD1 is never waked up, while the kernel regularly tries to put it asleep, resulting in an error.

***************************************
*            HD1 stand by now!        *
***************************************
Set Power Saving Mode fail

It's normal that the NAS works normally, that is the whole point of raid1. But apparently the firmware can't handle a disk which doesn't answer to higher level commands.

Mijzelf

I think (one of) the disks is (almost) dead, causing long delays, and maybe internal crashes of the backend. Do you have shell access?

Paolo DeF

Hi, thank you. Yes, I have access via telnet. I guess you're right. Please note that, other than Volume, S.M.A.R.T. and such, the NAS works just fine. 

Mijzelf

You can run 'dmesg' to see the kernel error log. I think it will show a lot of I/O errors on either sda (the left disk, I think), or sdb (the right disk). Remove the disk that has I/O errors, and it should work.

Then you can plug in an equal sized or bigger disk to regain your redundancy.

Paolo DeF

Hi, thank you again.
Just run dmesg, this is the result (attached). No I/O errors it seems...
Don't know what to think...

Mijzelf

That looks strange, indeed. But I think the right disk is dead. HD0 is waked up regularly, also by 'normal' daemons.

###############################

#              HD0 awaked by nfsd  !        #

###############################

while HD1 is never waked up, while the kernel regularly tries to put it asleep, resulting in an error.

***************************************
*            HD1 stand by now!        *
***************************************
Set Power Saving Mode fail

It's normal that the NAS works normally, that is the whole point of raid1. But apparently the firmware can't handle a disk which doesn't answer to higher level commands.

Paolo DeF

Thanks again. I'll try to mount the HDD on the computer and see if it's definitely dead or can somehow be revived. Cheers

Paolo DeF

Hi, just run a few checks. If I leave just the "good" HD the NAS works just fine. I was able to mount it on my computer and it's ok. The "bad" HD spins but nothing more. The NAS does not even recognize it has been attached. I have not been able to mount it on the computer (linux was not even booting... strange, but then I stopped).
I'm leaving just the HD working in the NAS and I'm buying  a new HD.
Again, thanks a lot.
Cheers, Paolo