DS 918+ Status light blinking green - lost

[jerry210]

HI,

First-time poster so please be gentle with my newness and the length of this post.

My DS918+ has been running fine for 3 years. But yesterday I could not reach the unit. When I walked over to the Status light is flashing green. I have tried cycling the power, reseating the memory, rebooting, etc. but nothing seems to work. And unfortunately, some of the data has not been backed up elsewhere. So I have been investigating the options to try to recover the data. Below are the links I have been following. Do these sound correct?

1. I went up to Synology's site and it sent me to this article, The STATUS or ALERT LED indicator keeps blinking or lights up steadily in orange. What can I do? - Synology Knowledge Center.
2. That lead me to this article, I can't connect to my Synology NAS on the local network. What can I do? - Synology Knowledge Center. I ran the Synology Assistant and it says I need to reinstall and would lose all data. Whoa. I don't want to lose all data!!!
3. So I have followed the link to this page to retrieve my data, How to fix drive failure and retrieve the data from your drives? - Synology Knowledge Center, On this page, the instructions are to run the drive manufacturer's (WD) diagnostic tools.
4. I hope the 4 WD Red drives pass the WD Diagnostic tools. But, if they do, it looks like I have to create a Ubuntu environment, install the drives in the system, and create a RAID array and hopefully be able to get to my data.

Is there any easier way to access the data on these drives?

In the future, I want to avoid this. What are others doing to back up their data? Second NAS, Huge Cloud account, ...

Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[Telos]

Four drives... is this SHR? RAID5? Other?

Is the unit working? A simple test is to power off, remove all drives and add a freshly formatted drive (any type/size), and re-power the unit. Can you create a pool/volume? If so the NAS hardware is likely OK.

If that works, you can likely read the data from the drives, with the help of the drive you created a new pool from.

 

[jerry210]

Four drives... is this SHR? RAID5? Other?

Is the unit working? A simple test is to power off, remove all drives and add a freshly formatted drive (any type/size), and re-power the unit. Can you create a pool/volume? If so the NAS hardware is likely OK.

If that works, you can likely read the data from the drives, with the help of the drive you created a new pool from.

Thanks. This sounds great. It's SHR.

Am a neophyte at this so forgive these dumb questions based on my limited knowledge of SHR.

Would I just leave the new drive in and insert the old drives that have my data? And then the new pool would be expanded to include the data on the old drives?

And if so, should add the 3 old drives one by one all at once?

I assume after the last step, I would be to pull the new drive and replace it with the last old drive. Is that correct?

 

[Telos]

It all depends on what you want to do. If your first priority is to copy off the drives, confirm that you can create the volume with the new drive. If so, shut down and add in 3 of the 4 drives, and restart the NAS. Hopefully you can see the old volume (in degraded state) when the machine boots up, and backup your files.

If you can't see your files, post back here. If one of the original drives is bad, shut down, pull that drive, and insert the fourth original drive in its place and restart.

And if so, should add the 3 old drives one by one all at once?

Not while powered on!

 

[jerry210]

It all depends on what you want to do. If your first priority is to copy off the drives, confirm that you can create the volume with the new drive. If so, shut down and add in 3 of the 4 drives, and restart the NAS. Hopefully you can see the old volume (in degraded state) when the machine boots up, and backup your files.

If you can't see your files, post back here. If one of the original drives is bad, shut down, pull that drive, and insert the fourth original drive in its place and restart.



Not while powered on!

OK. Thanks.

If you don't mind, let me verify my understanding of the steps in this procedure. I am getting a new drive tomorrow.

I install the new drive as the only drive and boot up the NAS with only that drive. I will then create a new volume with just one drive. Then I shut it down.

With the NAS shut down, I add 3 of the 4 old drives. Then power up the unit.

When the NAS comes up I should see 2 volumes. One volume I created with just the new drive, and another volume with the 3 old drives (in a degraded state) which should have all my data.

Is this correct?

 

[Telos]

Is this correct?

Yes. Depending upon what is the issue with the original volume, you may be given an option to fix it. For example, if DSM is corrupt on the old volume, it is a simple repair. If that is the only issue, you may be able to fix the original volume with another step. Let's see what comes up.

 

[jerry210]

Yes. Depending upon what is the issue with the original volume, you may be given an option to fix it. For example, if DSM is corrupt on the old volume, it is a simple repair. If that is the only issue, you may be able to fix the original volume with another step. Let's see what comes up.

Hi. Sorry to take so long to get back to this project. I installed the new drive and created a new volume on it. Then the remaining 3 drives came up in degraded state and was able to copy my data off. Thanks so much for your help.

At this point I am not sure how to get back the 3 drives + a fourth back to "regular" state since it is booting up on the new drive. Can I add the "new" drive that is the volume we are booted on to the "degraded" volume?

 

[Telos]

It would be helpful if you can post screenshots of all Storage Manager views. I suspect a repair may be somewhat straightforward at this point.

 

[jerry210]

Sure. Here are the current screens.

 

[Telos]

You have two tasks that need to be completed.
1. To repair the DSM partition on the 3 drives.
2. To repair the 3-drive volume degradation (data partition).

What happens when you click the "repair now" link?

This would be a good time to ensure your back-up is current.

 

[jerry210]

You have two tasks that need to be completed.
1. To repair the DSM partition on the 3 drives.
2. To repair the 3-drive volume degradation (data partition).

What happens when you click the "repair now" link?

This would be a good time to ensure your back-up is current.

I wanted so much to push that Repair Now button but decided I should get a complete backup first. Yesterday, I backup the critical data. And this AM I went to Best Buy and got an external drive for the rest. Might take a day or so to back up the remainder of the files to the new drive. Then I will press the Repair Now button.

 

[jerry210]

I finished the backup and pressed the repair "Now button". Unfortunately, it displayed the error message below. Not sure if I should pull the volume 1 and insert a new drive or do something else.

 

[Rusty]

I finished the backup and pressed the repair "Now button". Unfortunately, it displayed the error message below. Not sure if I should pull the volume 1 and insert a new drive or do something else.

View attachment 5243

Whats the status of those 3 drives that make volume2?

 

[Telos]

I finished the backup and pressed the repair "Now button". Unfortunately, it displayed the error message below. Not sure if I should pull the volume 1 and insert a new drive or do something else.

Since you are backed up, I would deactivate the single standalone drive, and then, attempt to add it to the original storage pool. I'm unsure if the NAS will allow you to do that, as the original pool is showing "not initialized".

There is some risk to this, however, you have a backup. Or perhaps someone else has an alternate idea.

 

[jerry210]

Whats the status of those 3 drives that make volume2?

All 3 drives show a Health Status of "Healthy" and an Allocation Status of "System Partition Failed" as in the last image. I have never received from the DS 918+ any sort of message about these 4 drives (3 old drives in use + the 1 old drive I replaced with a new drive to create volume 1) having issues in the 3 years or so they have been in the unit.

All 3 old drives are WD RED 8 TB. The new drive in volume 1 is a WD Red Pro 8 TB.

 

[jerry210]

Everything seems to be working. Thanks for all the help.

The unit spent a couple of days putting thing back together and scrubbing, but it is all green now! Such a beautiful site!

I am still concerned about why I received not warnings about an impending problem. But, I guess it is just one of those things.

 

[Telos]

Everything seems to be working. Thanks for all the help.

Exactly what did you do?

 

[jerry210]

Exactly what did you do?

Hi. I decide that my backups where good enough to prevent catastrophic loss of data. So I took your suggestion and moved forward with the potentially risker option of adding the Storage 1 Poll drive to Storage Pool 2.

Specifically, I deleted the Storage 1 Pool and then added that drive to the Storage 2 Pool. Once I did that the system no longer threw the error of needing another drive, shown in post #12, and was able to repair Storage Pool 2. The repair took overnight and was followed by another day and half of Data Scrubbing.

So again, thanks for your help. I am not sure I could have recovered this data without yours and others in the forums guidance.

And even though It still bothers me that I don't know what caused this error in the first place, at least I am more confident that should it occur again, I know how to handle the issue.

PS. Since I have one new installed drive does anyone think I should start replacing the others? The original drives are 3 year old WD Red 8 TB. I replaced one of them with an 8 TB WD Red Pro and have another new in box 8 TB WD red Pro that I can swap in or send back to Best Buy.