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Replace drive taking extremely long, performance degradation

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2
1
NAS
DS918+
Operating system
  1. macOS
Mobile operating system
  1. iOS
I have a DS918+ with three Seagate IronWolf Pro drives combined into a single SHR storage volume. Last Saturday we had a power outage. After recovering my NAS was extremely slow. Upon checking the Storage Manager, it reported that one of the three drives (all Seagate IronWolf Pro drives listed as supported drives by Synology) was in Critical state. I followed the advice mentioned on screen, immediately ordered another IronWolf Pro drive and on Monday followed the steps outlined here to start the drive replacement.

As of Tuesday, the NAS became unresponsive and it got very difficult to login to DSM at all. Only on Thursday I finally managed to login and saw Storage Manager reporting that replacement would take another 1053 (!) days. After that, I have not been able to get into DSM again and I have no clue how far the replacement process is or when is it about to finish.

A few questions:
  • Is there another way in which I can check the progress of the replacement without having to login to DSM?
  • Is there a way to abort the process without causing data loss or other drive issues?
  • Is it normal that drive replacement is taking so long?
  • Is there another way to recover files from the critical drive, so I can back them up and just do a clean reinstallation of my DiskStation?
Any suggestions are appreciated.

Best regards,

Pascal Frencken
 
Welcome to the forum!

How big are individual drives if we can have that information?

Is there another way in which I can check the progress of the replacement without having to login to DSM?
Yes. If you have enabled SSH via Control Panel you can use an SSH application like macOS Terminal all, or Putty on Windows to log into your NAS. Then, try this: cat /proc/mdstat

It should list the rebuild time and progress of your array

Is there a way to abort the process without causing data loss or other drive issues?
That would not be smart as you would be risking your data altogether.

Is it normal that drive replacement is taking so long?
Not that long no. But, the rebuild timer does correct itself over time. Still, this could indicate that either another drive might have issues (due to slow rebuild speed), or there is something else on the NAS utilizing it that is taxing the box even more

Is there another way to recover files from the critical drive, so I can back them up and just do a clean reinstallation of my DiskStation?
Considering that you have a single SHR with 3 drives, there is no "critical" drive in this scenario. Your data exists on all drives in the volume with one drive capacity across the whole pool used for redundancy. Still rebuilding the array does not mean that you can't access the data.

So using your PC of choice you should be able to access the data via normal network access as up until now.
 
Upvote 0
Try going to Storage Manager -> Storage -> Global Settings, and ensure that RAID Resync Speed Limits is set to "Run RAID resync faster".
 

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Upvote 0
Maybe also enable Fast Repair ?
 
Upvote 0
Yeah good idea, but I personally prefer to let the DSM rebuild block per block and not let it skip empty blocks, it's like quick format vs full format, so it'll pick up if anything is wrong with the new disk. CMIIW.
 
Upvote 0
These extreme rebuild times are, in my experience, a result of disk errors, either from an existing disk, or from the new one.
Most of the times, these errors will be remapped/ resolved. If rebuild stops completely, a power cycle can help.
Beware: in rare cases the system may not startup anymore, as you know two failed disks is the end of your data pool and restore of the backup is the only way forward.
 
Upvote 0
Thanks all for the responses. Some good suggestions, and learned something new. I also had a ticket opened with Synology Support, who recommended to shut down the NAS, pull the critical drive out and reboot. I did so and was able to get into DSM again. Storage Manager reported that the three remaining drives (2 old ones and 1 new one) were all healthy, and the NAS was optimising the storage pool. So far it looks like I'm back into safe waters and all my files are safe again.

Still, I do see that this replacement process seems a bit tricky, and forcing a shut down by pulling the power cable is not something I like to do. This time all seems to have gone right.

Thanks again, good to see there is a lively community for Synology users with helpful people. Enjoy your weekend!
 
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