Replacing failed DS920+ and rebuilding whole system

[ColBat]

I have a DS920+ no longer under warranty that Bay #1 has failed. I’ve done a lot of testing and received a lot of advice on this failure and am sure it is the bay that has failed not the HD in it. I have 5 16TB Ironwolf 3.5” drives that I have used. I believe 1 may have been fried by the bay failure though I am still checking on that and I still trying to test the 2nd 16TB that was a replace that didn’t work (I believe because of the failed bay, but I still checking that too). I also have 2 8TB Ironwolf drive I ran on a DS220+. What I’d like to do is start all over again, by getting a 6 bay synology, wiping the the existing drives (they are Btrfs formatted) and getting rid of the Raid10 I originally put on the system and go to SHR2. I want to use the 3 good 16TB and the 2 8TB drives plus get a new Ironwolf 16 TB drive. BTW, I use the synology as only a Plex media server for movies, TV shows, and want to add all my music and pictures. Everything is already backed up on external hard drives so I’m not worried about losing anything initially.

So my questions are: what do I do to prepare the 3 16TB and 2 8TB drives for use in a new Synology with SHR2 instead of Raid 10 (wipe them or is there some other less destructive way to prepare them?)? If I have to wipe the existing drives how do I do that (they are Btrfs)? I work on a Windows box and have little experience with linux OS. After I get the existing hard drives ready, I assume I will just start from stretch in setting up the Synology and installing Plex. Am I right on this?

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[Birdy]

When you start over, I would delete all partitions of the 6 Drives, with Windows Disk Management, then you're good for a fresh start.

 

[Telos]

So my questions are: what do I do to prepare the 3 16TB and 2 8TB drives for use in a new Synology with SHR2 instead of Raid 10 (wipe them or is there some other less destructive way to prepare them?

With a WinPC "diskpart clean" will do that nicely

 

[ColBat]

With a WinPC "diskpart clean" will do that nicely

I'm not clear on this. The disks are formatted Btrfs. If I put them in an HD enclosure and plug them into my Windows box, I'll see them? And if I see them I'll be able to "diskpart clean" and have what? An unformatted disk that I can then format, or a HD with no data but still formatted with Btrfs? Sorry, I know just enough to be dangerous with a computer but not enough to be sure with them. This I why I turn to people that obvious know more about these things than I do.
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When you start over, I would delete all partitions of the 6 Drives, with Windows Disk Management, then you're good for a fresh start.

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I'm not clear on this. The disks are formatted Btrfs. If I put them in an HD enclosure and plug them into my Windows box, Windows Disk Management will see them? I thought Windows couldn't read Btrfs HDs. I just don't know enough to be sure about these things.

 

[Birdy]

Remove the Partitions.
Disk Management don't care about Linux so, the Drives will been detected.
That's the way I always do when Drives must be clean for DSM.

 

[ColBat]

That is interesting. I'll give it a try tomorrow with a single HD and let you know what happens.

 

[Telos]

The disks are formatted Btrfs. If I put them in an HD enclosure and plug them into my Windows box

That's all you need to do. Then follow the linked instructions.

 

[ColBat]

Telos, thanks for the response. Below you can see the two HDs that I have out of the Synology already (1 original and 1 used for replacement when I thought I had a HD failure). Am I right to believe/assume the first hd is either fried of empty and the second HD still have my files on it? The other 3 16 TB HDs are in the Synology and working fine. I did not see a link to instructions, could you post it again?

Remove the Partitions.
Disk Management don't care about Linux so, the Drives will been detected.
That's the way I always do when Drives must be clean for DSM.

Below you can see the two HDs that I have out of the Synology already (1 original and 1 used for replacement when I thought I had a HD failure). Am I right to believe/assume the first hd is either fried of empty and the second HD still have my files on it? The other 3 16 TB HDs are in the Synology and working fine.

 

[Telos]

I did not see a link to instructions, could you post it again?

The link is still in my post above. Keep scrolling.

Am I right to believe/assume the first hd is either fried of empty and the second HD still have my files on it?

Whether your files are on either is indeterminable from that screenshot, however recovery won't happen simply by reconnecting them to USB mount.

 

[ColBat]

The link is still in my post above. Keep scrolling.


Whether your files on on either is indeterminable, however recovery won't happen simply by reconnecting them to USB mount, or NAS. But there are tools that may recover the files if they have not been overwritten.

Telos, I'm sorry but I do not see any link. I've tried scrolling down and still see no link. Can you post the link in a separate email in this chain so I can find it?

 

[Telos]

 

[ColBat]

Sorry Telos, it was further up the chain than I thought. I found it. Thanks

 

[Birdy]

@ColBat A formality:

Reply #8:

Below you can see the two HDs that I have out of the Synology already (1 original and 1 used for replacement when I thought I had a HD failure). Am I right to believe/assume the first hd is either fried of empty and the second HD still have my files on it? The other 3 16 TB HDs are in the Synology and working fine.

You showed 4 screenshots and the first 2 are the same as the last 2.
So, screenshot 1 +3 shows an empty Drive and screenshot 2+4 shows a DSM Drive

 

[ColBat]

@ColBat A formality:



You showed 4 screenshots and the first 2 are the same as the last 2.
So, screenshot 1 +3 shows an empty Drive and screenshot 2+4 shows a DSM Drive

I'm not real familiar with the forums style and make mistakes trying to post on it. There are two drives that are not in the current DS920+ that is housing my Plex server. ZL2PWHD0 (D0) was in the server in bay 1 when I think the first bay crashed and told me I had a hard drive failure. ZL2PWKB6 (B6) was my spare 16TB hard drive which I inserted in Bay 1 after the supposed "hard drive crash" of D0. After doing the replacement, B6, did not show up in File System or any other DSM 7 app. So I'm pretty sure a hardware crash in Bay 1 is the culprit.Bays 2-4 are working fine.

I put both drives into a hd enclousure and ran Windows Disk Management and the two screenshots are the results. I have tried to reformat D0 using Windows disk management but can't get anywhere because the disk is shown as uninitialized, without a Drive letter so there is no way for me to choose it in Disk Management. I tried right clicking and holding on it and nothing happens. At one point the uninitialized D0 showed in Windows disk management as having a 8 GB healthy primary partition and a 2 gb healthy primary partiton like the other drive B6, BUT did not show the 14891.00 GB unallocated segment that B6 showed. A subsequent attempt to look at it again came back with just the 14902.00 GB unallocated view of the disk.

I used Seagates HD app SeaTools and have had no success with it either on D0.

I tried this morning using the command prompt on D0 so I could use Diskpart Clean in Windows. In Command Prompt I cannot see D0. I see my other Hard Drives but not D0 which again has no Drive letter and isn't visible even with the command prompt.

I'm just about at the point of writing off an expensive 16TB hard drive, D0, unless someone has any further ideas of how I can get to the drive so I can reformat it.

 

[ColBat]

I was looking through the Synology KB and I ran across the System Reset - Factory Reset page. The page states it will "restore your Synology NAS to its original manufacturer settings. All user data stored on the drives will be erased and the entire system will be restored to default settings." Will this erase the data (Movies and TV Shows) on my remaining three HDs? Will it erase the RAID 10 configuration that I want to change to SHR-2? Is this the same as reformatting the HDs?

The page also mentions a reset option to keep the admin password unchanged by holding the reset button for 4 seconds. Will doing the reset option ONLY keep the admin password and no other data/apps on the drive?

 

[Birdy]

Will this erase the data (Movies and TV Shows) on my remaining three HDs? Will it erase the RAID 10 configuration that I want to change to SHR-2? Is this the same as reformatting the HDs?

Yes, because:

it will "restore your Synology NAS to its original manufacturer settings. All user data stored on the drives will be erased and the entire system will be restored to default settings."

The page also mentions a reset option to keep the admin password unchanged by holding the reset button for 4 seconds. Will doing the reset option ONLY keep the admin password and no other data/apps on the drive?

Wrong! You should read that page again!

 

[ColBat]

Birdy, thanks for the response. I found the "System Reset" page in the Synology KB a little confusing.

System Reset

Factory Reset

You can perform a factory reset at Control Panel > Update & Restore > System Reset to restore your Synology NAS to its original manufacturer settings. All user data stored on the drives will be erased and the entire system will be restored to default settings.

Note:

• The Factory Reset option is disabled when Synology NAS belongs to a high-availability cluster. To restore default settings of a server belonging to a high-availability cluster, you must first remove the high-availability cluster at High Availability > Overview > Manage.

Reset Option

Tick the Keep admin password unchanged option to keep the admin password unchanged when you press and hold the RESET button on your Synology NAS for 4 seconds for system reset. This will also skip the password reset step when you reset the system.

Is the Factory Reset a completely different reset than RESET button on the Synology?

 

[Telos]

There are TWO system resets...
Mode 1 and Mode 2.
Quiz on Thursday.

 

[Birdy]

Right and "the factory reset" you do that in DSM and will deleted everything.

 

[ColBat]

Right and "the factory reset" you do that in DSM and will deleted everything.

Thank you and Telos. When I first set up my DS220+ I have absolutely no idea what I was doing. Months later when I moved to the DS920+ I was still a novice. Both systems had/have many things I wished I had done differently. Now with my new DS1621+ I think I have a much better idea of what I should do, so I want all the drives wiped and to start from the very beginning. I'm sure I'll still make mistakes and will be asking questions here but at least I won't have to deal with my previous mistakes. You and Telos have been very patient and I thank you.