Repair or New Build - Log for a NAS

vaibhavyagnik

youtube.com/vaibhavyagnik
Adept
I have had a 4 bay Netgear ReadyNAS RN104 since september 2015. It has been reliable and maintenance free till now. I have populated the NAS with 4 2TB WD green 5400 RPM drives and configured them in RAIDX which is like RAID5 (The volume can withstand 1 Drive failure). Couple of months back, drive 3, dropped from the volume, came back and volume started resyncing. The resync completed without any problems. I brushed it as a one-off event. However it happened again after a few days. I attributed this behaviour to disk failure, although smart data said the disk was alright. I replaced the drive with a Toshiba surveliance drive, 2TB, 5400 RPM. The volume resynced, only to be degraded again, and guess what, it was drive 3 again. The frequency of drive 3 dropping from the volume has increased and now resync does not complete at all. The drive drops off and comes back online within 2-3 minutes. I have ruled out the hard disk at this point. I opened the NAS to inspect the PCIE to SATA riser the main motherboard. I did not see any dry solder, rusted contacts or burnt components. There was dust, which I have cleaned and reassembled the NAS. But as expected, the drive 3 exhibits the same behaviours. At this point, I have some options which I will list below. I am yet to decide which way I will go. I have created this thread to document it, clear my mind, and probably help someone down the line.

Approach 1 - Go DIY. Build a new NAS.
Pros: Maintenance will be easy, will be much more powerful and economical then commercially available NAS. Can be upgraded without much fuss.
Cons: Costlier than repairing the old NAS. Won't be as sleek.

Approach 2 - Repair the existing NAS.
The problem may be in the PCIE to SATA riser board or the motherboard itself. It is hard to tell at this point. I haven't found a similar riser board in the sense, that the existing riser board provides power and data connection to the hard disks. The ones that I have found, are only with data connections. So I will have to provide power from another power supply. Another potential problem is that PCIE to SATA cards that are available, have an onboard controller, which the existing riser board does not. I cannot say for sure if the card that I buy, will work with the NAS motherboard. Even if it is compatible, I am looking at buying a PCIE to SATA card, a cabinet (because the PCIE to sata card will not fit like the original PCIE to SATA card and a power supply to provide the power to the hard disk. This cabinet will also have 2 power connections because the motherboard uses a XLR type of power connection.

Approach 3 - Use the NAS as is.
I will copy all the data from the NAS on to the 2 2TB hard disks that I have which are spare. Destroy the volume and make a new volume with hard disks in slot 1,2, 4. This approach seems the most easy but comes at the cost of reduced capacity.

To be continued
 
I think this has a eSATA port. Can that be used somehow ? Or attach an external drive to any of the USB ports. I don't know if those can then be configured into your RAID pool.
Given this appears to be a H/W issue, probably best to move critical stuff somewhere else unless you have already done so ?
 
Use a contact cleaner from amazon to clean the 3rd port if there is a problem of dust it should reduce the dropout's. If that is the case then a through cleaning or port replacement can be looked at.

Nas can be build for cheap as well, i think parts under 10k should let you do it, Install truenas core and you are done.

I am running a truenas core nas with 6 8tb in zfs raid 1 and 1 nvme for downloads and crap. You can get a board and processor from second market with 6 sata ports and onboard vga and it should work fine.

After 1.5years of open air usage i do face issues of disk's dropping and resilvering but it goes away for a month or two after using the contact cleaner.
 
Use a contact cleaner from amazon to clean the 3rd port if there is a problem of dust it should reduce the dropout's. If that is the case then a through cleaning or port replacement can be looked at.

Nas can be build for cheap as well, i think parts under 10k should let you do it, Install truenas core and you are done.

I am running a truenas core nas with 6 8tb in zfs raid 1 and 1 nvme for downloads and crap. You can get a board and processor from second market with 6 sata ports and onboard vga and it should work fine.

After 1.5years of open air usage i do face issues of disk's dropping and resilvering but it goes away for a month or two after using the contact cleaner.
I have sprayed electronic contact cleaner on both the riser board and motherboard. Let us see if the drive 3 still exhibits the same behaviour. If this does not work, I will atleast move all the data off the NAS. All the critical data is already backed up.
 
the only problem when drives are old they should be able to sustain the pressure of resyncing huge amount of data and you end up with data loss, Good that you have backed up. Keep us posted.
 
After I cleaned all the boards with contact cleaner, the resync has completed successfully. Will know for sure if it has worked if the volume does not degrade for a week.
 
You might have to reluctantly go with #1 then or unspoken #4 buy a new commercial NAS entirely
 
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