DSM-G600, DNS-3xx and NSA-220 Hack Forum

duhblow7 · 2008-05-29 10:28:47

Hi Everybody,

I've been a lurker for a while now, but just registered to post.

I've got a DNS-323 in RAID0 with 2x 500GB drives. Recently I move the device a couple times and from what I can recall always powered it down properly.

Today when I plugged it in I get an amber LED on the right side only. I read the amber indicates improper spindown on the drive.

When I take out the right drive and leave the left drive in only, still amber on right side (even though there's no drive in the right bay)
When I take out the right drive and place it in the left bay, still amber on the right side (even though there's no drive in the right bay)
When I swap the drives, right to left, left to right...still amber on the right side
When I remove both drives there are no LED's on at all.

After about 5-10 minutes the amber light will turn blue.
The web front end will launch, however my password has been reset to the default.
Upon logging in with default password I'm presented with the Hard Drive Configuration page.

To me this seems like the SATA adapter is not working properly on the right side. Another possible problem is during the move I've added devices to the room which would emit a high RF interference. I'm hoping it's the device and not the drives.

Thanks

fordem · 2008-05-29 15:16:16

I don't know where you read that an amber LED indicates an improper spindown - I don't recall seeing that before - to the best of my knowledge an amber LED indicates a failed drive.

I've never simulated drive failure with a RAID0 array, so I can't comment on the LED indications you report, other than to say that in my RAID1 & JBOD simulations, it was possible to have an amber LED with an empty bay if the unit thinks that a drive should be in that bay.

I think I'll run some simulations later today, since I don't have any live data on my unit at the moment.

duhblow7 · 2008-05-29 19:34:04

I read about the spindown in another post. I was just grasping at hope.

That makes sense now that you mention that...if it's a RAID0 and there's only one drive, it would throw an amber light on the second missing drive. Let me know how your tests go.

With a working RAID0, would it be possible to swap the drives in the bays and expect it to continue to function as normal? When I swapped them, the right bay still indicated amber. That seemed weird since if the drive was bad i thought the amber light would follow it. Perhaps the array is bad? Would that throw amber?

I forgot to mention, I'm running 1.04 and didn't go through the recent upgrade to 1.05 yet.

Last edited by duhblow7 (2008-05-29 19:36:16)

fordem · 2008-05-30 03:55:23

OK - 2x80GB Maxtors in a RAID0 array with about 1GB of data.

To simulate drive failure I hot unplugged the right drive and waited several minutes, first the amber LED came on and then then the email alert, and as I expected the data was no longer available.

I rebooted the system and as in RAID1 failure simulations the amber LED stayed off and the status screen changed to reflect the fact that there was no available storage volume. Placing the disk removed from the right bay in the left one and rebooting resulted in exactly the same indications - left bay LED only in blue - this is different to your case (although it's not clear if you moved the disks with power on or off) and at no time was I taken to the "hard drive configuration page".

Swapping the two drives around results in a display indicating that the drives are in the wrong place and that I should swap them, and interestingly enough, I lost no data in the entire exercise - when I put each disk back in the original position, the unit booted very happily and my data was available once more.

duhblow7 · 2008-05-30 20:20:08

thank you fordem. the time you've spent helping me is much appreciated.

tonight i'll throw in some shelf drives and see if i can determine if there is infact a SATA controller issue on the right side. I'll copy the steps you took and see what results i get.

if i don't have any controller issues, i'll restore a backup ROM and see if my original drives will read.

just to be clear, in your simulations when you were running only the 1 drive in the LEFT bay (doesn't matter which drive), you got the blue light in the LEFT bay and NO AMBER in the right?

In my case, i always get amber in the right, unless there are no drives at all. I'll test with additional drives and see if the amber remains.

Again, thanks!

-oo7-

fordem · 2008-05-30 23:51:49

duhblow7 wrote:
just to be clear, in your simulations when you were running only the 1 drive in the LEFT bay (doesn't matter which drive), you got the blue light in the LEFT bay and NO AMBER in the right?

I got the amber LED only after hot unplugging the drive - once the system was rebooted I never saw the amber LED again.

duhblow7 · 2009-01-02 21:57:51

I finally got around to resolving this.

I took an extra computer and installed gentoo minimal on it. I configured the kernel for a software RAID-0. I compiled mdadm. The DNS-323 created 2 partitions on each disk. The first partition was about 100MB and the second partition was the remaining space of the two 500GB drives, so about 980gb.

My drives were recognized as sda and sdb in the extra computer.

When I tried to reassemble the first partition; /dev/sda1 & /dev/sdb1 I received an error. I'm not sure what this is used for, perhaps it's used for memory swapping. I moved on, not knowing if that was normal or not, because the data i want is on the large partition.

I was able to successfully reassemble the second partitions with the command:

mdadm -A /dev/md2 /dev/sda2 /dev/sdb2

I was then able to mount them right up:

mkdir /mnt/md2 && mount /dev/md2 /mnt/md2

I ran to Fry's; bought a 1TB drive, formatted it on the DNS-323 as a single drive, threw it in the extra linux computer, mounted /dev/md2 and the new drive, then copied everything over.

So grateful!!

thanks fordem.

DSM-G600, DNS-3xx and NSA-220 Hack Forum

Announcement

#1 2008-05-29 10:28:47

Amber light right side only even after drives swapped

#2 2008-05-29 15:16:16

Re: Amber light right side only even after drives swapped

#3 2008-05-29 19:34:04

Re: Amber light right side only even after drives swapped

#4 2008-05-30 03:55:23

Re: Amber light right side only even after drives swapped

#5 2008-05-30 20:20:08

Re: Amber light right side only even after drives swapped

#6 2008-05-30 23:51:49

Re: Amber light right side only even after drives swapped

duhblow7 wrote:

#7 2009-01-02 21:57:51

Re: Amber light right side only even after drives swapped

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