Reasons for NAS hard drive failures
There is a variety of reasons for failed hard drives in Netgear NAS systems:
Wear and tear of the hard drive
Generally speaking, NAS systems operate non-stop, even though the contained hard drives are often not optimized for long term usage. Frequent write- and read-operations can cause normal wear and tear to occur much sooner than expected and lead to a failure of one or more hard drives. Wear and tear is one of the most common reasons for failure or defects of physical or electronic hard drives components.
Incorrect handling
Sometimes Netgear NAS can already suffer damages on their route of transport caused by incorrect handling or physical influences (drop, shock, heavy vibrations). These can negatively influence the life span of the integrated hard drives and can lead to mechanical defects (write-/read-heads, surface damages).
Electronic damages caused by over-voltage
If a Netgear NAS is non-stop operating, this also means that it needs a continuous power supply. In case of a storm or lightning, over-voltage based damages on the NAS itself or the hard drives can occur. Another scenario are wrong or defective power supplies, that can cause over-voltage.
Thermal factors
Netgear NAS can overheat very quickly, if not properly cooled. Hard drives are very prone to damages caused by temperature fluctuations (material expansion, change of the height of the air cushion). This can result in grave mechanical defects.
Other causes for data loss of Netgear NAS
Lost data after a firmware update
Netgear provides the latest firmware updates for their NAS servers. The administrator gets notified via the web interface that a new firmware version for his Netgear NAS is available. In some cases, the firmware update can lead to a loss of data.
Deleted RAID configuration of the Netgear NAS
When configuring a new RAID set-up (e. g. RAID 0 to RAID 1), the previous configuration of the NAS will be deleted, the hard drives formatted and a new volume and file system created. Thereby all shares or files will be deleted. Additionally, if new data is being saved onto the NAS, the previous raw data gets gradually overwritten.
Netgear NAS error messages:
- Could not mount root
- Corrupt root
- There was an error in volumes
- Error in evaluating table display raidvol
- Failed sync raid 4 current position
- Cannot change volume mode to X-RAID
- Disk fail event occurred on SATA channel X
- Disk X did not pass SMART self-assessment test. Please replace this disk as soon as possible.
- Growing SMART errors indicate a disk that may fail soon. If the errors continue to increase, you should be prepared to replace the disk.
- Access to the disk on channel (#) is producing I/O errors. Although the array is still redundant, please replace this drive as soon as possible, as it is likely to fail soon.
- Disk: Detected increasing uncorrectable error count: [#] on disk # [model number] This often indicates an impending failure. Please be prepared to replace this disk to maintain data redundancy.
- RAID sync finished on volume #. The array is still in degraded mode, however. This can be caused by a disk sync failure or failed disks in a multi-parity disk array.
Missing shares detected
- Disk capacity expansion error
- Disk(s) contains data
- The X-RAID engine has failed to start. To ensure data integrity, please refrain from using the NAS and contact Support immediately.
- No disks detected
- Bad contents on root partition of disks
- Unsupported RAID configuration
- Hard drive error (orange ReadyNAS LED)
Damage limitation with Netgear NAS systems
- No restarts, rebuilds or chkdsk! That may have fatal consequences.
- Avoid new installations and don't save new data on the NAS.
- Remove the hard drives from the Netgear NAS and label them with their correct slot position.
- Tell us the exact model name of your Netgear ReadyNAS/ReadyNAS duo, the capacity of the hard drives and the NAS system configuration.
Data recovery of Netgear X-RAID
Netgear has developed a proprietary data management for an optimized expansion of disk space - even with hard drives of different capacities. X-RAID can tolerate the failure of one hard drive. Contact us in case of multiple hard drive failure or any kind of logical damages.
