Discussion
  • Read More
    ImmaLionEric Ravenscraft
    8/03/16 12:25pm

    I feel I need to talk a bit about my harrowing tale here as warning for others.

    I had a couple of 3Tb Seagate drives failing in my Synology NAS during a 1 month trip in June. I still could not diagnose what exactly happened, how it happened, if it was a simultaneous failure or one that spread over the course of the month I was away.

    But after searching a while, I found many others complaining of similar failures. I still can’t toss this against Synology, but my case is just too similar.

    I practically spent the entire month of July learning HDD recovery, and in the end had to pay a cool 100 bucks for software that could do it for me - recover data from degraded RAID 1 Synology drives.

    No success with regular recovery software... recuva, ddrescue, testdisk, gparted and whatnot. Couldn’t find any open source recovery software that worked for my particular case too... if anyone has a recommendation, I’m all ears. It has to work with RAID configurations, and file systems used by NASs. If someone is looking for something like this, Runtime’s NAS Data Recovery worked for me, but like I said, you’ll have to pay cool 100 bucks. xD

    Problem is, I still have 2x3Tb drives that, despite not having any apparent physical damage, are still reading as S.M.A.R.T. “abnormal”, which I’m guessing is something the Synology NAS marked by itself. And of course, I had to spend a whole lot more for HDD replacement. Prices are extremely high in Brazil right now.

    Will probably have to do some low level format or something that completely resets the drive, if that’s even possible. And I’m not sure I’ll be able to use it on the NAS again.

    It’s my fault for not having a separate backup really (the data recovery part), which is the recommendation I’m gonna make here - don’t rely on a single piece of hardware alone, backup to something else.

    Reply
    • Read More
      Bob The BuilderImmaLion
      8/03/16 1:16pm

      Lucky for you. Labs charge about $300-500 for that type of recovery. If that doesn’t work, you’re usually looking at a cool $1000 or more. At least you caught the failure before you needed higher level recovery.

      Reply
    • Read More
      ImmaLionBob The Builder
      8/03/16 1:51pm

      I almost capitulated and stored the drives away to send them to some lab, but decided to see if it really was physical damage, fried board and whatnot... truth is, with no money in the bank, I’d probably just deal with the loss and start from scratch.

      I had nothing in the drives that were really essencial, but rebuilding them would take a whole lot of time I didn’t want to spend. xD

      Documents, photos and essencial stuff I backup in multiple free cloud accounts (the only thing I can afford), but it’s sort of a mess...

      The more I looked at it though, the more it seemed like a software/firmware thing.

      Oh, which leads me to another tip I forgot to add - most of the NAS recovery software I found worked in the same way: you can download them free, and they’ll try to read from your failed drives, at least showing you the file structure... to prove that it works. But you have to pay to retrieve the files. Fair enough. :)

      Reply
  • Read More
    SolutionsCostEric Ravenscraft
    8/03/16 8:14am

    Western Digital Red drives in a Synology NAS are totally awesome.

    Reply
    • Read More
      LailokenSolutionsCost
      8/03/16 9:43am

      I have a WD Red and HGST Red in my NAS raid, and I already had to replace the WD one once.

      Reply
    • Read More
      qwho387SolutionsCost
      8/03/16 10:34am

      We have had red drives in a Synology in our office for at least 3 years now. The thing has been great.

      Reply
  • Read More
    praeixEric Ravenscraft
    8/03/16 9:45am

    Do you even SATA, bro?!

    Reply
  • Read More
    sui_generisEric Ravenscraft
    8/06/16 7:31pm

    It looks like Hitachi Deskstars have some of the best failure rate stats right now. However, a Hitachi “Deathstar” is the only HD I’ve ever had fail on me in my life.

    Other than that one, I’ve used WD drives almost exclusively (though I’ve recently switched all but one over to SSD), and I’ve never had a WD fail. Ever.

    (Granted, I don’t keep them indefinitely, and eventually one needs to be replaced just because the size/price ratio has made it ridiculous not to, but still.)

    I haven’t owned any myself, but I’ve heard pretty bad things about Seagate’s customer service.

    Reply
  • Read More
    BG1980Eric Ravenscraft
    8/03/16 5:47pm

    Why is an enterprise cloud storage company using DESKTOP Seagate drives? They should be using Enterprise or Surveillance drives to have a lower fail rate in the environment they are being used for.

    Reply
  • Read More
    BG1980Eric Ravenscraft
    2/04/17 8:28am

    Debunked

    http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/6028/dispelling-backblaze-s-hdd-reliability-myth-the-real-story-covered/index5.html

    Reply