So, Purchase some Toshiba N300 4TB drives for my NAS (the one I was looking at selling). I was asked by a friend to give him a detailed report of each drive because he was interested......lucky I did. Every single drive has 'bad sector count' 3 of them are above the threshold. Drive 1 - 43 Drive 2 - 45 Drive 3 - 42 Drive 4 - 97 Drive 5 - 168 Drive 6 - 26 Drive 7 - 147 Drive 8 - 46 Threshold set in firmware is 50, so as you can see, 3 of them are above that, strangely, disk 4 is one of their newer drives (1 to 4 are new, 5 to 8 are older type (by 3 months)) Synology NAS shows the 3 with the highest bad sector count as failing, though disk 7 has been like that since I powered on the NAS for the first time (drive was used in another NAS before then for 6 months). Though I have seen some bad reviews (other forums/Amazon), Blackblaze promoted these drives as good for small NAS, something I was happy to buy based on very low failure rates, but now I am not certain they are good enough for NAS duties at all. Toshiba don't really have a easily found RMA system, they try and flog you off to point of sale, but luckily I have the online RMA website (found in my inbox from 6 years ago) and am about to RMA the 3 highest drives. My question is, should I RMA all of them? 4 of the remainder are close to the threshold and the other is only half way. Data is backed up and currently I can lose 2 drives without loosing data. Even stranger is the Seagate 750GB HDD I have which is now in its 9th year and going strong (though it has 10 bad sectors), all these N300 drives are under a year old! No where did I put my HDD transport boxes LOL
I would RMA them all and get rid of them personally. That's a shockingly high rate at which they are dying...
I'm with @TheMadDutchDude: I start to shuffle data onto something else when I see *one* bad sector, let alone a few dozen. But I'd say you've either got a bad batch (which is why I always recommend that RAID arrays are built up of different drive models and manufacturers), or there's something very wrong with your NAS: there's no way they should be dying like that. For contrast, here are the drives in my HP Microserver, as of the 24th when the automatic SMART checker last ran: Code: /dev/sda status: Model Family: HP 250GB SATA disk VB0250EAVER Device Model: VB0250EAVER 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 036 Pre-fail Always - 0 196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 100 100 036 Old_age Always - 0 197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0022 073 063 045 Old_age Always - 27 (Min/Max 24/37) 194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 027 040 000 Old_age Always - 27 (0 13 0 0 0) SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED /dev/sdb status: Model Family: Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 (AF) Device Model: ST2000DM001-1CH164 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0 197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0012 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0022 075 047 045 Old_age Always - 25 (Min/Max 16/39) 194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 025 053 000 Old_age Always - 25 (0 11 0 0 0) SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED /dev/sdc status: Model Family: Hitachi Deskstar 5K3000 Device Model: Hitachi HDS5C3020BLE630 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 005 Pre-fail Always - 0 196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0022 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0002 240 240 000 Old_age Always - 25 (Min/Max 14/42) SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED /dev/sdd status: Device Model: WDC WD60EFRX-68MYMN1 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 200 200 140 Pre-fail Always - 0 196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 129 112 000 Old_age Always - 23 SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED The two 2TB drives are probably approaching eight years old (just checked the Seagate and it's showing 5.8 power-on years, and it spins down when it can), while the 6TB WDC is a bit newer. Still: zero reallocated or pending sectors.
Technically Tosh are right in you should take it up with the retailer [if you bought them as a member of the general pubic]. The only thing i'd add is - check them in another system, make sure the drives are dud and it's not the NAS making a hash of reporting the SMART data. Other than that... i'd be sending the lot back.
Toshiba got back to me, I asked if there was a way of logging all of these in 1 job, based on the info I gave them. They said yes, then directed me towards the RMA claims page which only allows 1 drive at a time LOL (oh well, doesn't cost me a thing, so if they want to pay 8 times, they can)
I wouldn't be surprised if the NAS was to blame somehow, over at gamers nexus they seem to have uncovered a possible quality control problem with modern synology storage systems.
I would be. A NAS killing drives? Aside from inadequate cooling, that's pretty far fetched. A Synolgoy NAS is no more than an appliance-ified linux server. I watched all of their NAS videos as part of of some pre-purchase research, and concluded that they're mainly (nay, entirely) talking through their posterior.
Shonky power supply could do it pretty easily, though I'd expect that to show different symptoms than bad sectors - but, then again, I'm also incredulous that eight hard drives bought in two different batches months apart would be dying without the NAS being responsible, so... <shrug>
Well yeah, as could any power supply... pretty sure that would just manifest itself as dead drives though, rather than dying ones. If it was something other than reallocated sectors, I'd probably suggest that the NAS's interpretation of the SMART data is at fault and wonder what Toshiba's own diagnostic tool had to say about it (which I'm surprised Toshiba didn't demand prior to RMA), since whilst SMART is a standard set of data, the HDD's mechanism for reporting/tracking it is disparate amongst vendors. I feel like if any of them were consistent across vendors though, it would be reallocated sector count.
Just my two pence guys, I'm definitely no expert but thought the situation should be pointed out as a possible problem. I'm actually using an N300 4tb myself as a games drive and have been for almost a year without any hiccups.
I'd find it more likely an environmental influence, if there was something making them fail, as opposed a commonality in the drives making them fail of their own volition. I can't fathom what a any host could do to cause slow failures like this in a set of drives.
Broadly speaking, yes. Which is why I'm surprised Toshiba didn't ask for a diagnostic report from their own tool to rule this out. Except there's not much room for misinterpretation when the SMART data is reporting reallocated sectors.
Have some 8TB Red's on their way, once installed I'll pull these and run more diagnostics, just in case it is the NAS
