I have a DS1520+ with 2 5-bay expansions running DSM 7.2.
One of my Vol1 hard drives came back with an audible alarm saying the drive was critical.
I have 2 hot spare drives and selected one to rebuild the failed drive. I don’t know what the protocol for this is. Should the failed drive be removed? Is it serving any purpose in helping the new drive rebuild? Once removed, is that drive slot still attached to Vol1? By that I mean, if a drive is replaced… will it auto-start rebuilding or just add the drive as a hot spare or nothing?
Last dumb question… I am rebuilding Vol2 and the drive slots are not together… there is one drive in a different chassis, I know it will still make the Volume, but my OCD wants them together. That is not possible without rebuilding volumes and selecting adjacent drives, correct?
First, drive bays or slots and volumes are not linked. Theoretically, you could power down the NAS and reorder the disks. This point of view contrasts with a firm belief on the web that the order is specific. I believe it is not.
Any disk in each expansion box does not have DSM installed on the system partition. So, I am curious what will happen if you move a disk from the DX box to the DS box. I assume you are prompted to re-install DSM, which you can do without harming your data.
If you have a hot spare and DSM is rebuilding the storage pool (and the volume), you should be able to remove the failed drive. Based on your description, the failed drive is disconnected, and removal does not affect the pool rebuild.
At this point in the conversation, I would like to point out that before you repair a pool, remove a disk, or rearrange disks, you do so after you have convinced yourself you have a solid backup.
As long as one drive which was operational remains in the DS, the remaining slots can be filled with drives from the DX.
You are correct. Even Synology retains outdated references to drive position in their Knowledge Center, and others which accurately reflect that slot position is irrelevant.
See the problem with us old folks, is that we learned one way and assume that it “the process” never changes or improves.
For example, in my day, to add another HD to a RAID5 set you needed to rebuild it from scratch… not with Synology. That was kinda why I was asking. Thanks.
In my current setup, my Vol1 has DS x5 8TB, DX-1 x3 8 TB, & DX-2 8TB and it has worked like a champ. I have had a Vol2 on DX-1 x1 2TB, and a Vol3 on DX-2 x2 500GB drives and it all worked fine… neither of those volumes had any of their drives in the DS box.
So, I am not sure any volumes need to specifically be in the main DS box.
Has anyone seen a utility that turns OFF the DX drive lights? or… lights up specific drive lights for identification?