Question Lenovo ix2-NG NAS issue

[Aerodevelopments]

Lenovo ix2-NG NAS, set up as a RAID 1 NAS, operated for years without issue.

Last week, one Seagate 2TB drive indicated degraded after periodic check, then failed after the ix2 attempted to automatically rebuild it.

Other Seagate 2TB drive is intact, just lacks its RAID 1 mirror partner.

Degraded drive rebuilt itself, then failed, and it appears ix2 box did as well - displayed solid RED LED.

Replaced the ix2 box with new, upgraded to final 4.1.408.34845 firmware.

Now, the intact drive shows operational and is addressable when in the box alone, but RAID 1 still shows degraded (expected, since only one of mirrored drives present).

When installing a known compatible, new, bare, Seagate 2TB drive, the ix2 boots, but only to a solid WHITE LED.

Drive is not addressable via LenovoEMC Storage Manager or Network inquiry, although a network inquiry shows it as 192.168.1.184 and "ix2-NG.fios-router-home"

Two other ix2 devices on the network show their IPs and names “ix2-dl" and "ix2-dl2", so there is a resolution difference, despite the ix2-NG booting and DHCP to the correct private IP.

Any ideas on how to rebuild and restore this ix2-NG RAID 1 drive?

Thanks.

 

[Aerodevelopments]

Further to this report, when the remaining good drive is loaded, alone, in either bay, the ix2-NG boots, gets IP, and is manageable, but displays the expected FLASHING RED and BLUE LEDs.

When the original failed drive or a replacement bare drive are loaded into the second bay, the ix2-NG partially boots to a SOLID WHITE LED, and does not get complete routable IP from DHCP.

When the original failed drive is loaded individually, the ix2-NG partially boots to a SOLID WHITE and SOLID BLUE LEDs, then to FLASHING RED and FLASHING BLUE LEDs as the drive attempts to correct, and does not get complete routable IP from DHCP.

 

[billyjack1313]

I'm curious to know what the result was. Did a monkey sneak in and pour banana juice on it?
Seriously though, maybe a firmware update could have caused the issue? Today everything is pretty much PnP but back before say 2004 or so we actually had to work at this stuff and the failure options were pages long. Trouble shooting was a definite stage of installation.
Without similarity, I know that when I use Intel Optane on a drive it requires that at least 5mb of space be left on the end of the storage drive, and the Optane be unpartitioned and raw, which leads me to ask if you partitioned the drive before the swap. Another question, is there a chance that the new drive had a subtle difference like the amount of cache, or was there a jumper directing it to perform as a slave to the other drives. Was the cable/belt failing, and not necessarily the drive itself? Another is although they should "hot swap" while operating live, did a reboot detect and assign new ID for the new drive.
Now that I use Ubuntu a lot, it's possible to copy the partition tables from one disk to another, maybe that would have solved the problem to copy the old drive table to the new.
There's all kinds of things going through my mind and I really want to know!

 

[Misgar]

Further to this report, when the remaining good drive is loaded, alone, in either bay, the ix2-NG boots, gets IP, and is manageable,

Before going any further, is all of the data on the one remaining "good" drive backed up elsewhere? If not and you can still access the NAS, copy all the data over to other storage devices.

You sometimes hear tales of mirrored RAID 1 sytems where the controller rebuilds the array, but copies the new blank drive over the top of the original drive, deleting all the data.

After backing up all your files and before rebuilding the array, I'd be inclined to run a long S.M.A.R.T. test on the old drive, to see if it's on its way out too.
https://www.thomas-krenn.com/en/wiki/SMART_tests_with_smartctl

I run Hard Disk Sentinel in Non-destructive read-only mode because it provides a pretty image and I find it easier to interpret than smartctl.

If you see this display after testing, dispose of the drive immediately.