LG n2a2dd2 NAS drive failing? Dead fan? Which drive to replace?

[777Bounce]

Hello all, and thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

I've got an LG n2a2dd2 (2 x 1TB Toshiba drives) that seems to be in trouble. It's been running pretty much 24/7 for about 3 years, I'm guessing. I noticed the other day that the exhaust fan wasn't spinning and the enclosure was pretty hot. I rebooted it a few times, and found that the fan would spin for a couple minutes and stop and won't restart as it should, I have no idea why. I don't know if this is a fan failure or something that controls the fan.

Anyway, I looked at my diagnostics stuff (kind of clueless here) and one drive says: Volume normal and SMART status: error. The other says Volume normal Smart status: normal.

I was unable to run the "inspection" thing on the volume that says error, it just stayed at 0% for a long, long time with no disk activity showing. I ran it fine on the "normal' volume and it found no bad blocks.

So, several questions:

1) Does this add up to a dead drive, or what else can I do to verify?
2) I can replace a drive if one is dead, but how do I know which is the dead one?
3) Do I need to replace it with the EXACT same kind of drive, or is the same size, speed and manufacturer close enough?
4) All that said... does it even make sense to replace a drive if the fan controller is failing and may be the root of my trouble (heat)?

I really don't want to shell out for a whole new NAS if possible.

 

[777Bounce]

Update: I really have no idea what's going on here. I can't figure out if the NAS is Raid 0 or 1 and it does appear that both drives are functioning. The fan comes on during bootup and just doesn't come on otherwise it seems.

 

[CompGee]

I would replace the fan first things first. If that fails to solve it, try replacing the fan controller.

 

[777Bounce]

Is a fan controller something I can just replace? Seems like it's just a little mobo in there.

 

[CompGee]

You might want to contact the manufacturers about a new fan controller. Have you replaced the fan yet?

 

[777Bounce]

The fan has a weird connector and I haven't found a replacement yet. I was going to plug in one I have on hand that is close in size but... connector.

 

[CompGee]

Hmmmm...... Photo please?

 

[rel]

1. I don't think the fan is a problem. I have two of these units. The fans run during the boot process and then stop. I have them in a remote basement location and don't check the fans specifically. I do note that if both drives in one unit are running pretty heavily (rebuilding mirror), the cases gets hot over the system board area but the fan only runs some time. If you take the top plastic cover off the drives are pretty hot also.

I am having a real problem with one unit that doesn't want to read at all. Like mine, 3 - 4 years old with continuous use, the drives have to die sometime. LG did not use the best drives at the time either. I can see the other unit in windows immediately after I boot the NAS cold. I've also run it with the cover off and a tabletop fan blowing on it without an improvement in accessibility from windows though I can access the setup page using my web browser. This started after I upgraded two laptops to windows 10.

2. With the top off, the chassis is marked 1 and 2 over the respective drive. You can verify this by disconnecting the problem drive cables and seeing what shows in the Volume page.

3. Replacing the drive with the same size or larger and the same speed is ok. Same manufacturer better. Same grade of drive best. If drives are three years old, whatever you buy now will probably be better and less expensive. You could always use any new drive(s) in a new diskless NAS such as Synology DS715.

4. Can't say for sure, but with the price of drives so low, I'd try to replace apparent bad? drive and see what happens. Here's where a temporary fix with a cheaper drive might tell you something more before you get a more expensive matching drive. You might find out that it's the system board somehow.

I got a good deal at Costco on my two units with 4TB each for a total of 8TB way back then, I'll probably buy 2 new units with NAS grade drives this week while I can still see my data on at least one drive per unit. This time I want to sync files between the NAS units instead of just mirroring the drives on each. I'm evaluating the software capabilities and bay expandability now.

Confusing enough?