Question Undocumented Light Sequence on LaCie 4Big Quadra

[AlanPare]

I've been using a LaCie 4Big Quadra USB RAID system that I bought second hand - worked dandy for about 6 weeks. One morning, I woke to find all rear lights and the front light blinking blue - as though it were in its start-up sequence - and none of the LaCie's volumes accessible. It never finished startup. After fooling around with power cycling etc., I discovered that on boot, one drive would blink red once, then enter the normal blinking blue startup sequence. I pulled the drive (Drive 3) and booted - volumes now accessible and lights indicating a failed drive. Working just like you'd expect a RAID system to do. Replaced the failed drive with an exact match. Lights now indicate rebuilding, volumes and data accessible. Yay! Three days later, the rebuild is still active - next day I find front light alternating long blue and short red, lights on Drives 2-4 blinking 3 short blue and 1 long red, Drive 1 blinking blue - volumes inaccessible. This condition is not described in the user's guide. Any thoughts on what's going on here?

 

[Lutfij]

Try removing the drive you just replaced to see if that regains your RAID's functionality.

 

[AlanPare]

Thanks, Lutfij, for responding and for taking time to think about this.

I removed the replaced drive (Drive 3) as you suggested. All light activity is the same except that Drive 3 is now alternating one-red and one-blue (previously was 3 short-blue and one long-red) - no volumes accessible. After soaking overnight, pushed Drive 3 back in and the original reported undocumented light sequences resumed. BTW, Raid 5 with 1.5 TB drives.