ReadyNas Duo email.

Keep them crossed as much as you like, but one of your disks is failing, you need to replace it.

The Status/Health page such shows the disk as Status=OK. The email was sent a couple of days ago when the NAS powered up in the morning. It has now started twice since then without problem.

I have a NV+ rather than a Duo..... On the NV+ you can access the SMART+ detail by pushing the button next to the OK. [Just like the fan recalibration]  It opens a window with the raw SMART stats though how helpful that is....

I've only had one disk go bad in the last 2 years or so.  That followed the usual pattern that the re-allocated sector count clicked up slowly at first.  While I got the email alert for the first change I don't think it reported every change.  I've never been sure if that was a feature or because it depended on what sectors were accessed on the disk.  [Its hard to tell what the Netgear s/w is actually doing at the disk level, I find] 

It was easier to order a standby disk and hot swap it in (no need to recover from backup).  Running the supplier diagnostics on the old disk (slightly painful for me since seagate only supply a Windows utility) showed that it was a very sick puppy indeed. Most of the counts were getting close to max, which you can't tell without using the seagate app.  Nice thing about the disk I'd got was the 5 year warranty so RTM got me a new standy disk.

Of course you can just wait till it fails and then recover from backup - if you don't make many changes that would work. For me, going for a RAID config was entirely to not have to that.  [I have backups, just don't want to go there unless I have multiple simultaneous failures or (more likely) inflict operator error on myself]

And it could be that the self assessment alarm was a spurious one...  

@Slioch

Thanks for your advice. Looks like my Seagate disk is still covered by a manufacturer warranty. I will run the manufacturer diagnostics and see what that reveals. I was told that if the disk fails the diagnostics then I should be able to get it replaced.

In September I started to get emails every day from my Readynas Duo telling me that Disk 1 was failing.

So I copied all my data (music etc) to Disk 2 (where I already have a backup copy), removed the disk, connected it to my PC and ran the Seagate diagnostics. The diagnostics confirmed that the disk was failing and gave a long error code.

I then arranged and RMA with Seagate. This was a little difficult as they wanted a copy (picture) of the original paper invoice/delivery note rather than an email invoice.

I used some utility to erase all the data on the hard drive and returned it to Seagate. I received a replacement disk a week later.  I now have this running and am listening to my music.

The good bit about this is that I was able to replace the drive without losing any data.   

Funny you should say that - I've just had a second disk start to show signs of distress..... - reallocated sector count ticking up every 2 days or so.  I had a spare disk (actually a refurbished one that Seagate had provided when I had the previous failure) so swapped it in this morning.

Still need to see if the ailing disk is bad enough to send back - its still under warranty.

You do hear horror stories about this but it does seem to work well - the most painful thing is dealing with Seagate's warranty procedure.

Mine is configured to go to sleep at night. This probably saves a little power. The disks go to sleep anyway when they are not being used. Interestingly with a V1 box it restarts after a power cut if the power cut happens when it is asleep. If the power cut happens whilst it is running it has to be started manually by pressing the button on the front. I then have to wait an hour or two whilst it checks the disks.

I have an NV+ (v1).  I leave it on all the time - it has various partitions with shared files and I use it as the archive for my photographs.  One result is that its being accessed fairly regularly through the day unless I'm at work.

I've never been convinced that its worth powering down and never got round to setting up the sleep mode.  The NV+ is pretty old and basic....and not free of some niggling features...