Diskstation system partition crash

Mr Pleasant

Any Synology Diskstation owners on here with storage management know-how? My single-drive DS214Play is giving me a system partition crash warning, with no option to repair. I suspect this is because it's a single-drive set-up. I have a new drive arriving today and my plan is to backup the existing drive's data to a USB storage device, install the new drive in an SHR arrangement and see if the Diskstation then offers me a repair option on the bad sector. If anyone has experience of this or generally knows of a better way to do it, please let me know.

bubblegum57

The disk will be ext4. you can get a ext4 reader for windows. But a linux machine or bootable linux disk/usb might be able to read it. It depends on how bad it is damaged.

I suppose you haven't been making backups?

So, you could try removing disk, putting it in a usb enclosure, then with a linux boot disk, copy the data to another usb drive. BUT, if you just copy it to the new disk, that won't work, because when you insert the new disk into the nas, it will overwrite everything.

Mr Pleasant

Losing everything would be more a matter of inconvenience as it's mainly used as a media source. If I put the new drive in and treat it as a separate volume would that not allow me to move stuff across to it?

I wonder if I should have pointed out that despite the seriousness of the message, the device continues to work fine and I can even stream movies to my Minix, view photos, etc. All of which makes it pretty odd that I can't find a repair option when apart from the one bad sector, DSM sees the disk as 'healthy'.

I'm still not clear why I can't just install the new drive. As I understand it, Synology DSM will put all system files on the new drive (all drives get the system files, I believe) which might be enough to let me do a repair. Might just drag files off it onto a USB drive.

bubblegum57

Perhaps you need to go to the synology forums.

I thought the system files would be on volume 1, if you just fit a second drive as a volume, it wont have system files on

If it works, copy files to usb drive, take out faulty drive install the new drive as volume one.

I don't know enough about SHR, so don't know anything about repair.

Mr Pleasant

Thanks for your help. The Synology forums didn't come up with much which is disappointing. I won't rush this. Even copying stuff to a connected USB device wasn't straightforward and I gave up after a couple of attempts.

maf1970

Think you have answered your question in your own statement. You only have a single drive in your NAS. The repair option will only be offered with multi-drive setups. i.e 2 drives or more.
Next point, don't you backup your NAS on a regular basis ? or is the inconvenience caused not really that inconvenient ?
Synology Support Centre actually says -

For crashed volumes, we recommend contacting our Technical Support for assistanceI suspect you will only get help from them if the drive in the NAS is on their compatability list.
I think your HDD has failed so even if you install a second it will configure as an individual volume and you still won't be able to access the original disk.

Mr Pleasant

I don't have the means to back up the entire NAS. The things that matter are all backed up on Google Drive. Has anyone read the terms and conditions of Synology Support? I started raising a ticket and then noticed reference to payment systems which made me pause. A quick online search quickly suggested support might only be for the duration of the device's warranty. Basically, it wasn't clear what I was getting into so I backed out. I'll keep plugging away as time allows and post the outcome on here (whatever that ends up being).

brunation

I don't own a Synology, which version of DSM?

brunation

Adding a new disk drive to a Synology 2-bay drive

Can you access a SMART report?

Is the sector 're-allocated' or  'Offline Uncorrectable'?

Mr Pleasant

DSM is v6.2, I think. Whatever the latest one is. I always keep it up to date. I did a quick SMART check and it came back normal so I kicked off the full-monty check and it seemed to stick at 90% (which is a bit of a thing from what I've seen online). Don't think it would have told me anything I don't already know. The disk is regarded as 'healthy' but has one bad sector in the worst possible place. I think my best approach is to reinstall the OS (what Synology call a reset) and hope it simply rebuilds everything around the bad sector.