Failed HDD in RAID 5 - quick help needed

[chnapo]

A couple years ago I set up my old PC as a NAS and I believe it is RAID 5 with 4x 4TB WD RED drives.

 

Now it shows this error:

Translated:

Pool Error

Usage of pool capacity: 14.5 TB out of 14.5 TB - Read only, check the part Physical units
NAS

Parity

10.9 TB

Usage of pool capacity: 14.5TB

 

Error - unavailable, check the part "Physical units"

 

Physical units:

1. WDC .... Connected via SATA, supplied capacity to the fund: 3.63TB

Warning

2. WDC...

OK

3. WDC ....

Warning

4. WDC ...

Error - excluded, add unit and then remove this unit

 

Now, the folder called NAS stopped appearing with all my valuable data in there. I have a few drives but neither is the same capacity as these, I have one 6TB WD RED and one 12TB WD Purple currently not used.

 

Shouldn´t RAID 5 be available to read even if one drive fails?? Also it says "Read only" but how do I read it?

 

How should I proceed please? I have some really important data there.

[mariushm]

I would start by turning off the system and checking each power connector, make sure it's fully plugged in, properly plugged in.  Then maybe put your hand on each drive, to feel if the platters spin or not.

 

As far as I remember, RAID5 is designed to survive ONE missing drive, but you have "critical" (the red icon) on two drives.  Either the drive is dead, or is unresponsive... could be the power cable is loose.

 

Check each drive individually, check the SMART info, see if they report any errors or something bad like lots of bad sectors.

 

Seems like the parity drive (which holds info on how to rebuilt array) is disconnected so maybe it's just not powered ... and the last in the list maybe it's failed completely or has too many bad sectors to be usable (or maybe it's incorrectly listed with that error and it's just another power related issue)

 

Your bottom 4 TB drive could be replaced by that WD Red (temporarily if it's regular Red with SMR, if it's red plus with CMR it would be fine to use)  to rebuilt the array until you get a proper drive)

 

If the drives don't start up at all, it could be the protection diodes on the 5v and 12v inputs are shot - it's rare but it happens.Those diodes can be replaced. You can test those with a simple multimeter  and those can usually be replaced (depending on design, temporarily you could even use a wire or a solder blob to replace the diode)

 

 

[chnapo]

5 minutes ago, mariushm said:

I would start by turning off the system and checking each power connector, make sure it's fully plugged in, properly plugged in.  Then maybe put your hand on each drive, to feel if the platters spin or not.

 

As far as I remember, RAID5 is designed to survive ONE missing drive, but you have "critical" (the red icon) on two drives.  Either the drive is dead, or is unresponsive... could be the power cable is loose.

 

Check each drive individually, check the SMART info, see if they report any errors or something bad like lots of bad sectors.

 

 

The red icon is on one drive, two are yellow and one is green... Crystal Disk Info shows good health, no bad sectors, but two drives take longer to load in cdi.

[kokosnh]

How was the raid 5 set up? 
 

Some system will make the data unviable when such failure occurs 

 

I know it’s not intuitive, but that’s how it works in some systems. 
 

like mirror volume in windows 

 

also it seems like 2 other HDD have problems

can you post full smart table from crystaldiskinfo about them 

[mariushm]

1 minute ago, chnapo said:

The red icon is on one drive, two are yellow and one is green... Crystal Disk Info shows good health, no bad sectors, but two drives take longer to load in cdi.

My bad, my mind said  the first entry (NAS) is a hard drive and not the whole thing.

 

So check the one marked failed, if you can't get it working put the wd red and let it rebuild the array, and check the smart info to see what's up with those warnings.

Also may be worth looking in event viewer at warnings and errors.

[chnapo]

11 minutes ago, kokosnh said:

How was the raid 5 set up? 
 

Some system will make the data unviable when such failure occurs 

 

I know it’s not intuitive, but that’s how it works in some systems. 
 

like mirror volume in windows 

 

also it seems like 2 other HDD have problems

can you post full smart table from crystaldiskinfo about them 

In windows 10 disk management

[chnapo]

I replaced all SATA cables, now the control panel where I took the original screenshot says that (one of the yellow drives) is disconnected. Crystal Disk Info sees all four, all in good health and all respond immediately when I try to read their stats in CDI. I restarted the PC (silly me forgot to copy the screenshots first so I will upload the CDI screenshots in a minute).

[kokosnh]

So from my understanding, disk management will do that, at least with raid 1 (mirror). The data in dynamic partition is not available, when one disk is gone, tested it after setting it up, as I did not trust it, and I was right.  but i do not know how to recover raid 5 created from disk management, tested only raid 1 (mirror)

[chnapo]

[kokosnh]

The third one (**H06) had/have communications errors, could be lose connection, or bad sata cable. 

 

but we don’t know when the errors began, you will have to wait and see if the raw value of C7 will increase, from 6 value. To know they the errors are occurring now, and you need to take action. 

the rest is ok, nothing that looks bad. 

[chnapo]

8 minutes ago, kokosnh said:

The third one had/have communications errors, could be lose connection, or bad sata cable. 

 

but we don’t know when the errors began, you will have to wait and see if the raw value of C7 will increase.

the rest is ok, nothing that looks bad. 

Then why does windows report it as broken and is refusing to allow me to read from the pool? Also why the third disk in the original screenshot (the one that has SN ending with CU2) reports as unplugged by the storage manager in control panel but I can easily read its SMART with crystal disk info??

EDIT: Bios also can see only two. How does Crystal Disk Info read 4 (actually 7, two SSDs, 4x WD Red and one WD Purple that I am trying to use as a replacement)

[kokosnh]

Well no idea, but I’m not familiar with disk management raid 5 ( somebody knowledges at it will have to help you ). 
 

it could be because of the communication errors, that it was disconnected, but that’s only guessing, we do not know when the communication errors began ( no time of errors is loged in smart ), we could assume now, and that why it failed, but that assumption.

 

you could check event log 

[chnapo]

Update:
I tried connecting all four without the purple that should have been replacement, it shown all 4 in BIOS. I ran Windows and it shown 2 disconnected. Restart PC, BIOS only shows 2. I tried every disk standalone and BIOS has recognized it. I tried every disk standalone and windows shows it as "OK" giving the rest yellow "Warning" (because they are not even plugged in). That leads me to conclusion that whatever the issue is, it seems that it´s not disk related. Maybe motherboard or PSU??
All SATA cables have just been replaced (after the initial reply on this post) for brand new ones that I had in storage (not even unpacked). So it´s not SATA cables. Could it be that the PSU can´t handle 2 disks on the same cable? I mean, it´s a 1300W Seasonic 80+ Platinum... Or could SATA ports on the board be faulty? I am going to proceed with further testing.

EDIT:
Any single disk shows up green, but when more are connected, weird things happen, sometimes one shows as yellow, sometimes as green, sometimes as missing eventhough HWinfo and CDI can see it, then after restart even bios can´t see it...