FreeNAS hard drives 3 unreadable sectors

Computer Hardware & Server Infrastructure Builds
1

Hello to everyone.

I have one always on FreeNAS box with 2 X WD RED in Raid1 setup , giving me critical alerts of 3 unreadable sectors.
Those drives are having about 3 years runtime.

When i know is time to replace a drive ? Whats a common practice for this subject ?

Thank you all.

2

My personal opinion would be that if they have started to get bad sectors then you should replace them now.

There is a school of thought that says they will probably be fine for ages and drives can swap out bad sectors for years without totally failing… but… it’s normally a sign of a failure that’s building and it is only a matter of time till it dies or the sector goes bad before it’s mapped out and you loose something (although raid should have your back here).

Questions to ask yourself

  • Do you have a good, working, recently tested backup
  • Is this mission critical data
  • How long will it take you to rebuild if there is a catastrophic failure (including recovery from backup)
  • How much will the rebuild downtime cost.

If the rebuild time and/or cost is low AND you have good backups then risk it
If the rebuild cost is more than a replacement drive then do it now
If you don’t have a backup then make one now (no, right now, stop reading) then swap the drive.

Is the raid1 in software through freenas or in hardware?

3

Thanks @garethw Mr. Gareth.

All you said are very helpful and direct to the point.

This raid1 configuration is made by FreeNAS and i have totally passing the drives to FreeNAS, so i’m guessing is software Raid (ZFS) since i’m not using any RAID controller.

Truth is i have a secondary backup using GoodSync from FreeNAS box to another FileServer running Windows 10 and storage spaces Pool again using software Raid1. This machine runs also disaster backup to USB3 hard drive. so primary data + 2 backups.

Maybe in the future implement RSync from FreeNAS to Synology, since both are supporting this protocol, and maybe snapshots?? I’m new to this and I’m still experiment a little with all and different storage solutions (FreeNAS, Windows 10 and Server, Synology, Xigmanas etc…).

What is your suggestion for a solid organization ? Thank you.

4

If it were me I wouldn’t be using a raid 1 for critical data. Raidz2 all day long. I would also invest time into setting up snapshots of your datasets (retention is personal preference). If you have 2 Freenas boxes I would setup ZFS replication but if you are using synology then your method seems fine. I would also use the 321 method for backups which you can read here

5

Thanks @xMAXIMUSx, your comments are much appreciated. By the end of the year i’m going like 6-4-2 backup system. :blush:

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