XigmaNAS

Hi everyone, a bit of history about my problem followed by some questions for all you experts!

I've happily been running nas4free at home and set one up for my parents for the last few months everything has been working great. Until recently... They use theirs as a media server with a RAID-Z ZFS pool to a computer running Mediaportal as a client. They started to complain about more and more sound dropouts and freezes. I first started looking at the mediaportal PC and couldn't find much wrong, but then I decided to login to the Nas4Free web GUI remotely and saw the Pool1 status as degraded. I looked at the disks and one of them showed errors. I figured I had found the problem.

I arrived today and checked the status as degraded still (screenshot attached) but this time when I tried to view the disks in webgui it showed as UNAVAILABLE (screenshot attached). I tried a reboot and the HDD light was solid for around 10 minutes and didnt seem to boot. I then opened the case and disconnected/reconnected the sata cables at hdd end and mobo end, powered on and everything booted normally and the Disks are showing as available although still an error in description (screenshot attached).

So, I need to figure out what is going on. I originally thought one of the hdd's was at fault but now suspect the mobo hdd controller is failing. I'm planning to remove each drive individually and run a diagnostic tool like seagate seatools or similar (they are WD drives, so maybe WD Lifeguard) on each drive in another machine to verify that the HDD health is OK, and if they are all OK I will put it down to the HDD controller and move the drives into a new machine and see how that goes. Now for the questions:

1) Is there an option to email me alerts if HDD problems are detected in Nas4Free? I'm sure there is, just not sure where or how. Not too bothered by other alerts, don't want my inbox flooded, just storage alerts
2) If I replace the server and move the USB with Nas4Free and the HDD's across to a new machine with new hardware, what is the easiest and best setup process:
a) I can just boot off the USB and everything will run as it was, bar perhaps some slight adjustments
b) I'll have to create a config backup on the old machine, clean install on the new machine then restore the backup
c) Create a clean install, configure all options then import the zpool only?

Thanks in advance guys!

Hello Blueman,

perhaps you only have a connection problem with your cables. Does your Sata cables have a metall latch ? I recommend this version, after having problems in this respect. Also just recently 2 forummembers had problems with the power cables, please check them too.

Regarding your questions:
1) There is an email option but I never tried it, so perhaps someone else can give u more guidance on this.

2) The easierst way to move a working (!) ZFS-Pool is to save the config file of your old machine (recommended each time you change something). Then install N4F on the new machine and restore config file. Should work already, in worst case synchronize the ZFS Pool.

Kind Regards
apollo

pls post smart values of your drives

1) Is there an option to email me alerts if HDD problems are detected in Nas4Free?

NAS4Free's "Status|Email Report" page offers the option to schedule an email report which can include the S.M.A.R.T. log (I have configured my NAS4Free system to send me a daily report).

NAS4Free's "Disks|Management|S.M.A.R.T." page offers the option to get reports when the S.M.A.R.T. monitor detects problems. Here is an extract from an email sent when an problem was detected

<snip>
The following warning/error was logged by the smartd daemon:
Device: /dev/ada0, 1 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors

Device info:
HDT722525DLAT80, S/N:VDR41DT4EA1BDJ, WWN:5-000cca-20be0bfda, FW:V44OA96A, 250 GB

For details see host's SYSLOG.

You can also use the smartctl utility for further investigation.
No additional email messages about this problem will be sent.
</snip>

The email message was about 8.6 KB long as it also included the drive's S.M.A.R.T. information and data (as seen in the "Diagnostics|Information|S.M.A.R.T." page)

Edit:
I forgot to mention the "Helpful scripts: Backup,Snapshot,Standby,Scrub,CheckPools..." topic has links to a very useful collection of scripts which can email reports:
viewtopic.php?f=70&t=2197