4100Pro - odd disc replacement problem

[joe42]

I received a message from our 4100Pro, alerting us of an I/O error (surprising after 200 days of service). The RAID status was "Degraded" (we're using RAID 6, 4 drives @ 1Tb each).

However, looking at the Disks Information page, all of the disks are listed as "OK". Should not the disc be reported as an error?

Shouldn't also the tray have a red light blinking, instead of blue? There was no visible indication of a problem. They manual also doesn't say which tray is which - I assume #1 is on top.

Further, once I removed the bad drive, the Disks Information page STILL showed the disc as present in the tray, with the original model number! This is after refreshing the information. The Smart Info page showed N/A for all of the fields except model number.

Then, once I replaced the drive, the "SMART INFO" page still shows N/A for all of the fields. How long does this take to update?

My questions:

1. Why am I not getting accurate disc status? Why was there no blinking red light to show the I/O error?

2. How do I know that the new drive has been accepted by the system, and that the RAID is being rebuilt, or has done so successfully? Right now I have no indication that anything is happening.

Thanks!

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EDIT:

As instructed, I replaced the drive in Tray #2 (second from top) with a BRAND NEW drive, and got another I/O error!

Is my Thecus unit bad, or what? I can't imagine I had two bad hard drives like this, especially with all of the other weird symptoms.

[Thecus - Ivan]

Dear joe42,

Please go to Esupport and submit a ticket and also provide us with your config.bin for our tech support team assist with your query.

You can download your config bin under System-ConfigMgnt-download

_____________________________

Official Thecus Support Representative

[joe42]

I did open a ticket, but the support department remains nonresponsive. I'm pretty disappointed.

The only way I could get things working again was to reboot; this obviously forces the Thecus to re-map the hard drives, and eventually rebuild.

Obviously, this is far from an acceptable solution. Being able to hot-swap drives is one of the essential features of a system like this, and if this feature is broken, it severely diminishes its value. I'm not so happy about it.

[Thecus - Ivan]

Dear Joe42,

Please provide me with your ticket number.
_____________________________

Official Thecus Support Representative

[joe42]

Ticket BIK-10021-350