Data recovery and disk repair questions and discussions related to old-fashioned SATA, SAS, SCSI, IDE, MFM hard drives - any type of storage device that has moving parts
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2/5 WD30EZRX 00MMMB0 "died" at the same time

April 19th, 2016, 13:54

Hi,

i came here through research and even though i'm quite used to all this computer stuff it looks like i have about no clue compared to you guys. I hope to get some basic advise of what my options are.

Here's what i have: I had 5 WD30EZRX running for around 4 years in a Synology NAS which worked well until sunday night when I did an upgrade to the newest DSM. The NAS came up afterwards but in the next morning I only found it with a volume crash recognizing that two of the five drives were completely gone from the the hard drive panel inside the NAS administration.

Today I pulled them and tried to spin them up on an external SATA adapter only to hear that they don't spin up but give some low beeping style sound - can't tell if it's a real beep singalling something or only a noise that sounds a bit like a beep.

The "fun" thing with it is that this happened to two of the five drives at the same time and seems to be the exact same error. I haven't checked their SMART status right before the update but the Syno keeps sending me a monthly health report and back on April 1st all drives had not a single SMART error which is still true for the three remaining drives.

Do you think there's anything I could do besides throwing thousands of bucks onto a professional data recovery service or just being screwed?

Thanks for any input.

Frank

Re: 2/5 WD30EZRX 00MMMB0 "died" at the same time

April 19th, 2016, 18:54

Sounds like stiction or a stuck spindle, or perhaps insufficient power. Is there any visible problem near the motor controller IC on either PCB? Have you measured the voltage output of your adapter?

Re: 2/5 WD30EZRX 00MMMB0 "died" at the same time

April 20th, 2016, 3:03

hi lokari,

I would not use these cheap sata/usb adapters but try to connect the drive to a computer with linux / linux from cd and connect the drive to native SATA. If the drive beeps it is likely a stiction / headcrash issue and needs clean room work. If drives are dead / computer does not start with drive connected its rather a pcb issue.

If data is important, do not mess with the drives and do not open any of them. And no freezer tricks plz :wink:

best regards,

Re: 2/5 WD30EZRX 00MMMB0 "died" at the same time

April 20th, 2016, 3:05

I've tried it on a more reliable source (in a NAS) and it shows the same issues.

I was able to record a piece of audio of how it sounds: https://soundcloud.com/helmi74/hdd-sound

Re: 2/5 WD30EZRX 00MMMB0 "died" at the same time

April 20th, 2016, 3:30

We had a Synology 1515+ come in with just the same issue.
It seems that when users upgrade to the DSM 6.0 that the NAS begins whats called data scrubbing. This basically thrashes all of the drives in the RAID and runs a full parity check one all drives etc.

All the stress the data scrubbing causes on the drives can sometimes cause 1 or more drives to fail if they are already a few years old. I'm not saying that the data scrubbing has caused the issue of the 2 failed drives in your instance but it could be a possibility.

Whatever you do don't run the NAS anymore and number all of the drives if you are going to remove them.

We are happy to look at your NAS for free and give you a full diagnosis and cost of the recovery. If you find its out of your budget then we can just return everything no questions asked.

Sticktion is quite rare on WD30EZRX drives but could be possible. I would more say the beeping sound you are hearing is the voice coil the controls the heads. The heads are moving back and forward because it can't locate servo marks (eg. firmware).

Regards,
Luke

Re: 2/5 WD30EZRX 00MMMB0 "died" at the same time

April 20th, 2016, 5:40

the sound is definitely a stiction sound.
sorry, but it needs clean room work so better to contact a Pro if data is important.

Re: 2/5 WD30EZRX 00MMMB0 "died" at the same time

April 20th, 2016, 5:48

+1, definitely stiction.

Re: 2/5 WD30EZRX 00MMMB0 "died" at the same time

April 20th, 2016, 6:17

Thanks for your feedback guys.

Luckily Luke (day1data) is around the corner here and I've just been at his place with my drives.

I'm sure he'll update us here too later and we know what's going on.

Thanks so far for helping, Luke.
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