Synology DS220+: Disks failing to create storage pool and secure format too
TLDR: I bought a new Synology DS220+ (which has 2 drive slots) and a single HDD to get into the ecosystem first. After 2 days of all systems working perfectly, I bought another HDD and tried installing it in the 2nd empty slot and since then 2 new HDD drives for slot 2 has been failing continuously.
Here is a list of events with error screenshots:
- Day 1: Bought a Synology DS220+ and a WD Purple Pro 8TB HDD from Amazon and went ahead to format and install DSM. I moved my personal files on to it and it worked great for 2 days.
- Note here that I saw the WD Purple HDD being listed on the synology site before buying.
- Day 3: Once I was sure that the system was working fine, I went ahead and ordered the same WD Purple Pro 8TB HDD from Amazon.
- Day 4: New WD Purple Pro 8TB HDD drive came in and I put in slot #2 and assigned it as a new storage pool. The process started but just in 15 mins, I got an access error. (See screenshot below)
- I tried ejecting and reinserting the drive but kept getting the same error.
- Raised the issue to WD support and they suggested to try in a windows laptop with a HDD reader. Bought one HDD reader/adaptor and saw that the drive is not being detected by the drive reader.
- Reported it to Amazon as the HDD seemed faulty. Amazon refunded me the money.
- Day 5: In fear of WD's HDD being faulty once, I bought Seagate's IronWolf 8TB HDD this time. Inserted in slot #2 and the system didn't throw any error. Allocated it as a storage pool and left it overnight.
- Day 6: Next morning I woke up to see an error message that "Drive 2 of DS220+ was reconnected during system startup." and followed by "Drive 2 on DS220+ has failed." - both time stamped around 2:30 AM in the morning. (See screenshot below)
- The "reconnection" error was a surprise as I have a power backup at my home and in no way the Synology system would have lost power. I can also say this with confidence as I didn't receive any "powered off unexpectedly" kind of error from Synology which generally appears if you shut down it improperly.
- The next steps I tried were:
- Restarting the system and seeing if the error was still there. The disk failing error remained.
- Ejecting and installing the drive in slot 1 vs. slot 2 to see if the HDD was installed properly. The disk failing error remained.
- Formatting the drive hoping a fresh "Secure format" will reset the drive state and I'll reinsert it and restart the storage pool process. Formatting failed. (See screenshot below).
- After 2-3 tries of formatting the disk the disk kept failing and also my original drive's storage pool degraded. (See screenshot below)
- Day 7 (current state): After a tiring try with 2 drives failing consecutively and my original drive degrading, I ended up ejecting the new Seagate HDD and raisin another complaint to Amazon for a faulty drive.
- For now, I've formatted the 1st WD drive which I bought with my Synology NAS which seems to be working fine for now.
- Raised complaints to both WD and Seagate for faulty drives. Yet to hear back from them.
How can you help 🙏:
- If someone has experienced something similar and solved it so they're able to successfully install a 2nd drive in their Synology DS220+, please suggest how.
- If someone has experience something similar with other Synology systems and 3rd party HDDs, how did you solve the issue.
- Any other comment or feedback that might prevent me from getting another drive failure when extending storage pool with a new drive in 2nd slot.