DS410J all drives clicking every 20 seconds

[Dr Zoidberg]

Hi

I've searched through and cannot find a reference to what I'm experiencing.

I've just completed setup of my second DS410J in RAID 6. It has 4 x Western Digital 2TB (model WD20EARS), running DSM 2.3-1157

I've written about 1.5TB of data to this. Read/write went fine, logs show nothing negative and SMART also looks good.

When I'm reading/writing to the drive, it's perfectly quiet. When I'm logged in the the user interface it also seems fine.

But when it's idling, every 20 seconds or so, there's what sounds like a couple of little read/write clicks from one of the drives, followed in turn by what sounds like the other three drives clicking after.

My other DS410J config is near-identical; a couple of months older, it currently runs a slightly earlier firmware and disk config (4 x WD20EADS, DSM 2.2-0965, but RAID 6 also) - the first one is silent when idle, no problems.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

[jekyll]

Sounds like the click of death... SMART won't see it in all cases
Any sort of clicking could/will be related to the heads getting dragged along the platters...

[Dr Zoidberg]

Can you be more specific? Apart from the noise being a pain, how do I identify the cause? I assume it's one faulty drive and that a read/write on the one drive causes a cascade of actions in the other, hence the nature of the clicks - is that an accurate assumption? If so, why would this be happening every 20 seconds or so, when the NAS is idle?

Should I just take one drive out at a time to identify which is the cause of the trouble and, if so and SMART won't identify the problem, how do I confirm that the drive's at fault?

Thanks

[maxxfi]

Maybe it's the same as I reported in the following thread?
viewtopic.php?f=26&t=23739

I started to think that WDC Green drives are doing a lot of supposedly 'smart'
operations by themselves... which sometimes needs to be corrected by tools
like the WDIDLE3 or the WDTLER

[Dr Zoidberg]

Hi Maxxfi,
No, I don't think this is the same. This isn't a buzz, it's the clicking sound of read/write activity on a drive/s, consistently recurring on a 20 second cycle.
Does anyone have any suggestions about this?

[jekyll]

I think really you'l have to identify if the heads are getting dragged across the platters or if the heads are just parking.

See if you can find a sound file with the click of death & another with head clicks due to load cycles.

Whats the values of load cycles & power on hours in the SMART pannel?

[mbx]

Same problem as described. Clicks/clunks when drives are idle. It appears to be a little more random than every 20secs. There are no disk related errors in the logs. This has been doing it since new (as I installed the new firmware as soon as I bought it, I cannot say whether it happened on the older firmware).

Brand new DS410j unit with a single RAID5 volume across 3x 2TB Seagate ST32000542AS drives (which eliminates a specific drive model issue).
Running latest DSM 2.3-1157 firmware.
All drives pass the quick SMART test as Normal and all SMART info values are OK.
Power on hours is 221, can't find the load cycle metric?

Any further diagnostic clues would be appreciated.

M

[smee440]

Same problem with my new DS410J and 2 2TB Seagate ST32000542AS in RAID 1
The disk/disks click once or twice a minute, not every 20 seconds as the op mentioned, it is more random than that.
All diagnostics come up clean and the disks appear to be working correctly.
It is a shame because I had heard these disk stations were really quiet and I wanted to have it located in the office.
As it is I have had to move it to a utility room because the clicks are really annoying!

DSM2.3-1157 firmware
Power On is 20 hours
Power Cycle Info: Value=100, Worst=100, Threshold=020, Status=OK, Raw data=5
All Smart Info Statuses = OK

Regards
Smee440

[mYno]

Same problem with DS210j and 2xSeagate ST31500541AS.

This is what I know about this problem (I was just googling and experimenting), please correct me if I'm wrong.
As I know this problem is because of combination Linux + green disk(s). HDD is parking reading head after few seconds of inactivity to save the energy but linux is accessing drive also if there is no activity on it and wake it up, so the head is moving from parking position to working position and this is the source of the clicking.

Is there any solution?
You need to disable or adjust the APM (advanced power management) of the drive. Western Digital released some utility for their drives to solve it, but Seagate is ignoring this problem and there is no utility or firmware to do it permanently for you drives. The only solution I found is to use special utility (hdparam or smarttools) to do it on runtime. The problem (at least for me) is that you must install this utility in the disk station.

For example read here:

Code: Select all

http://forum.notebookreview.com/hardware-components-aftermarket-upgrades/271131-seagate-momentus-7200-4-thread-158.html

I didn't try it because I'm not very familiar with linux, I need to study the whole process of installing utilities to disk station and the using of telnet with it. If somebody have any experiences with using hdparam on diskstation or if there is any other workaround to solve this problem, please let us know.

[Tippe]

I have the same sound issue and I am also running a DS410j with 4 x Western Digital 2TB (model WD20EARS) and running DSM 2.3-1157, but in RAID 5.
I have seen the others have the same issue and for some it started with a firmware upgrade of a DS410j: http://forum.synology.com/enu/viewtopic.php?f=157&t=22732

[Kalle]

Hi, I just purchased DiskStation 110j and Seagate Barracuda 1 TB LP (low power). I have also the same problem of hard drive clicking every 20 seconds. Most likely that's also the reason for hard disk not to hibernate.

[Synology should publish an official how-to-fix tutorial or otherwise inform that low power / eco green disks are not compatible.]

EDIT:
nothing to do with LP disks, sorry.

[markdj]

If it is a GREEN issue then shutdown the nas, remove a drive, plug it into your PC and boot up using a bootable cdr with the Power Management utility on it e.g. Hitachi do a downloadable ISO which I wrote to cdr to adjust green-ness.

Setup each drive using the utility and then startup your Nas again and all should be normal.

[Kalle]

Thanks for the tip but I'm afraid Seagate Barracuda LP doesn't have any option to adjust APM. If anyone has better information I'd appreciate that a lot.

[maxxfi]

Thanks for the tip but I'm afraid Seagate Barracuda LP doesn't have any option to adjust APM. If anyone has better information I'd appreciate that a lot.

Try some options for the hdparm commands. Some hints are in this Seagate forum thread:
http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Barracuda-XT-Barracuda-and/ST32000542AS-Idle-Parking-Clicking-Bang/m-p/54087

P.S.: There should be hdparm package in the IPKG repository

[Kalle]

I tested an old Western Digital too and the problem persisted.

Then I took SSH connection into my NAS and from there I could see that there is a process named "scemd" that trigs for about every 20 or 30 seconds. It's like 15 seconds silence then I can hear a tiny crunch (and that is the moment when scemd wakes). Then after 5 seconds "scemd" goes back to sleep and there is a bigger crunch and also the disk led in the front panel flashes once.

And as described in the previous posts, it appears to be "more random than every 20secs". I also have a brand new NAS (DS110j) and I cannot say if it were there also with the previous firmwares.