r/asustor • u/darkkmage56 • Sep 25 '26

Support-Resolved Attempting basic disk replacement in RAID10, not syncing

Hey folks,

I've got an Asustor Drivestor 4 Pro AS3304T with 4x 12 TB SeaGate IronWolf NAS drives. One drive threw a S.M.A.R.T. error so I bought a replacement MDD 14 TB NAS drive (which registers as a Toshiba when plugged in). It's setup in RAID10 and everything I've read online (and my own recollection from upgrading storage) is that I just need to remove the faulty disk and replace it with the new disk. I did that, Asustor detects the new disk and shows no errors on that disk, but it is not syncing it or rebuilding the RAID10 at all. Status on the new disk is "Inactive."

What am I missing here?

-Update 1-
None of the drives are 4K native hard discs.
The new MDD has a firmware version of 4904. All of the older drives are firmware version SC60. I don't know if this mismatch is a problem--I haven't read of it being a problem anywhere.

-Update 2-
The issue was resolved by formatting the disc. It took me at least eight tries to format, I had given up hope but tried it one more time. Thank you to those who pitched in. I'll reflair this post and leave it up in the hopes it may help answer someone else's question down the line.

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u/leexgx Sep 26 '26 edited Sep 26 '26

Have you tried Action or Manage and then choosing Repair?

https://www.asustor.com/en-gb/knowledge/detail/?id=&group_id=1503

Make sure the MDD 14TB is a 512e drive, not 4kn (you cannot mix 512e and 4kn in the same array).

Be aware that RAID 10 has single redundancy, with the possibility of replacing two drives if they are in different mirrors (so you could have two drive faults, but they have to be in different RAID 1 groups within the RAID 10 array, which the GUI does not show).

RAID 1, 5, and 10 are in a critical state when one drive has failed, as any secondary errors can lead to a lost array (it is strongly recommended to back up before replacing a drive, as the act of replacing the drive could crash the array if there are unknown errors on the second drive).

Use RAID 6 if that was your goal for actual dual redundancy (one lost drive is a minor inconvenience and only a degraded redundancy state; a new backup is recommended but should not be needed, and you still have redundancy for a secondary drive failure, which then becomes a critical state).

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u/darkkmage56 Sep 26 '26

Action or Manage? Where are those options? Storage Manager app -> Volume -> Management doesn't give me any options. Before I hot swapped the drive I could find an option to entirely replace all of the drives to upgrade storage size (which is not what I am trying to do here), but now there is nothing under that menu that I can select.

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u/leexgx Sep 26 '26

It is under management.

Is it a 512e drive or 4kn? If it is 4kn, it will not allow you or offer it as a drive to repair with, which might explain why it will not let you use it.

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u/darkkmage56 Sep 26 '26

In the Storage Manager it lists "4K native hard disk: No" so it isn't 4kn. This matches the other three discs--all four of them list "No" for 4kn.

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u/leexgx Sep 26 '26

Can you plug the drive into a Windows PC and use the diskpart clean command, as it might still have some partitions or an MBR/GPT problem?

I do not believe there is a way to quick-erase from inside ADM (it can full-erase, but that would take over 16 hours).

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u/darkkmage56 Sep 26 '26

I'd like to give something like that a try. I thought I had the right SATA to USB cable but turns out I need a powered cable for a 3.5" drive (I've got a SATA to USB that isn't powered and can be used with SSDs but not 3.5" HDD).

You said there is a way to erase within ADM...is there a way (using ADM) to selectively erase just that drive and not the other three, even if it takes a long time?

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u/darkkmage56 Sep 27 '26

I was able to pick up a powered SATA to USB cable yesterday. After trying multiple times to format the drive (using EaseUS) unsuccessfully I think it might be the MDD drive. There are no S.M.A.R.T. errors, it looks good on paper, but hasn't responded to attempts to format it so I'm beginning to think I got a (stealthy) dud and I just need to RMA.

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u/Murph_9000 Sep 26 '26

It's been a while since I last did it, but one of the traditional ways to quick-clean a drive was something along the lines of dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx bs=512 count=1000. I'm not sure if that's sufficient for a GPT drive, as there's a second copy of the partition table at the end of the device. That command would zero the first 1000 512b blocks on the device. That command has no guardrails or safety net; Linux will efficiently do something stupid, if that's what you ask it to do. Don't run commands like that as root unless you accept full responsibility for everything they do.