In this article I discuss "unboxing" a new storage expansion device for my QNAP NAS. The QNAP TR-004.
In my case I was watching Black Friday and Boxing Day sales and pulled the trigger, grabbing the last expansion drive enclosure available from QNAP Canada preconfigured with 12 TBytes of storage (4 x 4Tbyte WD Red - WD40EFPX-68C6CN0).
QNAP Was Too Good for My Good !!
The RAID device was delivered pre-configured as a Raid 5 device out of the box. The dip switches on the device were set to Raid 5. This is great for someone who wants to get started on a Windows or MAC machine, but I wanted it to be "software managed" using my QNAP TS-453D. Right away I changed the dip switches on the back of the device to "Software Control" thinking that I would be able to manage the device using my QNAP - Storage & Snapshots.
Storage & Snapshots
Storage and Snapshots recognized that the device was in "Software Control" mode, and I added a "thick" volume to the device but right away it said that I required a Firmware Upgrade (to version 1.2.0). The screen was showing that the device had no firmware - just showing dashes: "Firmware Version: --".
I struggled with getting the device to recognize the new firmware. I used the automatic upgrade feature, and it said that it was successful in upgrading the device, but I needed to restart the device and recover the volumes. I did this successfully, but the upgraded firmware version was still not recognized in Storage & Snapshots. I then tried the manual upgrade - downloading the firmware (1.2.0) and upgrading but no luck. I repeated this loop several times and then magically it started to recognize the new firmware. I thought that I was out of the woods but...
RAID 5 Installed Caused Issues
I had assumed that the RAID 5 pre-installed would work fine in Software Controlled mode but then realized that RAID is not RAID. After moving about 4 TBytes of data from my NAS onto the TR-004 in a new volume in a newly created Storage Pool - within 24 hours of use the RAID threw fatal disk errors - stating that it was putting the device into read only mode as 2 disks were not available. This was alarming to say the least but luckily the data was accessible in read only mode and I transferred it back to my NAS - phew.
I followed the recovery steps and tried recovering the Storage Pool, but it could not be recovered, and all data was no longer accessible. What Next?...
Re-Initialize the TR-004 into RAID 5 for NAS
With the device now in a wonky state, I decided to completely wipe out and rebuild the RAID and add a new Storage Pool. I used the following steps:
- I removed the Storage Pool from the device
- I removed the existing RAID 5 that came preconfigured on the device
- I safely ejected the device and re-seated all the drives
- I powered back up the device
- I created a new RAID 5 configuration with mode "NAS Storage"
- I created a new "Thick" Volume on the Raid and a new Storage Pool
- I mounted the volume creating a "Shared Folder" using File Station 5
I am now testing the device in this mode - Since I am a bit gun shy on how reliable the Storage Pool will be, I will copy data to it for now and see if it throws any new errors in the coming days...
Copied 4.85 TBytes of data to the TR-004 and will monitor for any issues/errors.
Does Not Support S.M.A.R.T. 👎
After assessing the device more carefully, I was shocked to find out that the TR-004 does not support S.M.A.R.T testing. This is extremely disappointing and I would likely have changed my data storage strategy. I may have even used my old TS-421 as a file share as it would at least allow for disk health insight.
It appears that the TR-004 RAID chip does not support S.M.A.R.T. ATA passthrough to allow for testing the health of the drives. In my opinion, this is a fatal flaw in the design of this device and as a result I do not recommend this as a valid RAID storage expansion device or strategy for those who want to more proactively manage their data storage strategy. Instead, I would recommend spending a little more and purchase a NAS with S.M.A.R.T. and hot swappable drives.