D5-300 suddenly says drives are not initialized/must be formatted?

[IGagnon]

I have a D5-300. All 5 bays are populated with 4TB Iron Wolf Pro drives, running in RAID-5.

Purchased brand new on March 9th, 2022.

The RAID was at about 70% capacity and everything was working well. I use it as a staging drive for ingesting video footage into our main server.

I was using the drive 2 days ago and everything was operating normally. Since that time, the drive has not been powered down or disconnected from the PC.

This morning I went to pull some additional footage off the drives and Windows now claims that the drive is not initialized, and needs to be formatted.

The RAID Manager software that comes with the D5-300 also says the drives are connected, but it appears that it thinks the drives are all empty.

I have not formatted or deleted the RAID, it has been sitting idle on my desk since I last accessed it.

I have tried powering the enclosure down, disconnecting both power and USB, letting it sit for 10+ minutes and reconnecting/rebooting it. No difference.

I also tried the same procedure, but removed the drives and reseated them one-by-one in order to make sure the drives went back into their original slots. No change.

I'm assuming at this point that the hardware RAID controller has died or malfunctioned.

Does anyone else have additional troubleshooting steps?

[TMSupport]

1. Please open RAID Manager on Windows PC to check whether the RAID 5 is normal.
If it is displayed normally, it means that there is no problem with the RAID 5 you created.
2. Go to This Computer - Properties - Management - Disk Management. Check whether the hard disk partition of the D5-300 is normal. If it is abnormal or the file system format is changed, it means that the file system of hard disk partition created by your Windows has been damaged.
3. ExFAT format is not recommended for mass storage, NTFS is recommended.
Note: If the file system of partition has been damaged, it is recommended to use a third-party tool for data recovery.

[qdmt]

I have the same exact issue that @IGagnon has described - virtually identical story. My Raid5 was created on 2022/06/08.
@TMSupport, in following your steps, here is what I see:

0. On connecting the drive, I see a Windows error X:\ is not accessible. The volume does not contain a recognized file system. Please make sure that all required file system drivers are loaded and that the volume is not corrupted.
1. RAID Manager Overview: no meaningful information, just shows the 5 hard drives and the space available in each 4TB. It seems that it does not see any space being utilized.
2. Under Disk Management, it appears "Healthy (Basic Data Partition)" status, but also appears that 100% of space is available. I don't see "Damaged" noted anywhere.

Please advise the exact next step from here.

[CursaYang]

D5-300 Device RAID5 Mode Troubleshooting Guide

1. Confirm RAID5 Creation Method
First, verify whether the RAID5 array on the D5-300 device was created through the built-in Windows RAID Manager terminal. If a third-party RAID software was used for array configuration, this situation falls under software-related issues and not hardware failures.

2. RAID5 Status Check
Procedure:Open the RAID Manager terminal management interface in the Windows system.
Key points to check:
Check if the created RAID5 array architecture is fully displayed.
Confirm whether the array status is "Normal" or shows any degraded, damaged, or other abnormal indicators.
Verify that the array configuration parameters match the original creation information.

3. Deletion Mechanism Explanation
Safety Mechanism:The configuration information of the RAID array created through RAID Manager terminal is stored on the device’s hard disk.
Operation Restrictions:
Only manual "delete array" operations can be performed via the RAID Manager terminal.
There are no physical buttons or interfaces on the device hardware to directly clear the RAID configuration.
Any deletion operations outside of the terminal interface (such as power off, restart, device reset, etc.) will not affect the RAID configuration.

4. Fault Diagnosis Logic
If the created RAID5 array cannot be found in the RAID Manager terminal or the array status is abnormal:
If created through the terminal: Human error may have caused accidental deletion.
If created using third-party software: It is recommended to contact the software vendor for configuration issue troubleshooting.

Note:Before performing any array deletion operations, ensure that important data is backed up to prevent data loss. If technical issues arise, contact official technical support for further assistance.