[Help] D4-320 sleep issue on Mac

[cianosa]

Hi, I've had an ongoing issue where multiple brand new seagate ironwolf drives have failed in a short period of time in my RAID 1 array. Initially I was using the Terramaster D5-300C, had multiple drives fail in an abnormally short period of time. Amazon agreed to refund me and I ordered the D4-320 instead, since using I have had the same issue, a two month old ironwolf 8TB failed and then last night another five month old ironwolf 8TB failed.

I've had 5 drives fail in around a year on two separate Terramaster enclosures. I'm running on an M1 Mac, I believe the issue is to do with the enclosures sleep settings which for some reason do not sync up with my mac settings and as far as I can tell i'm unable to change. I've tried following the guides and have adjusted the power settings but the enclosure is still powering down and booting the drives constantly which i believe is putting stress on the drives and causing them to fail.

Posting here for help as a last resort and then will be returning to Amazon for a refund before switching to ugreen or synology if the issue isn't fixable.

[CursaYang]

I'm very sorry for the trouble you've experienced. Have you checked the SMART data of these hard drives? Is there an increase in the Load Cycle Count due to frequent power outages?

[cianosa]

Hi, Thanks for the reply. I'm unable to check the SMART data, terminal returns -
SMART Status: Not Supported
SMART Status: Not Supported
SMART Status: Not Supported
SMART Status: Not Supported
for all 4 drives.
Weirdly the raid is now showing as healthy and the drive doesn't appear to have failed. Do you have an idea of what could be causing this recurring issue?

[cianosa]

Is there a way to stop the drives from sleeping constantly? I'll be editing a picture in photoshop and go to a different window for literally 20 seconds and when I come back to continue editing the drives need to 'wake up' again because the DAS has put them to sleep.

[TMzethar]

Hi,
You mentioned referring to an operation guide, is it the one for adjusting sleep mode?
viewtopic.php?t=3840
The sleep/active status of the HDDs within the DAS depends on your Mac.

You have already replaced the DAS device, yet the same issue persists. It is recommended that you consider other possibilities.
If you have other USB ports or other Mac/PCs, it is recommended that you have a try with them.

[cianosa]

Yes, that's the one, I changed those settings a while back and also added the drives so that spotlight doesn't scan them as this can cause consistent checks of the drives. I've use three different ports on my mac, so the issue is something else. I've moved home recently so I know the issue isn't power related because it's the same in my old place as the new.

Unfortunately the raid is showing as degraded again today, I may have to return this DAS if we can't find a solution here.

[TMzethar]

It seems you are using the built-in software RAID on your Mac. If you haven't written too much data yet, you might try not using RAID.

[cianosa]

Unfortunatetly I have 8TB on each drive so it's very impractical for me to stop using RAID. Also I want to use RAID because of the redundancy it provides. Do you have any suggestions of how to fix the drive waking issue without removing RAID?

[TMzethar]

We may have needed to consider the relationship between the issue and your RAID tool. Since you cannot accept that, we will no longer investigate it.
If your Mac is a laptop, please note whether RAID automatically goes to sleep when powered on or when using the battery.
You may consider trying to reference the internet or AI to write an executable script for Mac that automatically runs 'ls' or 'cat' commands every x seconds to access the RAID storage directory to force it to stay active.

[cianosa]

I don't believe the issue is to do with Apple RAID but rather a hardware issue with the the DAS and the inability to adjust the wake/sleep period for the drives. I've tried the settings suggested on the Terramaster site as well as multiple terminal scripts but the DAS ignores all of these for the built in settings.

I've initiated a return and will upgrade to a Ugreen NAS instead, as Terramaster appears to be incompatible with the Mac ecosystem.