Terramaster D5 Thunderbolt 3: False Positive saying a drive is failing, and it is not
Posted: 24 Nov 2023, 21:21
To describe this issue: I have owned a Terramaster D5 Thunderbolt 3 for many years, and it would randomly set off the alarm indicating that my 3rd Hard Drive (out of 5) was failing. The first time it happened, I was not home near the Terramaster but my ex girlfriend was - and she called me at work freaking out about this super loud alarm going off at home (I had no idea what she was talking about).
Also worth mentioning is that the LED of the 3rd drive, does not always consistently blink with the LEDs for the other drives. Playback of 4K content from the Terramaster, is still fine as always.
I resolved this issue (somewhat) by no longer using the Raid Manager Pro software. I have not had this issue since, but I'm posting in case it can be troubleshot further or help another customer. I'm not eager to sort this out because the RAID Manager Pro Software doesn't really help my use case (aside from creating/destroying an array, or maybe replacing a failing single drive).
My setup has an Intel NUC6i7KYK, and it's running Windows Server 2016, and using a total of five 8 TB Hard Drives in my Terramaster. I have them running in RAID0, and performance has always been great. During the boot process, you can also see text on the screen showing the driver was successfully loaded for the Terramaster, before the Windows loading icon.
When the issue first started happening, I did so much troubleshooting like:
- standard troubleshooting like Windows Updates, reinstalling Windows Server 2016, physically inspecting and cleaning any dust on the Terramaster
- using 3rd party tools like WD Diagnostics, or from SeaGate, which shows the SMART status is fine
- I replaced the drive, and the issue happened again anyway (which sucked, because it was expensive)
- I rebuilt the array, and the issue happened again shortly after
- checked all the same diagnostic software again with the new hard drive, confirmed it was all good, and the issue happened again anyway
so why am I posting? If there's any other way to further resolve this I would be glad to, but I also will absolutely avoid feeling like "welp now this alarm may or may not go off again at any random moment" if that's required to troubleshoot this further.
Also worth mentioning is that the LED of the 3rd drive, does not always consistently blink with the LEDs for the other drives. Playback of 4K content from the Terramaster, is still fine as always.
I resolved this issue (somewhat) by no longer using the Raid Manager Pro software. I have not had this issue since, but I'm posting in case it can be troubleshot further or help another customer. I'm not eager to sort this out because the RAID Manager Pro Software doesn't really help my use case (aside from creating/destroying an array, or maybe replacing a failing single drive).
My setup has an Intel NUC6i7KYK, and it's running Windows Server 2016, and using a total of five 8 TB Hard Drives in my Terramaster. I have them running in RAID0, and performance has always been great. During the boot process, you can also see text on the screen showing the driver was successfully loaded for the Terramaster, before the Windows loading icon.
When the issue first started happening, I did so much troubleshooting like:
- standard troubleshooting like Windows Updates, reinstalling Windows Server 2016, physically inspecting and cleaning any dust on the Terramaster
- using 3rd party tools like WD Diagnostics, or from SeaGate, which shows the SMART status is fine
- I replaced the drive, and the issue happened again anyway (which sucked, because it was expensive)
- I rebuilt the array, and the issue happened again shortly after
- checked all the same diagnostic software again with the new hard drive, confirmed it was all good, and the issue happened again anyway
so why am I posting? If there's any other way to further resolve this I would be glad to, but I also will absolutely avoid feeling like "welp now this alarm may or may not go off again at any random moment" if that's required to troubleshoot this further.