How To Replace a Failed Drive in Synology NAS - Nothing is more stressful than a failed or failing hard drive in your Synology NAS. Years of data, Thousands of Photos and Videos, all hinge on a successful hard drive replacement, Don't Worry - Synology Makes it easy and painless.
Assumption: Your Synology has one or two drive fault tolerance. Meaning you can simply swap out the bad hard drive for a new one. DO NOT attempt this procedure if your Synology NAS is not set up with at least one Drive Fault tolerance.
Notification: If you took time and set up your Synology NAS Diskstation notifications you will receive an email concerning the failing or failed drive. If not, the first time you log onto the Synology NAS you will receive a Notice. You can also check the health of hard drives using Storage Manager and also be sent emails on a recurring basis on the overall health.
Warning Notice a Volume is degraded
Warning Notice a Volume is degraded aka a Hard Drive has failed.
(1). Once you are notified that a hard drive has failed you can determine which drive it is by clicking "Locate Drive" using the Storage Manager->HDD/SDD, highlight the bad drive then click locate. The drive light on the Synology NAS will blink.
Synology NAS - Locate the bad hard drive
Synology NAS a Volume Repair but first, you must locate the bad hard drive.
(2) Power Down the Synology NAS - Yes you can do a hot-swap but I do not recommend it. I rather have the other drives spin down to reduce vibration as I remove the bad drive.
(3) Once the Synology NAS is powered down slide out the old bad drive and replace it with a new hard drive.
(4) Power up the Synology NAS, you should hear an alarm - Log onto your Synology NAS -Time to start the Repair. Using Storage Manager click Storage Pool then Action ->Repair.
Synology NAS Doing a Volume Repair
Synology NAS Doing a Volume Repair is simple and straightforward
(5) Confirm You wish to do a repair on the selected Volume.
Synology NAS requesting confirmation
Synology NAS Notice to confirm the repair on the selected volume
(6) Warning all data on the replacement drive will be erased! This refers to the replacement drive, not the entire volume.
Synology NAS Warning Notice
Synology NAS Warning Notice that the data will be erased during the process. This is for the NEW drive only.
(7) Once the repair starts it will take several hours to rebuild the new drive with the missing data. You may continue using your Synology NAS during this process if needed.