Synology DS415+ catastrophic failure...suspect very poor power design on mainboard.

[jhwang107]

I have a Synology DS415+ that just recently went down...Catastrophically , it no joke. All 4 HDD's went out. Totally defeats the purpose of having RAID with 4 HDD's even.

Anyway to cut the story short, when I got this unit, I had endured a very suspicious shutdown for no reason. Since I had data on the HDD's so I didn't bother to spend too much time checking.

This time around, after getting back my RMA HDD's (all 4 of them), I started to check the system HW.

Sure enough I was able to reproduce the symptom I observed very early on. So here it goes:

1. Power UP DS415+
2. Insert HDD to Bay1 (the very left)...wait for the LED to show
3. Insert HDD to Bay2... wait for the LED to show online
4. Insert HDD to Bay3

Now the system will immediately shutdown ... no warning.

Tested again in a slightly different config:
1. Powerup with Bay1 and Bay2 inserted, (Bay3 and Bay4 empty)
3. After power up and running stable, insert HDD to Bay3

The system will immediately shutdown...no warning.

OK... check this out. I tried something else
1. instead of inserting HDD to Bay3 as in previous step... I insert HDD to Bay4 instead (leaving Bay3 empty). no shutdowns.
2. Followed up by inserting HDD to Bay3 (so it's now fully occupied).... no shutdowns. what da heck...


The HDD's I used are WD40ERFX 82.00A87

I would be interested if anyone else experienced the similar thing. All this is pointing to a poor hardware power design on the mainboard. In which case the NAS would turn into a HDD killer as I have endured.

Heck my desktop PC is on 24 hrs too and it's not like this.

-JH

 

[JaredDM]

I own several Synology units ranging from a little DS212 to a big old DA1813+ and I've never had an issue with it killing drives. I'm wondering if you have a short-circuited pin in one of the SATA power connectors that's causing the issue. I'd probably try shining a flashlight in there and see if everything looks normal. Also if you're in a dusty environment it's possible that some conductive dust material is causing a short circuit.

 

[jhwang107]

Everything seems quite normal. Nothing stuck in connectors.

What's strange now, is that now I cannot reproduce the sudden shutdown anymore. And I have no idea what's up with this thing.

The 4HDD failing at the same time really troubles me. I find it hard to believe it's a simple HDD issue.

If all 4 HDD's can go out all at the same time frame, my direct instinct tells me that something is going on with the NAS unit, not the HDD's. I mean, come on, it is like the equivalence of saying 2 disk redundancy is no good.

Just couple days ago someone else on the Facebook group is also complaining of his RAID-6 + spare all dying at the same time. With very similar symptoms I observed.

Synology support have been less than helpful so far...

 

[jhwang107]

It has been quiet, I'll just reply to myself in case anyone else might find similar issues.

1. RMA'd the unit and got a new DS415+ back.
2. This time around, I only inserted two WD RED 4TB HDD's.
3. about 3 months later, again... both HDD's failed together.
4. double checked SMART test using PC and confirmed HDD to be failing
5. yet again... the Health LED's show green.
6. I do run weekly FULL SMART check

There has to be something terribly wrong in the Hardware design. The reliability is not there.