DS-7716NI-M4 - Anyone had hard disk issues?

[JB1970]

I'm wondering if anyone has had disk issues with the DS-7716NI-M4?

I installed one in late November (firmware 4.63.020) and installed four 6TB Toshiba S300 drives.

Jan 31st I arrived to do some additional work and found the recorder showing a 'HDD Error' and going into the storage configuration HDD3 and HDD4 were both missing with the logs showing that a week previous HDD3 had failed and exactly one hour later HDD4 also failed. The NVR was rebooted and the disks were 'found' and everything was up and running again.

Feb 7th I've had a call with a further HDD error for HDD4. Power on time for the disks is only 67 days. I've done a full database rebuild and the disks pass a short self test. I notice that although all 4 disks pass the short self test in SMART settings, HDD4 seems to freeze on 10% progress before eventually reporting 'succeeded'; the others all progress 10, 20, 30% etc before reporting succeeded. I'm not sure whether to be considering a bad batch of Toshiba disks or a dodgy NVR.

 

[johnfitzy]

I'm not sure whether to be considering a bad batch of Toshiba disks or a dodgy NVR.

If it was your own home system, I suppose you could try swapping disk 1 with disk 3 and disk 2 with disk 4 to help determine if it is the drives or the NVR... maybe not practical at a customer site.

 

[Phil]

It's odd that they are failing, then passing - that makes it hard to diagnose and be sure of the cause.

As we have not seen any particular correlation with M-series NVRs and HDD issues, then I'd be inclined to snapshot bad test results for any of the HDDs and get your supplier to replace them (I doubt that you will face any resistance).

I wish I could recommend a particular surveillance HDD brand with any confidence over the others.
For years we offered WD Purple HDDs ONLY - BECAUSE they were reliable (for many years we experienced a very low failure / return rate).

Our current 'lived experience' is that:

• We experienced such an increase in WD Purple HDD failures (DOA and within warranty) recently, that we finally decided to add Seagate SkyHawk HDDs and give those a try.
• We have offered Toshiba alongside WD for a while now, I'm aware that a Tosh HDD was DOA to a customer last week

Because of the above we have discussed this recently with Hikvision, and they express no particular preference for any of the brands.
NB Hikvision offer their own-branded SSDs, but no HDDs.

 

[JB1970]

If it was your own home system, I suppose you could try swapping disk 1 with disk 3 and disk 2 with disk 4 to help determine if it is the drives or the NVR... maybe not practical at a customer

It's odd that they are failing, then passing - that makes it hard to diagnose and be sure of the cause.

As we have not seen any particular correlation with M-series NVRs and HDD issues, then I'd be inclined to snapshot bad test results for any of the HDDs and get your supplier to replace them (I doubt that you will face any resistance).

I wish I could recommend a particular surveillance HDD brand with any confidence over the others.
For years we offered WD Purple HDDs ONLY - BECAUSE they were reliable (for many years we experienced a very low failure / return rate).

Our current 'lived experience' is that:

• We experienced such an increase in WD Purple HDD failures (DOA and within warranty) recently, that we finally decided to add Seagate SkyHawk HDDs and give those a try.
• We have offered Toshiba alongside WD for a while now, I'm aware that a Tosh HDD was DOA to a customer last week

Because of the above we have discussed this recently with Hikvision, and they express no particular preference for any of the brands.
NB Hikvision offer their own-branded SSDs, but no HDDs.

I’m actually at the site now. HDD4 was the issue originally. I’ve just swapped them around so that 1, 2, 3, 4 are now connected as 4, 3, 2, 1 (as @johnfitzy and my supplier suggested). Interestingly on a short self test yesterday HDD4 passed but seemed to freeze a long time at 10%. Now I’ve moved it to position 1, that same disk is stuck at 40%. That suggests to me disk or SATA cable. I hate jobs like this!

 

[alfaclvi]

Could this have something to do with Support for IOT hard drives? Everything new they bring, causes problems somewhere else

 

[alfaclvi]

I also should not feel safe by their S.M.A.R.T. settings and Bad sector detection. They are back to July 2007 !!!!!!

 

[JB1970]

Swapped out the SATA cable but the self test still froze at 10%. There was a used WD Purple 6TB drive from the previous recorder so I've swapped the suspect disk with that for now. The supplier tech support recommended Lsoft KillDisk to ascertain what's wrong (though they will happily replace it regardless)

Previously I always used Seagate Surveillance/Skyhawk either from the CCTV supplier or Amazon. Recently I've been mainly using the Toshiba S300 as not only are they a little cheaper, the spec are the same (sometimes better) than the competitors and the warranty is 5 years. I've not had many HD issues in NVRs and DVRs over the last 10 years; they've tended to be a slower failure with the odd brief 'recording exception' when they were on the way out rather than a total fail.

 

[alfaclvi]

I think a PC is the best way to check. But I cannot find a specific one diagnostic for Toshiba

 

[alfaclvi]

Toshiba Storage Diagnostic Tool｜Toshiba：Personal Storage

 

[Phil]

I also should not feel safe by their S.M.A.R.T. settings and Bad sector detection. They are back to July 2007 !!!!!!

Can you elaborate on this please?

Where do you see this info?

Thanks

 

[alfaclvi]

Hi @Phil
This is a presumption and probably or surely not true
But till a few days ago, Configuration in iVMS and/or browsers and plug-in was back to Windows 7.
Only the latest iVMS is a true Microsoft Edge DevTools

 

[JB1970]

The used WD Purple drive that was installed temporarily and formatted lasted a full 1 hour. What a wonderful day I'm having

 

[JB1970]

Hmmm. One of the two disks was returned to the supplier and I've replaced the two with Seagate Surveillance from another supplier. Feedback from the suppliers testing of the returned disk is:

"S.M.A.R.T. Appears normal and tested without errors on a computer with testing software. Seems to be unstable in a CCTV recorder however."

That doesn't give me a lot of confidence with the Toshiba S300's. I've installed a fair few smaller 2 to 4TB versions. These were the first 6TB ones.