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NAS disks have been spinning for years, no idea when to replace

Disks usually fail in clusters because they were bought together and ran together. Waiting until the first one drops means the second often dies during the rebuild.

Try this first

  1. 1Read power-on hours and SMART attributes via the NAS UI or smartctl
  2. 2Plan proactive replacement from four to five years of power-on, not at failure
  3. 3Replace in batches, and intentionally vary suppliers or batches on the new ones
  4. 4Keep a hot spare on the shelf, a Sunday-evening rebuild with nothing to swap in is not a plan

When to bring us in

Multiple disks throwing SMART warnings at once: stop writing and restore from backup onto a fresh array. Pushing through a rebuild on a wobbly array is how you lose everything at once.

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