NAS device claims drive in a RAID is degraded but S.M.A.R.T. says it is fine

degradednetwork-attached-storageraidraid1

I have a Synology DS213 with two 600GB drives in RAID 1.

Last night the device reported that my second drive had become degraded and that I should replace it. When I ran a extensive S.M.A.R.T. test the results said that the drive is okay.

How can I confirm that the drive is actually bad? Is there any case that the degraded drive is the good one and that it is actually the other drive that is bad?

Best Answer

S.M.A.R.T. can be used as an indicator that there are drive problems but can never be relied upon to indicate that a drive is good. When there is disagreement between multiple diagnostic systems always favour the one that shows the worst results.