You can go to Storage Manager > HDD/SSD to monitor the statuses of the drives installed in your Synology NAS. If a drive’s allocation status is shown as Not Initialized, it simply means that the drive does not contain system partition (i.e., does not have DSM installed on it) and is not yet assigned to a storage pool.
This article will guide you through the common drive allocation statuses and give suggestions for when certain scenarios arise.
Note:
- For more information on drive monitoring and management, you can refer to this article.
Drive Allocation
A drive’s allocation status shows the status of the storage pool that the drive is assigned to. If you are unsure what a specific status indicates, you can simply hover the cursor over the info icon for more information, or you can continue reading this article.
Drive Partition:
Synology NAS formats drives into the following three types of partitions:
- The system partition is mainly used for storing the DSM operating system, user’s settings, and system logs. Since the system partition uses the mirroring technique (i.e., RAID 1), an identical set of system partition data will be saved on every drive in a Synology NAS.
- The data partition consists of storage pools and volumes, which are mainly used for storing the user’s data and all the installed packages’ configuration.
- The swap partition is mainly used as a temporary memory resource, especially when the system needs more memory resources and the RAM is full.
Allocation Status: Not Initialized
This status indicates:
- This drive contains no system partition, and DSM is not installed on it.
- This drive is not assigned to a storage pool.
- The system partition, DSM, and the storage pool on this drive were removed as the result of a drive/hardware failure or human error.
This status can occur in the following scenarios and we recommend doing the following:
- Scenario 1: The drive is brand new and was just installed in Synology NAS.
If the drive is brand new, you can proceed to use the drive without needing to initiate it. - Scenario 2: Both the system partition and the storage pool were removed from this drive as the result of drive failure.
Please run a S.M.A.R.T. test to further diagnose the drive’s health status. - Scenario 3: The drive was physically removed from Synology NAS and then re-inserted back (hot-swapping).
If no important services are running on your Synology NAS, we highly recommend immediately restarting the system. This will allow Synology NAS to add the drive back to its original storage pool.
Note: If some time has passed and the system has already generated new data, re-inserting the drive back in Synology NAS may result in data inconsistencies and cause the storage pool to degrade. Please repair the storage pool with the re-inserted drive.
Allocation Status: Initialized
This status indicates:
- This drive contains system partition, and DSM is installed on it.
- This drive is not assigned to a storage pool.
This status can occur in the following scenario and we recommend doing the following:
- Scenario: A storage pool was created on this drive but was later manually removed.
Make sure there are no important data saved on this drive first. Then, you can use this drive to create a new storage pool, or you can expand or repair an existing one.
Allocation Status: Normal
This status indicates:
- This drive contains system partition, and DSM is installed on it.
- This drive is assigned to a storage pool.
Allocation Status: System Partition Failed
This status indicates:
- The system partition cannot be accessed.
For example, there might be inconsistencies between the system partition on this drive and the ones that are currently in use. - The system partition has crashed because of drive failure.
This status can occur in the following scenario and we recommend doing the following:
- Scenario: The system is unable to access drive partitions, or the partitions are damaged.
Please refer to this article for troubleshooting steps.