Terastation stuck in checking Array 1

[JohnW63]

One of your three TeraStations has gone into permanent " Checking Array 1" mode. All the drive lights are green. The info light is orange. I can't get to it via the web page anymore. It's been this way for months. I've just taken it out of the rotation of backup drives. Is there a utility or process to rebuild the array or even put the TeraStation back to square 1 and start over ?

Model TS-XE8.0TL/R5

[1000001101000]

There are a few things you can try. My initial assumption would be that one of the drives is going bad in a way that is resulting in really slow reads rather than outright failure causing the array check to stall seemingly forever. If you pull out all but one drive and try booting it back up it should come online and complain about missing drives and arrays being degraded/failed but at least it would be up for troubleshooting (try different drives if the first turns out to be the bad one).

 You can try restoring factory settings on the device, though that won't address an issue with the array/drives:
"To reset the TeraStation to its factory default settings, power on the unit and hold down the reset button for five
seconds"

If you're unable to get it into a working state (or at least EM mode to re-install the firmware) you can load the firmware on some new/blank drives by

1. Extracting the needed boot files from the firmware updater:
https://buffalonas.miraheze.org/wiki/Extract_Boot_Files_from_Stock_Firmware

2. Boot into EM mode by directly loading the files onto a new drive:
https://buffalonas.miraheze.org/wiki/Restoring_Stock_Firmware_without_TFTP

3. Install the firmware using the firmware updater in Debug mode:
https://buffalonas.miraheze.org/wiki/Enable_Debug_mode

[JohnW63]

The boss got it to go into Emergency Mode, but I think it was by removing drives and formatting them.  We tftp'd the latest images on. I ran the updater and I guess it worked because it no longer can find a TerraStation that needs updating. However, it's still in EM and when I watch the screen, it doesn't show a firmware version and the NAS Navigator can see it but there are just dashes where the firmware version should be. It does get an IP from out network, but if I reboot it, were back in Emergency Mode.  We have two other matching TerraStations that are in the backup rotation. Is there a way to copy anything from one of the working ones to this one ? The Web interface does not work on the one we are messing with. I suspect it was on a drive, before it got formatted.

[JohnW63]

UPDATE:

After trying NUMEROUS time to see if it would update the firmware again, and having it say " No Terrastations that need an update can be found " , I hit the Update button again , after going to lunch. The darn thing started updating and having progress bars I never saw before. I think it rebooted the NAS a few times and said Firmware Updated. It looks to be up and ready to use now. I have no idea what changed. Did it need to be on our network and not locally attached to laptop for some serious time to be seen and read it needs Firmware ? No clue. We had tried both connection types.

Is there a HD health test we can run to find out why it went into " Checking Array 1 : forever ?  Maybe formatting all the drives turned out to be a GOOD idea.

[AugeK]

To be on the safe side, buy a set of new drives and replace all at a time.
You will need to re-install the firmware then as you did before.
Do this in the network because your DHCP server will support finding the unit.

If you'd like to keep the old drives, format them on a Windows computer one by one with NTFS (no quick format). Sometimes this MAY help overcoming issues but it will take ages.