Hi everyone,

I'm having a serious issue with my Synology DS218play (purchased in 2018) equipped with two 4TB WD Red hard drives (bought new around 2022). I’m looking for some advice or to see if anyone has experienced a similar issue.

The Problem

For the past few days, I can no longer access DSM, either via QuickConnect or using the local IP address.

• Browsers either hang on a blank loading page or throw a connection timeout error.
• On the NAS itself, both hard drives sound like they are running at 100% activity constantly for no apparent reason.
• Synology Assistant / find.synology.com actually detects the NAS and displays its status as "Ready", but clicking "Connect" leads to the same blank/unresponsive page.

Troubleshooting Steps I’ve Tried So Far

1. Manual Graceful Shutdown: Pressing and holding the power button makes the blue LED blink, but the NAS never actually shuts down. I have to force-pull the power cord to turn it off. Upon plugging it back in, it boots right back into this unresponsive state.
2. Reset Button (4s and 2x4s): Pressed the reset button to reset network settings/DSM, but the NAS does not respond to it at all. No change.
3. Isolating the Drives:
   • Booted with Drive 1 only $\rightarrow$ Same issue.
   • Booted with Drive 2 only $\rightarrow$ Same issue.
4. Testing a Spare Drive: I removed both original drives and inserted a blank drive. The NAS booted up normally and presented the DSM installation screen right away.

My Hypotheses

• Simultaneous Drive Failure: Since a spare drive works, it seems drive-related, but both drives failing or becoming corrupted at the exact same time seems statistically quite rare.
• Failing Power Supply Unit (PSU): I've read online that a degrading power brick can deliver unstable voltage—enough to spin drives and turn on LEDs, but causing read errors, system freezes, and strange behaviors under load.

Has anyone encountered this specific behavior before? Could a dying PSU cause drives to freeze DSM like this, or am I likely looking at a corrupted array / double drive crash? Any tips on how to safely diagnose or recover my data would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance for your help!