johngalt

Update: Got the new controller in and installed. Parity is currently rebuilding, but 15 minutes in and no errors, so that's a good sign. Once parity rebuild completes, how do I go about checking for corrupt data?

Cool. I’ll go with the intel Motherboard and the i5. I’m still looking at cases but leaning towards the Antec and I’ll keep an eye on temps. I’m thinking 16gb of RAM should be fine. For a PSU, I’m looking at a Corsair 650w unit. It has 8 SATA connectors without having to add any extra cables. I’m thinking this is more than enough for 8 drives. Only other thing is the networking card. I remember some compatibility issues back from my first build where I had to have a separate NIC. Are those a thing of the past and I can use the motherboard for Ethernet now? Any issues with my build so far? Probably going to put my order in later today.

Even with the three fans in front of the bays? It looks like I can just leave the front panel open for extra airflow if needed. It’s going to be sitting in a media closet, so not too concerned over how it looks.

Background: I've been using unRAID for about ten years now. My first server started out as a media server and as I started having extra storage space, I started using it as additional data storage. Now that I have a whole slew of extra HDDs sitting around, I thought I would build a second server and use Server 1 solely for Media again, and move all my data storage to Server 2. This will free up a lot of space on Server 1 and delay upgrading HDDs for while, which should result in overall cost savings factoring in the new build. I'm looking at putting in 8-10 6TB drives right now. It will be used for data storage and nothing else. It looks like a lot has changed with hardware compatibility over the last decade, so I just want to run a few options by and make sure everything should work with unRAID. Either way, I'm looking at this Antec P101 Case. It will hold 8 HDDs and has one additional 5.25" bay which I could convert to a 9th drive if needed. Ideally I was looking for a 10 drive case, but didn't really see any good options in the $100 range. https://www.newegg.com/black-antec-performance-series-atx-mid-tower/p/11-129-242 Option 1: AMD Motherboard: https://www.newegg.com/msi-pro-b550-vc/p/N82E16813144547?Item=N82E16813144547&SoldByNewegg=1&quicklink=true CPU: https://www.newegg.com/amd-ryzen-5-4600g-ryzen-5-4000-g-series/p/N82E16819113744?Item=N82E16819113744&SoldByNewegg=1&quicklink=true Option 2: Intel Motherboard: https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813162014?Item=N82E16813162014&quicklink=true CPU: https://www.newegg.com/intel-core-i5-10400-core-i5-10th-gen/p/N82E16819118135?Item=N82E16819118135&SoldByNewegg=1 The Intel option is using the LGA1200 socket. For my use case, I didn't really think I need the newer LGA1700, but can look into those options if recommended. I'm just looking for a simple build that can be assembled and with some basic set up, just plug and play. The AMD looks to be a little cheaper, but wanted to look at both options and will go with whichever has the best ease of use. Any recommendations are appreciated.

Thanks for all the help. Went ahead and ordered the card and SFF8643 cables. At this point, are these just false errors due to the controller or is there a possibility my data was corrupted? Once I get the new card up and going, I just need to rebuild parity and then go through the normal drive replacement for the new 18tb drive?

No other controllers on hand, but I can order one. The controller is from the original build about ten years ago. Would this be the best replacement? https://www.newegg.com/lsi-9300-8i-sata-sas/p/N82E16816118217 What's the process for changing the onboard SATA ports?

More errors, even with the new drive removed tower-diagnostics-20230428-1307.zip

ok, and just to make sure "Parity Disk content will be overwritten" is expected and won't lead to any data loss?

ok, I'll pull that and RMA it. In the meantime is there any harm in putting the old drive back in? It's giving me the message "The replacement disk must be as big or bigger than the original.". I assume I need to do a New Config and preserve all. Am I going to mess anything up in doing that? Or should I just wait for the new drive to come in? We're going to be out of town for the next week anyway, so it won't be a big deal to just wait it out. I was thinking I'd like to get the old drive in to confirm the problems do lie with the new drive.

Powered down (had to force it again as the server got hung up stopping the array again) and restarted. SMART report for new disk attached tower-smart-20230428-1011.zip

ok, I just started the data rebuild and almost immediately got more errors. Logs attached tower-diagnostics-20230428-0927.zip

Updated prior post. Array is up and running. New diagnostics attached. What should my next steps be? My new disk was 90% through step 5 of the preclear when everything crashed. Should I replace that drive with the old one and run a parity check before continuing? I wouldn't have normally had the array up and running with a missing disk, but my wife is nursing and wants to watch Friends, so I made an exception. tower-diagnostics-20230428-0803.zip

ok, swapped a couple drives. Disk 9 is now found and Disk 13 is missing. Looks like whatever is attached to that port is showing up as missing. Would this be the root cause of why there were errors across the array this morning, or is this just collateral damage and there's more to it? Edit: Apparently I forgot to plug the SATA cable back in. Plugged it in and all discs are up and running now

I had to force shutdown. I don't have any extra cables but I unplugged them all and plugged them back in. Now Disk 9 is missing from the array. I shutdown again and checked that drive and restarted and it's still not found. New diagnostics attached tower-diagnostics-20230428-0712.zip

I was in the process of upgrading a hard drive when I woke up this morning and had 921 errors across the array. I had pulled the drive, replaced with the new one and was preclearing that when this occurred. It also seems to be stuck, as I went to stop the array and it just says "stopping". I can't shutdown or restart at this point. On the dashboard, my processor is also running at 90%, which I've never seen before. Diagnostics attached. tower-diagnostics-20230428-0517.zip

I have extra drives, so I'll just go ahead and replace.

I finished converting all the drives to XFS (except the last one since I was shrinking the array for a cache drive). I ran a parity check before doing additional maintenance and it reported 64 errors on Disk 6. No sync errors though. I haven't had any of these for years, so is there anything I need to do other than replace Disk 6 and rebuild parity? tower-diagnostics-20220312-0552.zip

Title says it all. I've recently converted all my drives from ReiserFS to XFS and want to add the Cache drive while I'm doing maintenance. I currently have a 15 drive server with 14 in the array and 1 for parity. Right now drive #14 is empty so I want to remove that from the array and add in a 500gb SSD for Cache. I assume this will use the new config tool, but I'm not sure of what's involved.

First disk completed successfully using unBalance and onto disk 2 now. Will probably take a break after that to ensure that everything is up and running so I can broadcast the Super Bowl throughout the house on Sunday. This might be a stupid question, but as long as there are no files left on the disk, can I assume the files were transferred successfully? No risk of an error happening during the transfer and the file got moved, but corrupted during the process? I also noticed that my appsdata folder was spread across all 14 of my disks. My plan for this is to move everything from each disk's appsdata folder to a single disk and then add each disk to the exclude list for appsdata as I go. Theoretically it would then be consolidated to a single disk, and every other disk is on the exclude list. I'll add a SSD for a cache drive after everything is xfs and then move the folder over to that. Does this sound like a good way to go about that? From someone who is a casual "set it and forget it" user, this forum has been a great help. As you can tell, I hardly do any maintenance on my server and am getting caught up on a lot right now. I'm really appreciative of all the help you guys provide.

https://wiki.unraid.net/index.php/File_System_Conversion

It's in the wiki for the file system conversion: "Share based, no inclusions, preserving parity Note: only for systems with no share inclusions and exclusions, that is, all shares are allowed to use all data drives Use rsync or unBALANCE or MC to save all of the data on a ReiserFS drive to the other data drives; then format it with XFS, and repeat on another data drive, continuing until all drives are converted Advantages: simpler to understand, no drive swapping Disadvantages: some planning and space management needed; small shares may be scattered across the drives; some data may be moved multiple times, slowing down the overall speed; normal system operation is possible"

It's been a bumpy road but I now have three new 18TB drives in my server and am ready to start the conversion from ReiserFS to XFS. I currently have (7) 6TB, (5) 10TB, and (2) 18TB drives, plus an 18TB parity drive. The two 18TB drives are already XFS and I have 27TB of free space for moving files around. I've read through this thread and the wiki for the process. I was planning on using unBalance to move the files from disc to disc. I just had a question about the following: "small shares may be scattered across the drives; some data may be moved multiple times". Is this anything I need to worry about? If something gets moves multiple times, what do I look for? I was also thinking about just mapping each drive in windows and using File Explorer to move the files from one drive to another and was wondering what the downside and risk would be with this method?

Hmmm, can't start the array with the 6TB drive now that there's been an 18TB in its place. "The replacement disk must be as big or bigger than the original". I can think of two options at this point, but I'm obviously an amateur when it comes to this: 1) Use unbalance to move the data off the 18tb drive and onto another drive in the array and then format the 18tb drive as XFS. 2) Format the 18tb drive as XFS and then move the data onto the drive from the 6tb drive that's been pulled. Would one of these be a better solution than the other, or is there a better method I'm not thinking of?

That was going to be my next question since my plan was just to convert anyway. So replace the new drive with the original one, I assume this will now need to rebuild the drive again? Would it be safer to replace with a different 6tb drive so I can keep the original data intact in case of a worst case scenario? Then use unbalance to move the data off the 6tb disk, put the 18tb drive back in, format as XFS, and continue from there?

ok, finally up and running. Ran filesystem check and got the following: I've read the instructions for what to do next, but not really sure what happened with this drive. Preclear didn't have any errors and it wasn't until I put this drive into the array that there were errors. Is the best course of action to continue with the rebuild-sb command? What will happen to the data on the disk during this process? Would putting the original drive back in and exchanging the 18TB drive for a new one be an easier solution?