Hi all,
Looking for guidance on best steps to proceed.
Over past couple of months, I noticed one of my drives having a very slowly creeping UDMA CRC error count. For the drive in question (Disk 3, WD80EZAZ), things had seemed to stabilized around a UDMA CRC error count of 29 for sometime. The drive in question is a shucked drive from a WD elements enclosure using Kapton tape over the 3rd pin trick, but working flawlessly for the past 5 years or so. Last weekend I had time to open the box and take a good look at things and double check connections as well as the Kapton tape. Everything appeared to be ok and so just double checked connections. Been monitoring every day and the count hasn't moved. Since I also had the box open last week, I upgraded some ram, installed a new HBA card, and introduced another drive (also shucked). Not sure it's relevant, but providing in the outside chance the context matters. Everything running smooth and stable for rest of the week.
Fast forward to yesterday morning where I found out the drive (Disk 3) had been disabled, seemingly as a result of multiple failures to write. I opened up the box. Inspected the drive and tape again and decided to swap out the corresponding sata cable. I have run a short SMART test (passed) and an extended test (also passed, results attached). Drive is showing as healthy (with the exception of the [still only] 29 UDMA CRC errors). I've reviewed all the threads on the same topic and I THINK it might be ok to rebuild my drive upon itself, but I wanted to seek some guidance first. I'm ok to swap the drive with the new one if I have to since it is also been running for 5 years. Since taking the array down yesterday when I noticed the issue, I have yet to try and start up the array again.
My questions:
1) Given the diagnostics and extended test results, would you recommend a rebuild upon self?
2) I've seen comments in other threads, like in this one (https://forums.unraid.net/topic/136397-device-is-disabled-contents-emulated-what-is-my-next-move/ ), that it would be better to maybe replace with a new drive instead of rebuild in case something goes wrong (see Itimpi's comments on July 22, 2023). Let's say the rebuild of a new drive doesn't work, how does having the old drive help? Maybe I can still try and get the contents off safely if I put the drive up and things are up and running and emulated?
3) Since I'm more fussed about the data/downtime than the cost, I'm considering as a first option to just replace the drive with a new one and rebuilding and monitoring. Then monitoring/taking a better look at the drive in question and re-purposing (cold storage, backup, or re-introduced as another drive into the array) if signs continue to point to external factors instead of the drive.
Thanks in advance for any guidance, suggestions, or clarifications you can provide.
tower-diagnostics-20250419-0700.zip
tower-smart-20250418-2332.zip