AgentXXL

Thanks @Benson... I plan to do this. The Mini-SAS SFF-8087 to 4 SATA breakout cables have been ordered and should be here tomorrow (Amazon Prime). I have 4 more of the reverse cable that I could have likely re-wired, but the effort and time aren't worth it so I just ordered new ones. I'm still not sure that the OEM LSI adapter from China is functioning properly, but as mentioned I did order a genuine retail packaged controller and it's on the way as well. Of course there's the need for a bunch of SATA power splitters which I have lots of... the backplanes took the standard 4 pin Molex power connectors so I'll have to use a bunch of Molex to SATA splitters so I can power all of the drives. My ddrescue on the 8TB drive is 80% complete and so far no errors have been found so I may get lucky and just have to copy the data back to the array. I did have one other thought - if the 8TB drive is OK all the way through, I might consider creating a new unRAID configuration once I'm direct cabled to the drives. To my understanding, all the drives that have been members of my existing config (XFS formatted by unRAID) can be re-imported to the new config without losing the data. I'll just have to let the parity rebuild on the dual parity drives. I'll do more reading on this but that seems like the easiest way to get back to a functional array.

Sorry for another lengthy post... let this be a warning to others trying to make use of older hardware. Sigh... as much as I like unRAID, my on-going drive connection issues are driving me crazy. Today I did a scheduled weekly reboot of my unRAID server. Alas when it came back, I had 3 drives missing. I have 2 parity drives, but that only allows for recovery of 2 devices. The array tried starting and appeared to do an extremely accelerated 'parity check/rebuild' for drive 8, one of the 3 that went missing. It took about 20 minutes to 'parity rebuild' 8TB... this was obviously not doing anything as there were no reads or writes being done to it or the rest of the drives in the array. At the end of this 'accelerated' rebuild, Disk 8 went 'green' but the filesystem was shown as not mountable and of course no used/free space was shown. Disk 12 (4TB HGST) and Disk 15 (new 10TB that was still empty) were also shown as unmountable. In the usual spot on the Main tab, all 3 drives were listed as needing a 'format' by unRAID. I did NOT select the Yes box to allow the formatting of all 3 drives. At this point I made sure Disk Settings had the array set to NOT autostart. I powered down and pulled drive 8, which has now existed on 3 separate 8TB drives that are 2 - 3 months old and all test fine. I then attached the pulled drive to my Ubuntu system and it recognized it as 8TB with an XFS file system. Further checks revealed what appear to be intact contents... movies, tv shows, documents, pictures, etc all seem fine. So at current, my unRAID is powered down, and to prevent losing the apparent data on the pulled disk 8, I'm now using ddrescue on my Ubuntu system to copy the 'bad' 8TB to a new 8TB. This should take about 15 hrs. I'll also do the same with the 4TB HGST drive that also went missing. The other drive that went missing was a new 10TB that had been added a few days ago but as yet did not have anything copied to it so it was still empty, but is now shown as missing. The other was one of my 4TB HGST drives that now is just unmountable. I have yet to check the 4TB HGST to see if Ubuntu can mount it. So my 1st steps towards recovery are: 1. Let ddrescue completely copy the 'bad' disk 8 to another new 8TB drive. 2. Use ddrescue to copy the 'bad' disk 12 to another 4TB drive. While these copies complete, I've been researching options for a different case. Alas it seems that with my current budget (I'm on disability income) I'm stuck with either a new Norco or a Rosewill. As much as I'm disappointed in my 6+ year old Norco RPC-4220, it's looking likely that I'm going to take the chance on a new one, though this time I'll go for the RPC-4224 model with 4 more drive bays. I already have the genuine LSI controller on the way so it combined with my new Norco should hopefully rectify the connection issues. I also sourced the Rosewill RSV-L4500 that can take 15 3.5" drives. I haven't purchased it yet but as I can't trust my old Norco RPC-4220, I thinking this could be a temporary solution until I can save up the cash for a new Norco RPC-4224. As the Rosewill doesn't have a SAS/SATA backplane for any of the 15 bays, I'll need to grab some new mini-SAS (SFF-8087; host/initiator) to 4 SATA (target; individual drives) breakout cables. The cables I have are reverse - 4 SATA (host) to SFF-8087 (target/miniSAS backplane). I believe my existing cables to be a 'crossover' breakout that's meant to hookup 4 discreet SATA ports from the motherboard/controller to a mini-SAS backplane. I could look at re-wiring my existing cables but that's too much work. I'm still trying to decide if I should get the Rosewill and new mini-SAS to 4 SATA breakout cables. Since they're only needed temporarily, I may just leave unRAID offline until I can afford the replacement Norco RPC-4224. My other thought was to acquire 4 of the hard drive cages that convert 3 x 5.25" bays to 5 x 3.5" bays - Supermicro, Icy Dock, iStarUSA, Norco all make these but 4 of them cost more than a new Norco RPC-4224. My last option is to temporarily create a new unRAID config that only uses direct cabling (no backplanes), albeit much reduced in capacity. I can transfer a bunch of the drives to USB enclosures and can mount them using UD for the interim. I could create a dual parity unRAID with a 1TB cache SSD, a 512GB SSD UD-mounted for Docker/VM and new 10TB and 8TB drive for data. Sad that i only ever used 8 bays out of the 20 when it was used as my FreeNAS, but the rest of the unused bays are now creating havoc likely due to oxidation and dirt buildup on the connectors for 6_ years. Any thoughts or suggestions, other than stop trying to use my old Norco?

Hot swap is not necessary. Only time I want/need to replace a drive is when it fails or I'm upgrading to a larger capacity. I'm looking at Rosewill cases as an alternative to the Norco RPC-4220. EDIT: Rosewill RSV-L4500 looks to only support 15 drives max. And it looks like they use 3 of the 5x3 drive cages to offer that. Definitely would be cheaper than a new Norco, but alas not enough bays for my existing 17 x 3.5" drives and 2 x 2.5" SSDs (one for cache, one for UD mounted Docker apps/vm). I might have to look at buying 2 more 10TB drives and migrate my data off the existing 1 x 6TB and 4 x 4TB drives. That would drop my drive count to 14 drives so a Rosewill would work.

Well, I'm still struggling with errors from my system... I disassembled it completely to clean the connectors on the backplanes. When re-assembling I tested each port on each backplane while connected to my motherboard SATA controllers. This helped me identify that 5 of the 20 drive bays have bad connections. As mentioned above by @Benson it appears that a number of the errors are due to these bad connections. So a new storage enclosure is a must. I did order the genuine LSI 9201-16i controller as a backup but now I'm thinking that most of my issues are the bad connections on some of the backplane SATA/power connectors. I'm struggling to find another affordable storage enclosure that I can trust. A new Supermicro 24 bay enclosure is way out of my ballpark so I've been watching eBay to see what comes up. Alas even most of those offerings are iffy as there's no guarantee that all 24 bays will still function. I've thought about buying 4 of the 5x3 adapters that 'converts' 3 x 5.25" bays to 5 x 3.5" bays. That would give me the 20 ports of my current system, but cost wise they are still quite expensive - about $85 CAD each is the best price I've seen so 4 of them would be around $350 CAD. They would only see use until I can find an alternate storage enclosure to the Norco RPC-4220. Norco still sells the 20 and 24 bay units but reviews are still iffy as some users have had bad bays right from new. Any suggested enclosures? I've posted in the Hardware forum area in the threads about enclosures, but most of them have dated info for cases that are no longer in production. I've found a few on eBay but again they're used so no guarantee that some ports haven't gone bad.

I was going to post in the Feature Request sub-forum as I saw related topics, but not one specific to this. Not a major issue. but glad to hear it's planned. I definitely need to find the misplaced cable for my UPS so unRAID can at least automate the shutdown process when necessary. Right now I have to do it manually, which isn't a big concern as I'm home most of the time and will get alerted when the UPS is in play. But sure enough, it'll happen when I'm out for an appointment or grocery shopping. I was considering a new UPS too, one with a longer runtime. Plus the batteries in the current unit are 3 years old so they should also be replaced. Since we're in the season of these summer storms, I think that I need to at least get new batteries, if not a new UPS. That's the plan for today now.

Thanks, that's what I expected. Funny that the storm appears to have settled down during the last few minutes. No more lightning for the last 5 minutes. It was giving quite a show with close-by strikes that had little to no recognizable delay for the thunder, so it was pretty close. I live near a power substation that often gets hit during these storms, but looks like this one has passed by. Definitely would be a great feature to allow a pause of a rebuild and power-down, and then resume when it's safe. I'm sure users in hurricane/tornado prone areas would appreciate this too.

I have a drive being rebuilt from parity that's 82% complete. We're having a major electrical storm and even though I have a UPS, the run time is less than 15 minutes. The rebuild estimates another 3 hrs to go. Can I pause the rebuild and power my unRAID down and unplug it from the wall until the storm passes?

The only reason I suspect this 4TB drive is I've moved it to new bays 3 times. And it produces errors no matter which bay it's been in. At least these are correctable errors by the drive/system, but it's still annoying. I've been browsing the Supermicro cases but that means also getting a different controller than my current one, also more expensive. Looks like there are some older SKUs on eBay and Amazon at reasonable prices, complete with dual Xeon motherboards, some RAM and some with a 8 port internal SAS/SATA LSI controller. A full 24 port controller is more than one of these systems, so it'll take a while to save up enough cash so I can purchase. I'll just keep watching eBay and Amazon and see what pops up. I'm sure eventually I'll find a decent deal for the case and controller.

Alas I'm still getting random UDMA CRC errors from a few drives. One of them (an older 4TB) might be the drive itself, but it's almost full so it's not getting new data written to it any longer. That said, I'll replace it soon. I'm also still suspecting the 3rd party LSI controller, so in addition to a new storage enclosure, I'm also considering the genuine LSI controller from an eBay seller in the US. The Chinese vendor has offered to let me return the one from him and will refund my money. I'll likely go ahead with getting the replacement controller. Any suggestions for 20 - 24 bay storage enclosures anyone? I posted in the hardware topic about this, but the threads mentioning cases all seem to focus on standard PC cases with a lot of drive bay options, but rarely have I seen one that even takes 16 drives. I'm not adverse to buying a used enclosure from eBay as long as the seller guarantees all drive bays are functional.

Well, I received the shorter miniSAS cables. I shut the system down after setting the array to NOT autostart. Good thing as it turns out that a few of the disks didn't re-seat properly in their bays on the Norco RPC-4220. After I swapped in the new cables, I applied some contact restorer to the drives before re-insertion. 3 of them were shown as 'Missing', which would have failed since there's only 2 disk failure with the 2 parity disks. I shut down and decided that there might be a better connection if I remove the door catch frame from the drive trays. Sure enough, after removal of the door catch assembly from each of the drive trays, the drives definitely seated deeper into the case and were definitely mating with the backplane SATA connectors. Upon reboot, 2 of the missing drives had returned, but Disk 8 failed again. I did some brief testing and alas it does appear that the bay I've assigned to Disk 8 does have another issue, so for now I'm marking it as bad and just not putting a drive in that bay anymore. Of course that means I also ended up with another 'disabled' Disk 8. Since moving it to one of the other bays, it's recognized and unRAID is rebuilding its contents once again. I thought the disk re-enable process would just do a parity check of Disk 8 but it appears it just went directly into a rebuild of the data from the parity set. Both of my parity drives seem fine, as do all the others. So for now, I'll continue to watch for more UDMA CRC errors. If they continue, I'm going to look into a new storage enclosure and get the genuine LSI 9201-16i controller. Thanks again to all that helped with troubleshooting this. Dale

The rebuild of Disk 8 was successful while connected to the motherboard SATA port. I've now stopped the array, added the new 10TB Ironwolf as the 2nd parity drive, and restarted the array. The parity sync/build for Parity 2 is underway.... 20 hrs to go for dual failure protection to be active. LSI got back to me re: the pictures and although the card looks good physically, the labelling is good except for the serial number. The number is not in their manufactured database and is in a format that's wrong for this series of card. They've given me some instructions and tools that should work from a terminal session under unRAID to do some diagnostics. I will wait for the 2nd parity disk to finish syncing before doing anything else. I also got shipping confirmation on the replacement miniSAS cables and they could be here by the end of this week. Once they arrive I'll shutdown, swap out the cables, disconnect all unRAID disks and do some testing with the controller and the tools that LSI supplied. I have two spare drives that I can use for testing purposes, one 10TB and one 8TB which I can move between bays of the enclosure to run the tests on each of the 4 SAS/SATA connections per backplane. The only ones I'll not bother testing are the ones that are connected to motherboard SATA ports as none of them have ever reported errors. I may use them initially, since they have been reliable and would be a good indicator if they failed while attached to the LSI controller vs the MB SATA. When attached to the MB SATA ports, those drive bays have been error-free - that would almost definitely point to the LSI controller as the faulting unit. When I get my next disability check, I'm going to go ahead and order a new LSI card from the eBay vendor that guarantees a new-in-box unit from LSI. It won't hurt to have a spare even if the existing controller proves to be OK. More to come when I get some of the testing done.

So I sent the pictures to LSI and they said it looks OK, but the serial number isn't in their database and it's not in the right format for this card type. They've given me some things to check and some tools that they think should run under unRAID to help diagnose the connection issues. Regardless, after I took the pictures I re-assembled everything, putting my replacement 8TB drive in a drive bay connected to the motherboard SATA ports. The 8TB drive is about 10 minutes away from being rebuilt using the unRAID parity. Before I do any testing with the tools that LSI provided, I'm also going to add my 2nd parity drive to the array and let it complete its parity calculation so I have 2 drive failure capability. With the potential for drives to drop offline and the random UDMA CRC, read and maybe even write errors, I feel safer having 2 drive protection before I proceed with any testing. I also still have short (11.5" vs 30" current) miniSAS cables on the way and they should arrive later this week. I'm fairly certain I'm going to order a 2nd of the same model controller from the eBay seller that guarantees a genuine, retail boxed card. Alas that'll have to wait until I get my next disability check, so another week or so. At least that gives me time to let the 2nd parity drive get calculated. More to come on my efforts later in the week.

Update: the zero of the 8TB completed with no more UDMA CRC errors and no reallocated sectors or anything else to worry about. I shut the array down and moved the disks so that the 8TB replacement was attached to a motherboard SATA port. I did place the 10TB drive into another bay, but since it's UD mounted and read-only data (movies/TV) for Plex, that shouldn't cause any real issues. While the array was powered down, I also removed the LSI controller and took some pics that I've now sent to LSI to see if they can identify the card. Also, since I had removed all the cables from it, I then booted off a Win10 SSD as the only device attached to the motherboard. From there I proceeded to use the LSI sas2flash utility for x64 so I could download the firmware, bios and nvram files just in case LSI wants to take a look at them. I then proceeded to update the 9201-16i with the latest IT firmware (P20) and the latest bios that came with the firmware package. After verifying it all looked fine, I shut down again and disconnected the Win10 SSD. I then re-connected all of the cables to the motherboard SATA and LSI controller. The boot was normal from what I could see. Once booted to the login screen, I opened the webgui from my main system and assigned the replacement 8TB to the Disk 8 slot. Upon starting the array it proceeded with the start of the parity rebuild for Disk 8. I'll be waiting about 15 - 20 hrs for that to complete. Once it's complete, I'll then stop the array and add the new 10TB Ironwolf (which also finished its preclear/stress test run) and assign it as my 2nd parity drive. I'm sure that will take another 20 hrs or so to build the 2nd parity drive. But for now, the system looks good. I'll try to not add any new data to the array and instead use the cache drive and/or a temporary disk mounted in UD if I need to. I'm attaching the pics of the suspected fake 9201-16i controller, just in case anyone here wants to take a gander. Thanks again @johnnie.black, @Benson and also @Squid who responded in a related post in the Hardware forum. Dale

The new cables will be here later this week. At least they're coming from a vendor that clearly states they're 6G certified. I ordered one spare just in case. As for reverse breakout testing, that's definitely a possibility too. I have 4 more of the SFF-8087 to 4 SATA breakout cables so I could use them if I can figure out a solution to easily power the drives under test. I do have lots of hardware on hand so I'm sure I can make up a decent test rig. As mentioned above though, LSI thinks the controller is a fake based on the serial number. I'll post the photos I take later both here and of course send them to LSI for more help with identifying it (they asked for this). It's still possible it's a re-badged version from IBM/Dell/HP. And yes, I'm going to be very cautious in my testing so as to not introduce more problems than I'm attempting to solve. That's one of the reasons I'm also going to wait until I have the 2nd parity drive online before doing ANY major disassembly or contact cleaning of the backplanes. Having dual drive failure protection in place before doing much else is a bit more of a safety net. Thanks for the suggestions! Dale

The listing is still valid - link below. I have received a response from LSI and they are suspecting it's a fake. I'm just waiting for the zero pass to complete on my 8TB spare before I can shut-down and move it to a motherboard connected SATA port for the rebuild from parity. While the system is shut down, I'm going to take some better pics of the card to send to LSI as it may just be a re-branded card. Based on the serial number I provided them, they think it's a fake until they see the pictures. https://www.ebay.ca/itm/LSI00244-9201-16i-PCI-Express-2-0-x8-SATA-SAS-Host-Bus-Adapter-Card/272695245759 The one that appears to be genuine is this one: https://www.ebay.com/itm/312653733132 As always, thanks @Squid! Dale

Just heard back from Broadcom/LSI and they are fairly certain that the controller is a fake. I'm going to wait until the zero pass finishes on the replacement 8TB spare drive and then I'll shut the system down and take some photos of the card to send back to LSI for confirmation. Looks like I should order the 'genuine' card ASAP.

This thread is a little long and the original post is dated but still hoping to find some answers/suggestions. I have a 2 month old unRAID build based on a Norcotek RPC-4220 storage enclosure. I'm experiencing lots of UDMA CRC errors and suspect some of it may be due to half the drive bays not having anything installed since I purchased the unit 6+ years ago. It ran fine as my FreeNAS, but was only equipped with 10 drives installed, in addition to the 2 internal 2.5" slots I used for SSDs. Now that I've migrated it to unRAID, only the 2 internal slots and the 1st shelf/backplane of 4 SATA drives are connected to the motherboard SATA ports. The remaining 4 shelves/backplanes (16 bays) are attached to a LSI 9201-16i with 30" long SFF-8087 to SFF-8087 miniSAS cables. The LSI card itself may not be genuine and I have a case submitted to LSI asking about it. I've also ordered new 6G certified miniSAS cables that are only 11.5" long. The existing cables (new, came with the card from the Chinese retailer via eBay) are so long they are looped back and forth a few times inside the case. I'm concerned this could lead to cross-talk and other errors so that's why I've ordered the shorter cables. Getting back to the enclosure, I'm concerned that the 10 bays which had nothing connected for 6+ years have oxidation or other connection issues that could also be the source of my errors. I'm prepared to disassemble and clean the connectors with contact cleaner and then apply contact stabilizer like Stabilant 22. This will be after I get unRAID back healthy - one 8TB drive is currently disabled and contents emulated. The rebuild from parity will commence soon, just waiting for a zero pass from the preclear plugin to re-confirm my spare 8TB. I'll also move the 8TB to a motherboard connected SATA port for the rebuild, as I'm still unsure if the LSI controller could also be partly or wholly at fault. As a last resort, I'm thinking of purchasing a new enclosure, which the above backstory explains. However there hasn't been any major enclosure recommendations for quite a while - the thread has been fairly dormant. Does anyone have any current model suggestions for a relatively inexpensive storage case with at least the same 20 drive bays as my Norcotek RPC-4220? Thanks in advance for any suggestions! Dale

I've submitted a case to LSI/Broadcom with the serial number of the card I purchased via eBay from a Chinese retailer. The SAS9201-16i card arrived in a plain brown box in a new anti-static bag, but no official LSI documentation. While the card may be fine, I'm experiencing lots of UDMA CRC errors and occasional other issues that have me concerned that it's genuine. I have a thread in the General support forum regarding these issues: Anyone have any recommended procedure for verifying if the card is genuine, or better, a testing procedure to help verify if the card is working properly and not part or all of the cause of my numerous errors in unRAID. I do believe my Norcotek RPC-4220 may also be part of the issue, but validating the LSI card will help take it out of the equation. Thanks for any assistance! Dale

One other option: replace my 6+ year old Norcotek RPC-4220 with a new storage case. This would help eliminate the issue of oxidation/poor contact that might also be part or entirely the cause of my issues. I'll research the current solutions that might be available but if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. Thanks!

Before I follow the procedure completely, I decided to spend a little more time investigating the cause of the UDMA CRC errors. It looks like my LSI controller might not be genuine, but I'm not able to confirm that yet. I did cancel the parity read check but decided before I try the rebuild on my spare drive, I've decided to run one more zero pass. I know it isn't strictly necessary, but I wanted to confirm the drive is OK. I've been doing the zero pass using the Preclear plugin and just disabled the pre and post read stages. At first I was seeing some more UDMA CRC errors, but no actual read or write errors. And no re-allocated sectors at current. I've got another couple of hours to wait before the zero stage completes. At that time I'm definitely going to shut down and move one of the 10TB UD mounted drives off the MB SATA. Temporarily I'll re-attach it via USB rather than take my chance on more errors from the possibly fake LSI controller. I will of course attach the spare 8TB to the MB SATA for the data rebuild. Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can test the LSI to see if it's actually causing some of these issues? I'm planning to order a genuine LSI card from a US vendor as a backup, but have to wait until I get my next disability payment next week. In the meantime, if there are procedures anyone can recommend, I'm willing to give it a go. Before I try and go back to eBay and/or the Chinese supplier of my LSI controller, I want to try and confirm if it's part of the problem. I'll take some close-up photos so I can try and verify if the card is indeed a fake or if it was just pulled from surplussed servers. It did come in a plain brown box like a lot of generic items, but I've found one supplier in California selling them in the genuine LSI box: https://www.ebay.com/itm/312653733132 Suggestions?

I am seeing the notification regarding UDMA CRC errors... definitely that's one issue that overall I hope to resolve too. At least they aren't too system critical as the system/drive auto-corrects these, but they're a good indicator of connection issues. When they stop, I'll know I have likely corrected the problem(s). Thanks!

Yes, each shelf has connectors for 4 SAS/SATA drives, fed by one SFF-8087 miniSAS connector per shelf. The 1st shelf is connected to the motherboard SATA ports using a SFF-8087 to 4 SATA breakout cable. There are 2 more MB SATA ports, 1 used for a 1TB SSD cache drive and 1 for an unassigned devices SSD for some Dockers and a VM. The other 4 shelves are direct connected to the LSI 9201-16i via the 4 SFF-8087 to SFF-8087 MiniSAS cables. 3 shelves have independent power supplied via different rails of my power supply, with the remaining 2 shelves sharing one power connector/rail from the power supply. The current cables are 30" long each, the new ones I've ordered are 11.5" each. In my past experience, I've always tried to use cables with the shortest required length as cross-talk is far more likely when excess length is looped to make them fit somewhat cleanly in the case. As mentioned the parity rebuild of disk 8 had write errors after about 2TB had been re-constructed. When I noticed it was paused on the Main tab of the unRAID webgui, I instinctively clicked Resume. That didn't resume the parity rebuild of disk 8 but instead continued it as a parity read check. Disk 8 is still shown as disabled and contents emulated. I'm going to assume that because the rebuild failed, the original contents of disk 8 are still what's emulated. I think my best option is to move 1 of my 2 10TB drives that are currently connected to the motherboard SATA to another bay. They are full of data so are essentially read-only devices and are not yet part of the array. They are mounted using the Unassigned Devices plugin until I can migrate their data to the array. I'm not saying that the current miniSAS cables are entirely the cause, but they may play a role. I'm definitely thinking the bigger problems are the bays that haven't had any drives connected to them for the last 6+ years. Oxidation on the SATA connectors for those unused bays is highly probable. But for now, the real issue is getting the array back to not having that 1 drive emulated. So at this point, my plan is to: 1. cancel the parity read check 2. stop the array and unassign the failed disk 8 and remove it from the system entirely 3. insert my spare 8TB into the bay vacated by 1 of my UD mounted 10TB drives 4. assign the spare 8TB to the Disk 8 slot and start the array 5. wait for the rebuild of Disk 8 to complete 6. when the preclear/stress test of the new 10TB Ironwolf completes, stop the array and assign it to the 2nd parity slot 7. restart the array and let the 2nd parity drive build/sync This should allow me to continue using the system until I'm ready to do the major disassembly and cleaning/contact restoration. Does this seem reasonable? Obviously my main goal is to troubleshoot and stabilize the system and reduce the potential for more failures.

I'm concerned about letting the parity read check continue. As I mentioned when I edited the post above, unRAID paused the rebuild of Disk 8 from parity, but when I clicked Resume, it's no longer doing a rebuild of Disk 8, but a read check. As Disk 8 is still showing as disabled and contents emulated, I've got a feeling I would be better off cancelling the read check. Then stopping the array, removing Disk 8 that had a partial rebuild and replacing it with my spare 8TB. Especially since with the write errors, I now may have corrupted data on Disk 8. If I cancel the parity read check and remove this disk, I assume the array will let me replace it with my spare and start the rebuild again from scratch. My only concern is that I see the parity drive has had some writes while this issue occurred, and now I'm uncertain if it's actually valid. My head is spinning on this one.... what should I do?

The drive trays were left in all slots to prevent dust, etc from entering the unused bays, but yes, open air exposure for the SAS/SATA connectors on 2.5 shelves. I'm more than willing to do the cleanup and plan to apply some contact stabilizer like the Stabilant 22 I use for a lot of my audio gear. I just want to wait until the new MiniSAS cables arrive as I'm pretty convinced the current extra-long ones are part of the issue too.

Everyone has their own idea of what qualifies as a successful stress test of a new drive. In the past before using unRAID, I often would use the drive manufacturers test tools for at least one pass. Sometimes though it was as simple as doing a full format (not a quick format) of the drive (when using Windows). For me, I've not had many occurrences of drive 'infant mortality' in recent years so I'm now comfortable with a single 3-phase pass of the pre-clear plugin. With 8TB or 10TB drives, that usually takes up to 48hrs to do all 3 phases. Around 36 hours for the 8TB drives and around 45 hours for the 10TB ones. Right now I'm less concerned about the new drives but more with cabling, controller and potential oxidation on the hot-swap SATA backplanes in my Norcotek enclosure. Half of the 20 drive bays have never had anything installed in them until recently, but having moved from FreeNAS to unRAID, I now have a number of those previously unused bays in operation. They sat for over 6 years with nothing connected so oxidation of the connectors is a real potential issue that I now have to address. First I just want to get my array back to stable without the one drive - for some reason always Disk 8, that keeps disabling after reboots or adding another new drives to the array. I've got a new topic created about 10 minutes ago asking for suggestions on how to proceed. Regardless, I'm not experiencing the same bugs that some are with the pre-clear plugin on 6.7.2. I did have an unRAID VM setup on a Windows system that had an eSATA connection pass-through so that I could use it for pre-clearing, but the Windows box suffered a massive hardware failure and so that option isn't available until I get it back up and running. For now I'm back to doing pre-clears on my 'production' unRAID.