Parity hard drive dead or am I doing something wrong?


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Hi I am relatively new to Unraid and am currently trying out the trial version to see if I should get a license to use as a NAS as a few docker containers. I have tried starting my array of 2 disks several times at this point but the parity check (or parity copying) always fails at 70.2%. I found a few other threads that suggested changing the SATA port on the MB and changing the cables but even after doing so it seems like the disk still fails. I will attach logs in this post for anyone that could see if they  can find any information in them. But to my understanding the parity HDD is dead? I am going to try to run the Preclear disk Utility over night to see if it does anything different.

I also have 2 simpler questions. 
Does Unraid usually take a long time to reboot and it seems like it has an effect on the amount of time my BIOS takes to boot, is this normal? (probably takes 5 minutes in comparison to my workstation which usually takes 2 sec.)

Had some trouble with the automatic formatter when starting the array. Had to use Fdisk in the terminal to change the partition type and then it could format and mouint the drives, is this intended?

Thankful for any help,
Kung-Fubick

nas-syslog-20210116-2254.zip

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4 minutes ago, Kung-Fubick said:

parity copying

Copying parity is not something that is done except during the Parity Swap procedure. I assume that is not what you are attempting to do.

 

5 minutes ago, Kung-Fubick said:

Had some trouble with the automatic formatter when starting the array. Had to use Fdisk in the terminal to change the partition type and then it could format and mouint the drives, is this intended?

Not sure what you mean by any of that. Should not be necessary to go to the command line for these routine management operations, and in fact, not recommended since you are likely to do something wrong. Also never heard of anyone having this problem. Where did these disks come from?

 

7 minutes ago, Kung-Fubick said:

attach logs

Instead of syslog, we always prefer complete diagnostics, which contains syslog and many other things.

 

If possible before rebooting and preferably with the array started
Go to Tools - Diagnostics and attach the complete Diagnostics ZIP file to your NEXT post in this thread.

 

 

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My lingo might not be up to speed on the subject but I will try my best to explain. 
By parity copying I meant the following:
I had an array with 1 HDD in it that contains data.
I stopped the array.
I added a parity drive.
Now when starting up the array the parity disk has to write to copy the original HDD data.

Bought the disks from an old colleague, told me they were previously unused. (3 TB Seagate x2)

I will attach new diagnostics, note that these are after stopping and starting the array. If this makes a difference I can try and run the parity check tomorrow again and then post diagnostics.

nas-diagnostics-20210117-0015.zip

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1 hour ago, Kung-Fubick said:

lingo might not be up to speed

1 hour ago, Kung-Fubick said:

Now when starting up the array the parity disk has to write to copy the original HDD data

Parity is built from the parity calculation by reading all the data disks then writing the calculated parity to the parity disk. While it is true that with a single data disk the result is a mirror, in the more general case of multiple data disks, parity is not a mirror (and definitely not a backup in any case), and I'm pretty sure that even in the case of a single data disk, it isn't really doing a copy, but is instead doing the parity calculation and writing the result to parity.

 

1 hour ago, Kung-Fubick said:

try and run the parity check tomorrow

You can't "check" parity until you have "built" parity.

 

Parity disk still not connected.

 

Check all connections, SATA and power, both ends, including splitters.

 

 

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Just now, trurl said:

You can't allow untrustworthy drives in your parity array. In order to reliably rebuild all bits of a disk, it must be able to reliably read all bits of parity PLUS all bits of all other disks.

Yes, I realized that but checking if that disk works instead of my real parity disk would tell me something atleast

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1 hour ago, Kung-Fubick said:

So the Seagate IronWolf ST4000VN008 64MB 4TB would be better?

Possibly, but not a sure bet. At the very least you need to run a long SMART test on any drive before you use it with Unraid.

 

Just because a specific model has a high failure rate doesn't mean all drives of that model are prone to early failure, just something to keep an eye on. I would trust one of those 3TB models that passed a long SMART and a preclear cycle more than I'd trust that 4TB if it failed SMART.

 

Drives must be fully tested for Unraid, no point using drives that are bad or untrustworthy.

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1 minute ago, jonathanm said:

Possibly, but not a sure bet. At the very least you need to run a long SMART test on any drive before you use it with Unraid.

 

Just because a specific model has a high failure rate doesn't mean all drives of that model are prone to early failure, just something to keep an eye on. I would trust one of those 3TB models that passed a long SMART and a preclear cycle more than I'd trust that 4TB if it failed SMART.

 

Drives must be fully tested for Unraid, no point using drives that are bad or untrustworthy.

Thank you, I will keep this in mind. I will run smart tests on my current disks over night. 
Thing is one of the disks (the one i'm trying to use as a parity disk) keeps dissapearing time to time. I did find that it failed a mandatory smart command so I guess that disk is quite dead.

Will probably end up getting 2 new HDDs within a month. 
 

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