Hello,

 

I know this is a common issue that has been discussed frequently on the forums. However, after reading through those threads, I am still confused as to what my best course of action is. 

 

The situation: recently, a disk in my array was disabled. I am not sure why, but after running an extended S.M.A.R.T. test I noticed the "Current pending sector" attribute had a Raw Value of 96 which, as I understand, could potentially be a cause for concern.

 

I am posting my S.M.A.R.T. report for that disk. 

 

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated. 

SMART_Report.txt

Do you have a spare disk? 

 

Go to Tools-Diagnostics and attach the complete Diagnostics ZIP file to your NEXT post in this thread 

Thank you for your fast reply, trurl.

 

My spare disk is in the mail and will be here in a couple days. I have other spare disks lying around but none that are the same capacity as the disabled one.

 

Diagnostics are attached.

 

Edited February 16, 20215 yr by slops

5 hours ago, slops said:

other spare disks lying around but none that are the same capacity

You can replace with a larger disk but no larger than parity.

The disabled disk is 10TB - the largest disk I currently have on hand is 8TB. 

Let us know when the new disk arrives.

I followed these steps: Stop Array, Unassigned the disabled disk, Restart Array, Stop Array, Reassigned the disabled disk. A parity check/sync completed with 0 errors and the disk is green again. I ran an extended SMART Test and the Current Pending Sector attribute returned to 0. Offline uncorrectable is also 0. 

I have also received my new disk. Should I proceed with replacing this disk or would it be advisable for me to add my shiny new 10TB to my array?

Thanks for your help.

 

 

IF you are not hurting for storage space, I would not install the disk until it is actually needed.  I would test it by exercising it for 70-100 hours.  (I, personally, would use preclear.)  Then set it on the shelve until needed for additional storage space or a disk goes off-line.  (I always replace any disk that goes off-line with a known good replacement.  Then I run diagnostics on the disk to figure out what the problem is.)

15 hours ago, slops said:

A parity check/sync completed

In this case, it was "syncing" the data disk with its results from the parity calculation. In other words, rebuilding the data. You would have seen lots of writes to the rebuilding disk, and lots of reads from all other disks to get the parity results.

@trurl Since it did not throw any errors, do you think the disk is probably fine after the rebuild? Or, would you recommend replacing it anyway?

Post new Diagnostics 

@trurl New diagnostics posted.

rhonda-diagnostics-20210216-1109.zip

Surprised some of the pending sectors didn't become reallocated sectors.

 

Looks good for now.

 

Do you have Notifications setup to alert you by email or other agent as soon as a problem is detected?

@trurlYes. I have notifications set up so I can stay on top of the server status. @Frank1940 weighed in above regarding whether or not I should add my new 10TB drive or not. Do you agree with them or would you recommend just adding it to my array? I'm not hurting for space yet.

 

14 hours ago, Frank1940 said:

IF you are not hurting for storage space, I would not install the disk until it is actually needed.  I would test it by exercising it for 70-100 hours.  (I, personally, would use preclear.)  Then set it on the shelve until needed for additional storage space or a disk goes off-line.  (I always replace any disk that goes off-line with a known good replacement.  Then I run diagnostics on the disk to figure out what the problem is.)

 

I always say each additional disk is an additional point of failure. If you don't need the capacity I would just keep it as a spare.