Replace drive and now I lost data

[Bizquick]

I'm trying to figure out why this happened. But I replaced a drive in my array and let the party rebuild. but it didnt restore the data.

I think I must have not replaced the drive correctly. What is the correct processes?

 

[JonathanM]

If parity is valid when the drive is replaced, the rebuilt drive will be identical. How long ago was your last parity check with zero errors?

 

Why did you replace the drive?

 

Tools, diagnostics, download the zip file and attach it to your next post in this thread.

[trurl]

Did you format the disk, perhaps because it was unmountable? Format is NEVER part of rebuild.

[Bizquick]

My parity check takes like 1.5 days to run. So I do my parity check 1 time every 2 months.

And it was good as of may 1st. 

I got 4 new 6TB drives from work and I want to swap out the 4TB drives I have. 6TB is still under the size of my 1st parity drive at 8TB and my second is 6TB. So I figure I should be fine.

 

I guess I'm not swapping disks correctly. I just hot swapped it and I see now I guess I need to bring the drive up and clear it first. I'm to use to a true raid system. I guess I need to learn more on how this works.

I'm restoring my data from my back up server I backup weekly to. I also figured out I can put the old drive in and mount it in unassigned devices. But I don't have enough knowledge to figure out how to copy the files from there to the array.

 

I guess for next drive I need to format the new drive first anything else I need to do?

 

 

[trurl]

No point in hot swapping, since Unraid will not do anything at all with the replacement disk until you assign it, and you can't assign it with the array started. Since you have to stop the array anyway better to not change any disks under power.

 

No need to preclear a replacement disk, and pointless to format a replacement disk since its contents will be completely overwritten during rebuild.

 

What you DO NOT want to do is format a disk in the array. Format writes an empty filesystem to the disk, updating parity just like any other write operation. Rebuilding a formatted disk just results in a formatted disk.

 

My guess is that you formatted the disk in the array for some reason, but you haven't told us what you did exactly, and you haven't given us your diagnostics so we can see if we can figure out what you did.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Bizquick]

That makes sense I thought I needed to format it cause it that button came up. now I see what you mean. s I think I understand what to do next time.

 

[ChatNoir]

1 hour ago, Bizquick said:

I think I understand what to do next time.

Just to be on the safe side, you might want to come and ask for guidance on the forum it you are in this situation again.

[Bizquick]

thank you all for your help. Looks like 2 of the 4 drives I got were bad. So I won't be doing anymore replacements. Unless I get RMA's on these other 2 drives.

But thank you again.

[trurl]

1 hour ago, Bizquick said:

2 of the 4 drives I got were bad

How did you determine that? Connection, cable, controller issues are much, much more common than bad disks.

[Bizquick]

Well I I plugged them into my desktop PC 1 and a time and tried to bring them up in some low level format tools and both times the drives wouldn't come up. also got some loud clicking almost right away when I would try to access the disc in any disc utility software.  but I got a 100 days left for warranty so I'll try to use it.