Question re Drive Assignment + Unmountable Disk Issue

[shimee]

I did a search but didnt get the answer as most threads are very specific troubleshooting scenarios.

 

My basic question is does the SATA port determine the drive assignment location in unRAID, or is it something specific to the HDD like a serial or UID type of thing? The reason I ask is I have either coincidental drive failures on sdi, or there is some other hardware fault in play. It's probably been 3-4 drives over 7years. I've swapped the cables out more than once, and today I have another failure on sdi with a <1year old 6TB WD Red. I'd like to simply put that drive onto another SATA port or a port on my SAS card. Both options mean swapping that port with another existing data drive. Is this risky?

 

Thank you.

Edited December 26, 2021 by shimee

[Hoopster]

48 minutes ago, shimee said:

does the SATA port determine the drive assignment location in unRAID,

unRAID tracks drives by serial number.   It can be connected to a different SATA port and it should not matter,  The SATA/SAS port does not determine the drive assignment.  The sdX assignment is determined by the order in which the drives are initialized and may change.  With some controllers, connecting drives to them may alter the way in which drive serial number are reported; however, if the SAS card is one you are currently using and other drives are connected to it, you should be OK.

[JonathanM]

50 minutes ago, shimee said:

something specific to the HDD like a serial

This.

 

sd? designations are subject to change on hardware differences.

 

53 minutes ago, shimee said:

Both options mean swapping that port with another existing data drive. Is this risky?

Once you have a drive failure, to rebuild requires all remaining drives to be read flawlessly to rebuild the failed drive. So yes, if you suspect an issue with a port, it's probably not a great idea to move a drive there to try to rebuild a different drive.

 

Diagnostics might provide a better picture of what's happening.

[shimee]

Thanks for both replies. I guess I should so some more digging first. I ran the reiserfsck on the disk in question and got the below output. This NAS has been out of action for a while, and I've lost track a little of the whole unRAID solution but I read elsewhere I should not be using reiserfs?

 

Ill add diagnostics shortly.

 

tower-diagnostics-20211226-1443.zip

Edited December 26, 2021 by shimee
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[Hoopster]

1 hour ago, shimee said:

I read elsewhere I should not be using reiserfs

ReiserFS is still supported but not recommended due to development and support concerns.  Many now opt for XFS in array drives but BTRFS is also supported.

[shimee]

1 hour ago, Hoopster said:

ReiserFS is still supported but not recommended due to development and support concerns.  Many now opt for XFS in array drives but BTRFS is also supported.

ok thanks so its probably not directly contributing to my issue.

 

Any thoughts on what the output of the check means?

[shimee]

I realise this situation Im facing is a bit different to past. I normally get the Red X but in this case my 6TB data drive is showing as unmountable. I note that my entire Music share is gone, which is really odd as it should span all my drives. That aside, I thought the FORMAT option might be my way out but I believe that writes the blank drive to parity so no way I want to do that.

 

 

Can anyone advise any troubleshooting steps for this?

 

[JorgeB]

You need to run reiserfsck again but using with the --rebuild-tree option.

[shimee]

On 12/27/2021 at 2:49 AM, JorgeB said:

You need to run reiserfsck again but using with the --rebuild-tree option.

Thanks I have done that now, it took 2 days lol.

 

I have a heap of data in the Lost and Found directory. A question I have is would an alternative have been to swap the drive out and have it rebuilt from Parity? Or is the invalid rive content also reflected in parity?

 

I've realised I've lost most of my files. It's awful. I would really like to know what has caused this and whether there is something I should do differently if it occurs again. I always thought if a data drive failed the parity drive was there to rebuild the content of that drive. In this case I did not do a drive rebuild obviously, but Im thinking I should have.

Edited December 28, 2021 by shimee

[JorgeB]

12 hours ago, shimee said:

A question I have is would an alternative have been to swap the drive out and have it rebuilt from Parity?

Parity can't help with filesystem corruption, the rebuilt disk would look the same.

 

Filesystem corruption can be the result of for example an unclean shutdown or some hardware issue, like bad RAM, or just a bit flip in the wrong place, it's important to always have backups of anything important.