A couple of days ago my server started acting weird. Last weekend I wanted to start a VM just to find out, that the VM menu is gone from the WebUI. Also no running Docker containers were shown. When accessing the Docker menu or the Tools, it just kept loading.

 

There was the info, that a new version is available. The server was running for about a year. So I thought I restart and then install the new version.

 

But the server never came back up.

 

When I connected a display I was greeted with some message like "please plug in a disk with a working OS and restart". So I searched through the forums and found out that my flash drive might have an issue. So I plugged it into my notebook and checked dmesg and found a couple of these errors:

 

[32236.970776] critical medium error, dev sdb, sector 0 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 1 prio class 0
[32236.970796] Buffer I/O error on dev sdb, logical block 0, async page read
[32236.970851] ldm_validate_partition_table(): Disk read failed.
[32236.975692] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_OK cmd_age=0s
[32236.975701] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 Sense Key : Medium Error [current]
[32236.975706] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error
[32236.975711] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 CDB: Read(10) 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00
[32236.975714] critical medium error, dev sdb, sector 0 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 1 prio class 0
[32236.975730] Buffer I/O error on dev sdb, logical block 0, async page read
[32236.979372] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_OK cmd_age=0s
[32236.979384] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 Sense Key : Medium Error [current]
[32236.979392] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error
[32236.979399] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 CDB: Read(10) 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00
[32236.979404] critical medium error, dev sdb, sector 0 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 1 prio class 0
[32236.979419] Buffer I/O error on dev sdb, logical block 0, async page read

They appear only on two sectors though (0 and 30031744). But I cannot mount the drive anymore. And I cannot run `fsck`. So I guess the drive is gone, right?

 

Of course I have no working backup of it (because I'm an idiot).

 

I checked the wiki and found this article, that says I should install it to a new flash device and put my registration key on it (I still have that one at least...). For the array and cache it says to ensure no data loss after the server is booted, you will need to make sure you assign each disk to the array / cache exactly as it was prior to the failure. Fortunately I did physically mark the disks with their position in the array (Parity, Disk 1, Disk 2, ...). With these markings and the serial numbers I hope I can get it back up. The two cache disks were mirrored. I have no idea which way around. But I hope this does not really matter.

 

When I touched the flash drive it was pretty hot. Which might be (one of) the reason(s) the flash drive failed? It is a 16GB SanDisk Ultra Fit USB 3. I thought about getting a SanDisk Cruzer Fit, which is USB 2.0, as I read they are not getting as hot as the USB 3 ones. And since the OS is pulled into memory anyways, the speed should also not really make a difference.

 

Is there anything else I need to consider? Besides creating regular backups next time...

 

Thanks in advance!

 

PS: The link in the bottom to the Wiki article "Replace Registration Key" is wrong. It leads me to https://wiki.unraid.net/UnRAID_6/Changing_The_Flash_Device when I think it should be https://wiki.unraid.net/Manual/Changing_The_Flash_Device.

Edited February 18, 20224 yr by razr
solved

This is exactly what I did. I re-installed the OS on a new USB flash drive, booted with it and renewed my registration key. Afterwards I recreated the array in the same configuraion I had before and everything worked out fine!