This one isn't specific to Unraid that I can tell, but I am stuck in a bit of a spot.

 

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I had a longer post typed out, but I'm sure that wasn't helping, so I'll move it to a reply to this post.

 

After swapping out a SATA card for a SAS HBA, I have 5 drives showing up as missing.  They do not show up with new IDs or in the unassigned devices list; they are just not detected by the expansion cards (or the motherboard if I plug them in directly).  They are detected on another computer if I put them in a SATA dock.

 

I was in the middle of a parity check using the plugin that splits it across several days.  It was paused before I powered down the server.  I didn't really think about it at the time.  I saw in another thread that swapping to a SAS HBA would cause the disk IDs to change, but that didn't seem to happen with my setup.  My array started back up and put all of the correct disks in the proper places.

 

Is there anything that I can check to figure out why 5 relatively new drives went from working to missing?

Edited March 2, 20224 yr by b01000100
clarification and shortening

To note, there are no glaring errors showing up in the log, and I didn't post any diagnostics because the drives themselves just don't show up.  If I connect them directly to the motherboard, they do not show up in the BIOS.  I didn't figure diagnostics would help much.

Here is the original post if you want to look at a dissertation of my problems:

 

Spoiler

A couple of days ago I planned on shutting down my server to replace a SATA card with a SAS HBA.  When I was ready, I had already stopped the array and clicked on the Shutdown/Proceed buttons.  Everything powered down as expected.  

I put the SAS HBA in, hooked everything up, powered on the server, and found that several of the drives were in a missing state.  I fiddled around with everything for a while and couldn't get anything to work.  I decided to swap out some SATA power cables.  That fixed it right up.  I left the server on until yesterday when I powered it down to button it all back up after my little expedition.

 

As soon as I had it all buttoned up and turned back on, I was presented with another set of missing drives.  Some were the same, but some were different.  I went back through all of my troubleshooting steps.  I replaced all of the data cables, all of the power cables, moved cables around to different ports - but none of that got me anywhere.  I then unhooked all of the drives and all expansion cards.  I left only the video card, memory, and my two parity drives hooked up.  After powering the system on, I went into the BIOS to see what was detected.  Only one of the two drives shows up.  If I swap the cables between them, the same drive shows up in a different spot.  That is, the first parity drive will not show up. 

 

The drive spins up if I give it power.  It shows up just fine in a SATA dock on another computer.  I have StableBit Scanner on the computer I hooked it to, and it shows that everything is fine with it.  SMART shows green checkmarks across the board in the report from StableBit Scanner.  I did the same with a couple of the other disks that were showing as missing.  I just can't get them to be recognized by my motherboard or any of the expansion cards.

 

I put everything back in the original hardware config in the case, but no dice.  I don't have another CPU/motherboard to swap everything to, but I did try replacing the power supply with no luck.  All of the drives are less than 6 months old (I know age doesn't really matter here, but they have low hours on them and were all precleared twice before adding them to the array).  I currently have 5 drives missing. 

 

Did I just get really unlucky and have all of them stop on me at once or would anyone have any ideas on what else I could try?  The only thing I did before losing them all was straighten up wires.  I didn't pull on any wires too terribly hard or torque on anything.  I used some small velcro strips to tidy things up.  Before my troubleshooting efforts, I didn't even connect/disconnect anything.  I can't think of anything specific that stands out to me as something that would have caused this.

 

There was nothing I couldn't stand to lose on the array, but I obviously don't want to lose any of it.  I don't know if there's anything to this, but thinking back on it, I realize I was in the middle of a parity check.  I have the plugin that allows you to break parity checks across several days.  I was 1/3 of the way through, but it was paused at the time of the shutdown.  Could that have put the drives in some sort of state like this?

 

Again, sorry for such a long post.

 

(I didn't post diagnostics, as the drives won't even show up in the BIOS of the Unraid server)

 

Were these shucked drives?

Yes they were.  Every one of the 5 missing drives was shucked.  Other drives that are still working are also shucked.  The two parity drives were bought and shucked at the same time - one still works and the other is missing.

5 minutes ago, b01000100 said:

Yes they were.  Every one of the 5 missing drives was shucked.  Other drives that are still working are also shucked.  The two parity drives were bought and shucked at the same time - one still works and the other is missing.

Did you change the way you are powering them ?

No.  I had them all hooked up using SATA power splitter wires (1 connection to 5).  I've tried several splitter cables that I have.  The ones that are on them right now are brand new out of the packages (not that they could be bad, but still).  I've also tried powering them directly from the cable coming from the power supply.  I also tried swapping power supplies.  Think it might be the 3.3v pin thing with some shucked drives?  I've been using these for a while now with no issues.

 

They spin up if I put them in a SATA dock, so I didn't think to mess with masking the pin.  I can give it a try if that is what you are thinking.

Well holy hell.  I just grabbed one of the drives that was failing, masked off that pin, and the motherboard picked it right up.  What in the world?  I haven't tried all the others yet.  I mean, I have had this array set up for a while and have been using it with no issues.  I didn't even think to try it because they have all been working.

 

Assuming this is the issue for all of them, maybe I was just lucky and had them on a power splitter that was somehow letting them work?

Hot damn, it worked for the parity drive too!  I am going to keep masking the pins off and seeing what happens.  

 

I just wanted to say thanks to you guys for helping me.  I'm all set now after masking all of the 3.3v pins.  I really appreciate your time.