[RESOLVED] Start Array without parity

[opentoe]

If someone can give me a good solution without me spending 2k on new drives I'll pick your name out of a hat and donate some funds to your best charity, even if it's your own.

 

 

UPDATE: Ok, I reinstalled the 4TB drive back and unraid sees it. It unfortunately doesn't see it as from the original configuration because when the parity automatically started to build on the new 10TB drive it was getting hundreds of errors on parity drive that died. That 4tb drive hasn't been written to or anything, I just want to set all the drives the way they are now without a parity disk. Then after all the disks are set I can add the new 10TB parity drive and start that re-build. Looks like I'm back to if I should hit NEW CONFIG in the tools section. My start array button is grayed out and tells me too many wrong disks, but I just need to reset the array the way it exactly is now. Is hitting the NEW CONFIG button my solution. I have captured a screen shot of what the array looks like. When I hover over the old 4TB drive a pop-up tells me DEVICE CONTENTS EMULATED, so I think I'm in a good spot but just need reassurance that the NEW CONFIG button is the correct option. I also want to maybe move my drives around so I can fill up that slot 11, which along the line dropped a disk and something happened and it was never replaced but a new parity was built without it so I never bothered it. Or, I can be in a complete jam and screwed and have no way out of this situation. If I'm completely screwed here the ONLY solution I can see is I would need to remove all the drives. Buy enough drives to cover all the space I'm using with the old drives and manually copy each individual drive back onto the "new" array using another desktop loaded with Ubuntu or something, which hopefully can read each single drive. This would be VERY expensive. I would need approx 80TB of brand new drives. It would be wonderful having 20TB drives, since I would only need to have 4 drives and wouldn't need a huge 24bay Norco.

Approx cost:

16TB drives: $1500

18TB drives: $1595

20TB drives: $2000

 

I'd love to get 20TB drives, but jesus, I can build a complete high end system for 2k. Or I can be an ass and buy like a premade synology/nas system from Amazon, use it for copying, then return it before the return period ends. This is really getting crazy and I'd hate to lose data that I've had for about 20+ years. Do I need all that data? Probably not, but I have media, pictures and movies from years and years ago.

 

It seems my parity drive died. What happened was when sliding another drive into the bay it was a very tight fit, so the metal edge of the bay scraped a little piece of the label off the drive and that piece somehow dropped right onto one of the pins on my parity drive. Not knowing this I kept trying to get my server running but eventually the parity drive doesn't even show up. I want to temporarily run the array without the parity drive to get some files I need and take the chance leaving it like that for a couple of days. My START array button is greyed out. So I'm guessing I need to go into the tools section and click NEW CONFIG? There is one caveat. I was in the middle of replacing a bad drive, so the new drive which is a larger drive has no data on it and can't be re-built until another drive comes. Any suggestions on what to do in this odd situation. The older 4TB drive I removed actually still works, so I can install that back in and then use the replacement which is a 10TB to replace my parity. Then at least the system will re-build my parity and I can worry about that 4TB that's going bad after the re-build. Does that sound like a good plan? The last thing I want to do is click a button and have my entire array go pooof.

 

Thanks!

 

Edited April 7, 2022 by opentoe

[trurl]

https://wiki.unraid.net/Manual/Tools#New_Config

[opentoe]

39 minutes ago, trurl said:

https://wiki.unraid.net/Manual/Tools#New_Config

It does not say what will happen if no parity drive is present, and I'm just trying to activate disk4 ( not rebuild it ) from the previous screw up that killed my original parity drive. I'm not looking for bootup utilities that will boot from USB flash drive and be able to read XFS file systems and have the ability to access my network so I can make sure I do not lose any data. Similar to what HIRENS BOOT CD but for Linux though. Anyone know of a HIRENS BOOT CD but for Linux so I can read the XFS file system on each unraid disk. If I had the money I'd love to get 20TB disks, but that kind of cash is out of the question right now. Thanks!

 

ADD:

I did find LINUX MINT, which is an ISO that has all the support to read XFS and network capabilities. I just can't try the NEW CONFIG option since there really isn't a hard explanation what will happen to the array if that option is selected with no parity drive but a disk that unraid "thinks" needs a rebuild but really does not. Is unraid smart enough to realize that when NEW CONFIG is processed? Argghhh.

Edited April 5, 2022 by opentoe

[MAM59]

calm down 🙂

relax 🙂

(hey, in my days we had a nice book called "the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy". It had the big red words "Don't Panic!" on the cover)

 

The most complicated thing you need is the screenshot you have already made and showed above.

If you do "new config" (and tell it to throw away all infos of the old array) you then just go to the array definition and create a new array using the serial numbers of your screenshot and leaving the parity entry free (no disk).

 

Then you can start the array, NOTHING will happen, just your data will reappear and accessible again.

 

This is because there is no data stored at all on the parity drive, its wise to have one in case of a data disk failing, but it is not needed for normal working operations.

Then you can go out, buy ONE new drive (maybe one of those 20Tb ones, to start with. I prefer faster 18TBs...), stop the array and assign it to the parity slot. It will then regenerate the parity  taking a long time.

It will make your data protected again and also opens the door for you for further updates. Someday you can go out and buy the next 18 or evern 20Tb drive and add it as a data disk (or replace an old drive with it)

But there is no time pressure, things can be done with long pauses or even not at all.

(of course, a 20Tb parity drive will be overkill right now, but it will allow you future updates without any stress and long copy orgies. And, dont sit on the money! the parity drive is the speed limit to all data disk. So go out and buy a FAST ONE! Usually those end with -PRO in their names and are more expensive, but you will notice the difference someday. Data Disks can be slower, but a slow Parity will slow down everything!)

 

 

[opentoe]

4 hours ago, Michael Meiszl said:

calm down 🙂

relax 🙂

(hey, in my days we had a nice book called "the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy". It had the big red words "Don't Panic!" on the cover)

 

The most complicated thing you need is the screenshot you have already made and showed above.

If you do "new config" (and tell it to throw away all infos of the old array) you then just go to the array definition and create a new array using the serial numbers of your screenshot and leaving the parity entry free (no disk).

 

Then you can start the array, NOTHING will happen, just your data will reappear and accessible again.

 

This is because there is no data stored at all on the parity drive, its wise to have one in case of a data disk failing, but it is not needed for normal working operations.

Then you can go out, buy ONE new drive (maybe one of those 20Tb ones, to start with. I prefer faster 18TBs...), stop the array and assign it to the parity slot. It will then regenerate the parity  taking a long time.

It will make your data protected again and also opens the door for you for further updates. Someday you can go out and buy the next 18 or evern 20Tb drive and add it as a data disk (or replace an old drive with it)

But there is no time pressure, things can be done with long pauses or even not at all.

(of course, a 20Tb parity drive will be overkill right now, but it will allow you future updates without any stress and long copy orgies. And, dont sit on the money! the parity drive is the speed limit to all data disk. So go out and buy a FAST ONE! Usually those end with -PRO in their names and are more expensive, but you will notice the difference someday. Data Disks can be slower, but a slow Parity will slow down everything!)

 

 

Well, I ran the NEW CONFIG without adding the new 10TB parity drive and unraid was smart enough to see all parity was good. Got all drives back, just not using parity now. I did not want to make myself get into the 18TB realm of drives, but as you suggest I may look into getting one for partity and another one to kick out a couple smaller 2TB drives Id o not need anymore. I see lots of Seagate IronWolf Drives. I know I will not break speed records, but  would like to do what you mentioned. Get a fast 18TB model. Are Seagate drives ok to buy these days? Growing up, working in the IT LAND we have piles 6 to 10 feet high of consumer Seagate drives. Western Digitals were among the most reliable.

And thank you.

 

[MAM59]

Can't comment about Seagate. Most of my drives are Western Digital (Red-Pro).

 

I dont understand your posting right now (maybe this is the usual "english is not my natural language" problem?) You have rebuild a new config but without any parity right now?

 

If so, UNRAID was not thinking that parity is good, it simply sees: "there is no parity".

And because parity is optional, there wont be any complains. Sooner or later you should add a parity drive again. If you never plan to use really big ones, 10Tb maybe sufficient for a long time for you.

 

Personally I have made rather bad experiences with 10Tb drives (of different brands). Those days when they came up, they did focus on size and not on speed. So I had to throw out some of them last week because they were slow as a dog...

 

Also, some manufacuteres are cheating on the customers, they offer the same drives with the same labels but use different recording mechansims, one drive is fast, the other one is crawling like a snake. And you dont know what you get when you order... So an advice "take this one!" can also be wrong.

 

 

[opentoe]

38 minutes ago, Michael Meiszl said:

Can't comment about Seagate. Most of my drives are Western Digital (Red-Pro).

 

I dont understand your posting right now (maybe this is the usual "english is not my natural language" problem?) You have rebuild a new config but without any parity right now?

 

If so, UNRAID was not thinking that parity is good, it simply sees: "there is no parity".

And because parity is optional, there wont be any complains. Sooner or later you should add a parity drive again. If you never plan to use really big ones, 10Tb maybe sufficient for a long time for you.

 

Personally I have made rather bad experiences with 10Tb drives (of different brands). Those days when they came up, they did focus on size and not on speed. So I had to throw out some of them last week because they were slow as a dog...

 

Also, some manufacuteres are cheating on the customers, they offer the same drives with the same labels but use different recording mechansims, one drive is fast, the other one is crawling like a snake. And you dont know what you get when you order... So an advice "take this one!" can also be wrong.

 

 

I did not add the 10TB parity drive in there because I purchased an 18TB Ultrastar WesternDigital to be my primary tomorrow. Since I have a couplw 2tb and a couple 4tb drives I want to just knock them all out by getting just one more 18TB drive. I've ALWAYS had good luck with HGST, Western Digital Black, Ultrastar. This model also has 5year warranty a 2.5mtbf failure. And it will be spinning 24/7. So I'm pretty picky with what kind of drives I get for my array. It's also pumped with and sealed with Helium, but that of course can be a marketing tactic. I'm just happy I have the array up, with a 10TB ready for use and I install the 18TB parity drive. These 4TB size drives are slow. Using DISKSPEED docker, I can see they are slowing down the system, while the 8 and 10TB drives are keeping up.

Western Digital Data Center Drive - for use 24/7

[MAM59]

the slow data drives now are the minor problem. You will certainly exchange them someday, if its only because of your electricity bill, or if one or more fail over the years.

But with a slow and small parity drive you are crippled for many years, because money that was put on a fast data disk is wasted then.

So, take your crash now as an opportunity and invest into the future. As I said, i can't comment on any manufacturer, I only used WD drives for decades now (but this does not mean that the others are bad/too expensive or something, its just my lazyness and the 5yrs warrenty. I usually through out the disks before the warrenty ends (and there are often people lurking in front of my house in the hope that I may want to get rid of old ones once more :-))) the "help" me that the wastebin does not run full :-)))) )

 

I usually keep the last generation here in the shelf and dispose the semi-last. Thats why there are so many free 10Tb Helium Drives laying around here currently. (and greedy people already gathering in the garden...)

 

[trurl]

Sounds like you plan to replace some drives with larger drives, and then possibly shrink the array to get rid of some other smaller drives.

 

Is that correct? Do you know how to proceed? Seems you may not have a good grasp of how Unraid parity works.

[MAM59]

it is really simple (too simple maybe?)

If the array has a working and valid parity, you can simply pull out any datadrive (only ONE!!!), wait until UNRAID complains (or just stop the array), put in a new drive (supposly a bigger one) and assign this to the slot of the now missing one.

Then start the array and have some cups of coffee or maybe a good night of sleep...

Depending on the amount of the previous drive UNRAID will some time to regenerate the old date onto the new drive.

For normal RAID systems the story would be over now, the reminders of the new drives are lost.

But UNRAID just contiues and zeros out the rest of the new drive and adds the free space to the array.

You dont have to do anything, its automatic. It takes quite a lot of time, but during this time the data is still usable normally.

 

The only drawback is that you can only do it one by one. So replacing 4 drives at once is not possible. If you can't wait that long you have to think of a different strategy.

 

(Freeing up more old drives with one bigger drive is not too complicated too. Replace the 1st one as described above, wait until finished. Then use the midnight commander from the UNRAID shell and move over folders from the other drives you want to clean. Once they are dataless, you can stop the array and pull them out. You may need to delete the Config again like you did just now. Reassign the new array without the drives you want to get rid off)

 

But more common for the small purse is to buy a new disk now and then and to replace a single drive only.

 

[opentoe]

1 hour ago, Michael Meiszl said:

it is really simple (too simple maybe?)

If the array has a working and valid parity, you can simply pull out any datadrive (only ONE!!!), wait until UNRAID complains (or just stop the array), put in a new drive (supposly a bigger one) and assign this to the slot of the now missing one.

Then start the array and have some cups of coffee or maybe a good night of sleep...

Depending on the amount of the previous drive UNRAID will some time to regenerate the old date onto the new drive.

For normal RAID systems the story would be over now, the reminders of the new drives are lost.

But UNRAID just contiues and zeros out the rest of the new drive and adds the free space to the array.

You dont have to do anything, its automatic. It takes quite a lot of time, but during this time the data is still usable normally.

 

The only drawback is that you can only do it one by one. So replacing 4 drives at once is not possible. If you can't wait that long you have to think of a different strategy.

 

(Freeing up more old drives with one bigger drive is not too complicated too. Replace the 1st one as described above, wait until finished. Then use the midnight commander from the UNRAID shell and move over folders from the other drives you want to clean. Once they are dataless, you can stop the array and pull them out. You may need to delete the Config again like you did just now. Reassign the new array without the drives you want to get rid off)

 

But more common for the small purse is to buy a new disk now and then and to replace a single drive only.

 

I was able to work through all my issues. The only bit I was very worried about if is using NEW CONFIG would it inherit an older drive even when just previously a parity was canceled. It was a hit or miss situation. So I chose no parity drive. Put back my old 4TB drive which was emulating. As stated, NEW CONFIG does not rebuild, but since that disk 4 was old news I was hoping unraid being smart enough to bring that 4TB drive back into the fold with no losing anything. All started from a tiny piece of paper stuck on one of the pins of my parity drive which destroyed the data on it. I'm just glad I did not erase my old 4TB, if I did that then with parity out and a drive I would have lost the array. I can grasp the concepts, been using unraid since 3.0, but I usually come here and ask questions for support and more motivational purposes than anything. Using since version V3 and haven't lost a file. Not bad. So I took Michael's advice (I think that's what his name was) and bought a 20TB Ultrastar Western Digital. It has 2.5mtbf and a 5 year warranty to be my final parity drive. Once that part is over, I can start removing these 4TB drives and bring the array down to a better manageable size and not 16 drives spinning up all the time. Oddly one of the SATA connections on one of the backplanes is dead. Won't start the drive, nothing. I removed all the drives, re-seated all the backplanes, SAS connections, cards and power lines, but it does seem one SATA connection is dead on the third backplane. I was checking out some NAS boxes online and for the price I found one that I may invest in. It uses a backplane, so I have all the hardware here already. It would take 2 weeks to arrive and is a lot smaller than the case I have now. Going from a 24bay to a 16bay. Check it out.

 

16HD bay with included backplane. Backplane is one piece.

Edited April 6, 2022 by opentoe

[opentoe]

2 hours ago, trurl said:

Sounds like you plan to replace some drives with larger drives, and then possibly shrink the array to get rid of some other smaller drives.

 

Is that correct? Do you know how to proceed? Seems you may not have a good grasp of how Unraid parity works.

Yes, this is exactly what I'm in the process but a couple unexpected things happened that could have been catastrophic and lost my 80TB array. Back on track now. Doing a pre-clear on that new 10TB while I wait for that 20TB tomorrow. And I don't know what Amazon did but they are sending me another 10TB Elements External ( which I shuck - they are 6Gbps 7200rpm ) for free because I complained there was no packaging. They just threw it in a plastic bag, no padding.

[opentoe]

5 hours ago, Michael Meiszl said:

the slow data drives now are the minor problem. You will certainly exchange them someday, if its only because of your electricity bill, or if one or more fail over the years.

But with a slow and small parity drive you are crippled for many years, because money that was put on a fast data disk is wasted then.

So, take your crash now as an opportunity and invest into the future. As I said, i can't comment on any manufacturer, I only used WD drives for decades now (but this does not mean that the others are bad/too expensive or something, its just my lazyness and the 5yrs warrenty. I usually through out the disks before the warrenty ends (and there are often people lurking in front of my house in the hope that I may want to get rid of old ones once more :-))) the "help" me that the wastebin does not run full :-)))) )

 

I usually keep the last generation here in the shelf and dispose the semi-last. Thats why there are so many free 10Tb Helium Drives laying around here currently. (and greedy people already gathering in the garden...)

 

You had some bad experiences with the WD Helium drives? This will be the third I own. I think my first one is in it's 4th year. The year I think they came out. You would think that those type drives are much more better sealed and would have fewer problems, but just about anything can happen during transit. Here is a WD ad for their Helium drives. All marketing! Just like I have helium in my tires to make my car lighter!

Western Digital Helios Drives

 

Another rant that makes me feel fuzzy inside I grabbed the Helium model -vs- WD RED

Edited April 6, 2022 by opentoe

[MAM59]

Just now, opentoe said:

You had some bad experiences with the WD Helium drives?

not really "bad", they are just too slow for my favour. Dunno what they do, but they are not getting higher than 150MB/s or so (the 18TB "gold" is about 260MB/s, a very noticable difference)

but it mainly depends on your needs. I have extremely huge files (>100Gigs) to move around daily, so size is essential but speed does matter too (especially since I gave up smoking some 20yrs ago :-))) ).

 

Your case looks good, almost identical to the new one I've bought a few weeks ago. 16 cages in 3U too. But I only have 6 slots filled (with all 18Tb and 1 10 TB, 2*2TB NVme and 512G NVMe for write cache only. I use 4 * 4 Port SATA Controllers, 2 on the Mobo, 2 in 1x Slots. The Disks in the array are spread among all controllers and all slots (so there is always enough empty slot for better airflow. I dont think this beast will ever be filled up to the limit.

https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B00O4G71XU/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

 

[opentoe]

1 hour ago, Michael Meiszl said:

not really "bad", they are just too slow for my favour. Dunno what they do, but they are not getting higher than 150MB/s or so (the 18TB "gold" is about 260MB/s, a very noticable difference)

but it mainly depends on your needs. I have extremely huge files (>100Gigs) to move around daily, so size is essential but speed does matter too (especially since I gave up smoking some 20yrs ago :-))) ).

 

Your case looks good, almost identical to the new one I've bought a few weeks ago. 16 cages in 3U too. But I only have 6 slots filled (with all 18Tb and 1 10 TB, 2*2TB NVme and 512G NVMe for write cache only. I use 4 * 4 Port SATA Controllers, 2 on the Mobo, 2 in 1x Slots. The Disks in the array are spread among all controllers and all slots (so there is always enough empty slot for better airflow. I dont think this beast will ever be filled up to the limit.

https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B00O4G71XU/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

 

How are you achieving 260MB/sec? Not using Gold as a parity drive, correct?

[MAM59]

7 minutes ago, opentoe said:

How are you achieving 260MB/sec? Not using Gold as a parity drive, correct?

sure. but i can't really say how fast a single drive is. writing is done to the cache that is ahead of all shares, so its blazing fast (about 1,1Gb/s)  I dont see the Mover that crawls over the night.

And reading back later on is not really speed important. 99% of the files are videos that are played back. So speed is not the factor here.

Fast Data is stored on NVMes, so usually here the Parity would be the limit. But, cheap trick: the nvmes are part of the array, so they also can use the fast cache for writing. The mover is slow here because it needs to create the parity, but if you read back the file later on, you dont need the parity, therefore getting full read speed later on too.

 

So in my daily work I dont see the parity speed limiter at all. This is now a 10Gbit/s LAN, I will update to 40 or 100 Gb/s someday. Just waiting for new LAN cards that use less PCIe lanes but in a more modern fashion...

 

(the 260 is what parity check shows me when it starts in the outer regions. it goes down to about 190 at the inner regions. When I added a 10TB WD-Red-pro the speed dropped down to 190-130, took almost 10hrs more than without)

 

[opentoe]

9 hours ago, Michael Meiszl said:

sure. but i can't really say how fast a single drive is. writing is done to the cache that is ahead of all shares, so its blazing fast (about 1,1Gb/s)  I dont see the Mover that crawls over the night.

And reading back later on is not really speed important. 99% of the files are videos that are played back. So speed is not the factor here.

Fast Data is stored on NVMes, so usually here the Parity would be the limit. But, cheap trick: the nvmes are part of the array, so they also can use the fast cache for writing. The mover is slow here because it needs to create the parity, but if you read back the file later on, you dont need the parity, therefore getting full read speed later on too.

 

So in my daily work I dont see the parity speed limiter at all. This is now a 10Gbit/s LAN, I will update to 40 or 100 Gb/s someday. Just waiting for new LAN cards that use less PCIe lanes but in a more modern fashion...

 

(the 260 is what parity check shows me when it starts in the outer regions. it goes down to about 190 at the inner regions. When I added a 10TB WD-Red-pro the speed dropped down to 190-130, took almost 10hrs more than without)

 

I know exactly what you mean, and that is why I don't even use mover or ever spin the drives down. I just removed a drive that had 9years on it and it was working great, just small and sluggish. Companies have been making hard drives for such a long time now they pretty much capped out that type of technology, unless the sectors on the platters get smaller and smaller to the microscopic level but I doubt that will happen at all. When you think about it, we have to wait a very long time before we can even afford 100TB SSD drives. $40,000 right now. So in 20 years I'll be dead or could care less about computers at that age. Would be nice though. Running unraid with just 2 single SSD drives. All the trim issues resolved, heating issues resolved, all the issues resolved and you have a 10 year warranty 100TBSSD. Beautiful.

 

I'm actually getting a big HD deposit tomorrow. My 18TB, my 10TB parity that had a piece of paper stuck to the pin is %20 done on a pre-clear, and then Amazon somehow sending me another 10TB because I complained the way it was packed.