Hey guys,

 

I've been doing some extensive troubleshooting over the weekend as my 20 drive array had all sorts of possible hardware/cable/hard drive issues. I brought everything back to my previous hardware in an attempt to narrow down the problems. In doing so I have identified a bad hard drive, which luckily I had made a backup of!! So long story short - I want to add one more drive to this array that is an unRAID formatted drive, with data on it. I want to be sure that I don't mess this up as I do not have this data backed up as of now and therefore before I do something that I 'think' is right, I'm going to confirm here.

 

According the the wiki - I believe this is what I want to do: Is this correct??

Here is a procedure provided by Tom of Lime Technology. Do this only if you know your configuration is completely valid, no disabled or missing disks, all disks correctly assigned, and you are sure that your parity drive is good. The data drives do NOT have to be assigned to the same slots as they were previously.

   * Boot unRAID, but DO NOT START the array. Stop the array if it has started. 

   * Make sure that all of your disks are correctly assigned, not disabled or missing. Note: they do not have to be assigned to the same slots they were originally assigned to, except for the Parity drive(!), but it MUST be the same set of drives. 

   * Open a console, either at the unRAID server or in a Telnet or PuTTY window. Make sure you are in the home directory, which is /root. If you are unsure, type cd and press the Enter key, and you will be there. 

   * If you are running any version of unRAID that is PRIOR to v4.5.4, then at the unRAID Web Management page, click the Restore button, after first checking the "I'm sure I want to do this" box. 

   * If you are running unRAID version v4.5.4 or later, then log in as root at your system console or via telnet and type the following command: 

initconfig

   * If necessary, refresh your unRAID Web Management Main page in your browser. 

   * On the unRAID Web Management Main page, this should result in all disk status symbols/balls turning <Blue>. The server status should indicate "Stopped. Initial Configuration". 

   * Now at the unRAID console or Telnet or PuTTY prompt, type this command: 

mdcmd set invalidslot 99

   * The output of this command should be this: 

cmdOper=set
cmdResult=ok

   * Now click the Start button. All the disk status indicators should turn <Green>; the system state should be Started; and there should be a parity check in progress. You can let the parity check complete, or you can cancel it. In most cases, you should let it finish. If you were correct and parity was valid, the parity check will not find any errors. If you were wrong, then the parity check will find and correct the errors, and report them. By the time the parity check reports on the parity errors, they will have already been corrected. 

When you type "initconfig" it will immediately invalidate parity.

 

The second set of steps where you set disk 99 as the invalid diskk is ONLY good if replacing a disk with on with the exactly the same contents. (in other words, putting back into place a loose cable)

 

You should simply type the

initconfig

command, make sure you answer "Yes" to its prompt, with a capital "Y" and lewer case "es", then refresh the main management screen.

All the indicators should be blue.  It should not say anything about clearing the new drive.

then start the array and let it re-calculate parity on the new configuration of disks.

When you type "initconfig" it will immediately invalidate parity.

 

The second set of steps where you set disk 99 as the invalid diskk is ONLY good if replacing a disk with on with the exactly the same contents. (in other words, putting back into place a loose cable)

 

You should simply type the

initconfig

command, make sure you answer "Yes" to its prompt, with a capital "Y" and lewer case "es", then refresh the main management screen.

All the indicators should be blue.   It should not say anything about clearing the new drive.

then start the array and let it re-calculate parity on the new configuration of disks.

 

Thanks Joe. So I did the initconfig command and when I go back to the management page all the disks have been unassigned.... I should just go ahead and reassign the drives, correct?

When you type "initconfig" it will immediately invalidate parity.

 

The second set of steps where you set disk 99 as the invalid diskk is ONLY good if replacing a disk with on with the exactly the same contents. (in other words, putting back into place a loose cable)

 

You should simply type the

initconfig

command, make sure you answer "Yes" to its prompt, with a capital "Y" and lewer case "es", then refresh the main management screen.

All the indicators should be blue.   It should not say anything about clearing the new drive.

then start the array and let it re-calculate parity on the new configuration of disks.

 

Thanks Joe. So I did the initconfig command and when I go back to the management page all the disks have been unassigned.... I should just go ahead and reassign the drives, correct?

I would think so, but I've never done it under 5.0beta6

 

It has a new interface for disk assignment, done on the main page.  I think I remember Tom mentioning that you would need to re-assign the disks, so it sounds about right.  If you want, do NOT initially assign the parity disk.  Get the data disks assigned, start the array with just them, then stop it and assign the parity drive.  It will then calculate parity on the assigned disks.

 

Joe L.

I would think so, but I've never done it under 5.0beta6

 

It has a new interface for disk assignment, done on the main page.   I think I remember Tom mentioning that you would need to re-assign the disks, so it sounds about right.

 

That does, indeed, sound right.  Whereas disk number used to be linked to physical port, it is now linked to drive id/serial number.  initconfig will wipe this information, so you will need to reassign.

 

However, the big benefit of this new method is that you can move the drives around without compromising the configuration.  For instance, I just unplugged three drives from the mobo SATA interface, and plugged them into the HBA interface instead - unRAID started up and ran as though nothing had happened!

Alternatively you can select New Config from the Utils tab on the management page as that too will clear all the drives that has to be reassigned.