Problems during initial parity scan

[D-Zyne]

Hi All - total newbie here and I know there have been plenty of posts already on this topic but I've done what I've read so far to no avail.

Started using Unraid Pro about 2 months ago (v 6.10.3) on a 4-5 year old HP PC I had laying around. I have 1x 18Tb, 2x 14Tb, and 2x 3Tb Western Digital drives with another 18Tb as my parity backup. I managed to get the array all up and running, used Midnight Commander and Crusader and Plex docker for weeks with no problems. But when I try to do my initial parity scan, it keeps freezing at 11.8% and I need to hard reboot manually. I did a memtest for 24hrs with no errors, I see no XMP options in my BIOS, and don't seem to have any drives set to IDE as per some of the other posts I've read.

I'm not entirely certain which log/diagnostics files are required - I've attached the tower-diagnostics  zip but if more info is needed am glad to provide it if someone lets me know what.

Thx in advance

R

 

tower-diagnostics-20220801-2103.zip

Edited August 1, 2022 by D-Zyne

[trurl]

15 minutes ago, D-Zyne said:

my parity backup

Parity is NOT a backup in any sense.

[trurl]

Diagnostics are after reboot, so only contain current syslog, which shows nothing from before reboot.

 

Setup syslog server, try again, and get diagnostics while the problem is occurring.

[trurl]

USB NOT recommended for array or pools for many reasons.

[trurl]

22 minutes ago, D-Zyne said:

don't seem to have any drives set to IDE

00:1f.2 IDE interface [0101]: Intel Corporation 82801JD/DO (ICH10 Family) 4-port SATA IDE Controller [8086:3a00] (rev 02)
	Subsystem: Dell 82801JD/DO (ICH10 Family) 4-port SATA IDE Controller [1028:027f]
	Kernel driver in use: ata_piix
	Kernel modules: ata_piix
00:1f.5 IDE interface [0101]: Intel Corporation 82801JD/DO (ICH10 Family) 2-port SATA IDE Controller [8086:3a06] (rev 02)
	Subsystem: Dell 82801JD/DO (ICH10 Family) 2-port SATA IDE Controller [1028:027f]
	Kernel driver in use: ata_piix
	Kernel modules: ata_piix

 

[D-Zyne]

8 hours ago, trurl said:

00:1f.2 IDE interface [0101]: Intel Corporation 82801JD/DO (ICH10 Family) 4-port SATA IDE Controller [8086:3a00] (rev 02)
	Subsystem: Dell 82801JD/DO (ICH10 Family) 4-port SATA IDE Controller [1028:027f]
	Kernel driver in use: ata_piix
	Kernel modules: ata_piix
00:1f.5 IDE interface [0101]: Intel Corporation 82801JD/DO (ICH10 Family) 2-port SATA IDE Controller [8086:3a06] (rev 02)
	Subsystem: Dell 82801JD/DO (ICH10 Family) 2-port SATA IDE Controller [1028:027f]
	Kernel driver in use: ata_piix
	Kernel modules: ata_piix

 

I stand corrected...but I couldn't see this in my BIOS settings.  Seems I need to spend a little more time finding my way around it.....

Thx and will let you know if anything changes

[D-Zyne]

8 hours ago, trurl said:

Parity is NOT a backup in any sense.

You're right- sloppy word choice

[trurl]

Are any of your disks using USB, or are they shucked? They seem to identify themselves as external USB drives.

[D-Zyne]

They’re all external USB drives- my HP chassis had 8x USB ports, 6 rear and 2 front 

[trurl]

5 hours ago, D-Zyne said:

They’re all external USB drives- my HP chassis had 8x USB ports, 6 rear and 2 front 

Then it is true that none of your disks are using the IDE interface. USB is worse than that.

[D-Zyne]

Well that's discouraging as I was certainly led to believe that my setup was rather typical. So my only option now is to do a full manual mirror backup of each drive?

[trurl]

9 hours ago, D-Zyne said:

my setup was rather typical

We always discourage USB for array or pool so I don't know where you got that idea. USB is allowed, but usually doesn't work well.

 

Very few try to use USB for array or pool disks because of many problems with specific USB implementations. Disconnects cause disks to be out-of-sync and kicked out of the array, no SMART information to allow Unraid to monitor disk health, inconsistent disk identifications so Unraid can't keep track of disk assignments, nonstandard disk sizes that can make it impossible to use a disk for replacement, probably other reasons I don't remember at the moment.

 

On the other hand, some have reported being able to make it work with their specific hardware, though they may have some issues to work around. Don't see many posts from those users so could be it just seems to work OK for a while.

 

If you don't use parity there is nothing to be in sync with so drives won't be kicked out when they disconnect.

 

And if you have a USB disk in a single disk pool outside the array then problems with it won't affect other disks.

 

Best approach is to use a computer with SATA or SAS connections for each disk.

[D-Zyne]

You certainly present a thorough  argument, thanks for that. I guess for now I just make do with what I’ve got and build it up to a proper server over time. Appreciate all your efforts 

 

[trurl]

21 hours ago, trurl said:

If you don't use parity there is nothing to be in sync with so drives won't be kicked out when they disconnect.

 

And if you have a USB disk in a single disk pool outside the array then problems with it won't affect other disks.

 

[kizer]

You could always run the USB drives using the Unassigned Devices Plugin, but they will not be part of the array or Parity protected.  

Not 100% sure that's the work around you might want, but it is an option for additional space and many people have used it. Just not preferred because of the lack of protection.