I was having problems with my server which turned out to be a problem with the USB flash drive.  The drive had a corrupt file on it which was, I believe, was causing it to be set as read-only.  I put the flash drive in my windows system and ran a chkdsk.  it found the secrets.tdb file to be corrupt (or possibly that sector of the drive).  It was deleted and my array was again accessible via Samba. 

 

But before this problem started I had noticed I had a disk that was disabled (red).  I had taken down the array and then ran a long SMART check on the drive and it came up fine.  I also put it in my Windows system and used rfstool to mount it and read it in Windows.  All the data was there and seemed intact.    But I put the drive back into the server and started it up.  And now I have the screen in the attached screengrab.  it says "Disabled disk replaced."

 

 

If I select:  "Start will bring the array on-line, start Data-Rebuild, and then expand the file system (if possible).

I'm sure I want to do this" 

am I going to loose the data on that drive?  (which is almost 1.5TB of data)

 

I believe I have the option that I could put it back in my Win7 machine and copy the data to the array if this will in fact erase my data.  But if I don't have to go through that long process, that would be ideal.

 

Thank you in advance!

 

I was having problems with my server which turned out to be a problem with the USB flash drive.  The drive had a corrupt file on it which was, I believe, was causing it to be set as read-only.   I put the flash drive in my windows system and ran a chkdsk.  it found the secrets.tdb file to be corrupt (or possibly that sector of the drive).   It was deleted and my array was again accessible via Samba.  

 

But before this problem started I had noticed I had a disk that was disabled (red).   I had taken down the array and then ran a long SMART check on the drive and it came up fine.   I also put it in my Windows system and used rfstool to mount it and read it in Windows.   All the data was there and seemed intact.    But I put the drive back into the server and started it up.  And now I have the screen in the attached screengrab.  it says "Disabled disk replaced."

 

 

If I select:  "Start will bring the array on-line, start Data-Rebuild, and then expand the file system (if possible).

I'm sure I want to do this"  

am I going to loose the data on that drive?   (which is almost 1.5TB of data)

 

I believe I have the option that I could put it back in my Win7 machine and copy the data to the array if this will in fact erase my data.   But if I don't have to go through that long process, that would be ideal.

 

Thank you in advance!

 

 

It was marked as red when it could not be written.  It is therefore in need of re-construction.  Currently, unRAID is simulating it.  If you start the array now, its contents will be re-constructed onto itself, including whatever could not be written.

 

Most "write" errors do not go away on their own.  It is often a loose cable, or a drive that is failing, or a bad backplane, or a bad disk controller, and sometimes a power supply not sized with enough capacity.

 

Only clue is to look in the syslog for the original error, but it is too late for that now since you've rebooted/power cycled.

 

Start the array, let it re-construct the drive.

 

Joe L.

Yup, start the rebuild and see what happens. If the disk is truely bad then the rebuild will fail and you'll have to replace the drive and attempt another rebuild.

 

Peter

Do a parity check after the rebuild to make sure it was successful.

OK thank you for the info.  I wasn't sure if that data would be rebuilt on that drive or not.

 

And I suspected a bad SATA cable and replaced it with a new one before running the SMART test on the drive.  So I'm hoping that it was just the cable.

 

Thank you!

OK thank you for the info.   I wasn't sure if that data would be rebuilt on that drive or not.

 

And I suspected a bad SATA cable and replaced it with a new one before running the SMART test on the drive.  So I'm hoping that it was just the cable.

 

Thank you!

 

 

OK, after about a 10 hour parity check/rebuild all drives are green again and it seems to be back to normal.

 

Thanks for the info!  I'm still not 100% on all the inner workings of the system so I was a little unsure of what I was doing and afraid to loose 1.5TB of data!

 

Thank you!

What do you mean by "parity check/rebuild" These are two distinct operations. First a rebuild and then a parity check.

What do you mean by "parity check/rebuild" These are two distinct operations. First a rebuild and then a parity check.

 

Well I assumed that it rebuilt the drive's contents and then did a parity check.

No, it just rebuild the drive so you should run a check now.

 

For some reason, unRAID "lost" the drive. So, unRAID thought the drive is gone and went into simulation mode. Then, the drive came back and unRAID then thought it was a new drive to replace the one that was "lost".

 

Peter

 

 

What do you mean by "parity check/rebuild" These are two distinct operations. First a rebuild and then a parity check.

 

Well I assumed that it rebuilt the drive's contents and then did a parity check.

You assumed wrong.   It only rebuilt the contents of the drive.  It made NO attempt to read it.

You should perform a NOCORRECT parity check.  That way, if the drive was unable to be written correctly you would know it, but it would not clobber parity in an attempt to get it in sync with the drive that had a error when reading it.

 

Joe L.

What do you mean by "parity check/rebuild" These are two distinct operations. First a rebuild and then a parity check.

 

Well I assumed that it rebuilt the drive's contents and then did a parity check.

You assumed wrong.   It only rebuilt the contents of the drive.  It made NO attempt to read it.

You should perform a NOCORRECT parity check.  That way, if the drive was unable to be written correctly you would know it, but it would not clobber parity in an attempt to get it in sync with the drive that had a error when reading it.

 

Joe L.

 

Well, I guess I shouldn't say "assume" exactly.  I'm fairly certain it did run a parity check after all of this because when I checked on the server after it's quoted ~10 hour job, it said this:

 

{Check button} Check will start a Parity-Check.

(Last checked on 6/6/2011 9:40:35 PM, finding 60 errors.)