Errors on parity disk?

[rmp5s]

Uh oh...my parity disk has 992 errors on it! Looks like it's giving up the ghost. 

 

As far as replacing it goes, this is what I found.

 

Is it really as simple as array offline, old disk out, new disk in, array online? That's what it seems to say even though it's not quite the procedure I'm looking for.

 

Is there better info somewhere?

 

Also...I know the parity disk dying right now isn't really that big of a deal as long as an error doesn't occur on another disk (or more?). What happens if another drive DOES die before I can get the parity disk replaced? Is ALL data gone or just the corrupt data on that disk?

 

Info:

 

unRAID version - 6.8.3

Array details - Six 8TB drives, five data, one parity, 40TB total, 36.8TB used. (Yes, I'm a data hoarder...)

Other disks - 1TB SATAIII cache disk, 2 other random SATAIII disks that aren't a part of the array.

Hardware - Running on an HP Proliant server with 2 Xeons, 64GB RAM, etc. Its old. Need to upgrade. 🤣

 

Thanks!

Edited October 4, 2022 by rmp5s

[trurl]

You linked to the parity swap procedure, but that isn't what you describe doing, and parity swap isn't what you need to do. The name is confusing but the point of parity swap is to replace a data drive with a larger disk when parity isn't large enough to allow it. It works by copying parity to a larger disk then rebuilding the data disk to the original parity drive. You don't need to do that.

 

And your description doesn't give enough information to really suggest what you do need to do. There are several kinds of errors that can be displayed to the user and some don't necessarily mean a disk is failing.

 

So we can get a better idea of what you do need to do

 

attach diagnostics to your NEXT post in this thread

[rmp5s]

16 hours ago, trurl said:

You linked to the parity swap procedure, but that isn't what you describe doing, and parity swap isn't what you need to do. The name is confusing but the point of parity swap is to replace a data drive with a larger disk when parity isn't large enough to allow it. It works by copying parity to a larger disk then rebuilding the data disk to the original parity drive. You don't need to do that.

 

And your description doesn't give enough information to really suggest what you do need to do. There are several kinds of errors that can be displayed to the user and some don't necessarily mean a disk is failing.

tower-diagnostics-20221005-1109.zip

So we can get a better idea of what you do need to do

 

attach diagnostics to your NEXT post in this thread

 

Attached. 

[trurl]

Your syslog is full of ACPI messages so can't see anything about what might have happened with parity. It isn't giving a SMART report, could be bad connection or could be bad disk.

 

Shutdown, check connection, both ends, SATA and power, including splitters. Reboot and post new diagnostics.

 

Not related, but I recommend leaving more free space on your disks than you have. Full disks don't perform as well, and more importantly, filesystem repair needs some room to work in if that ever becomes necessary.

[rmp5s]

On 10/6/2022 at 7:23 AM, trurl said:

Your syslog is full of ACPI messages so can't see anything about what might have happened with parity. It isn't giving a SMART report, could be bad connection or could be bad disk.

 

Shutdown, check connection, both ends, SATA and power, including splitters. Reboot and post new diagnostics.

 

Not related, but I recommend leaving more free space on your disks than you have. Full disks don't perform as well, and more importantly, filesystem repair needs some room to work in if that ever becomes necessary.

 

It's a Proliant server...there are no SATA cables or splitters or anything.

 

And yea...it's pretty full. I need to add another couple disks. 

 

As far as replacing the parity disk, do I just take the array down, yank that disk, put the new one in and start the array back up? Or is there more to it?

[JorgeB]

10 hours ago, rmp5s said:

As far as replacing the parity disk, do I just take the array down, yank that disk, put the new one in and start the array back up? Or is there more to it?

Basically that's it, you just need to assign the new disk before starting the array.

[rmp5s]

4 hours ago, JorgeB said:

Basically that's it, you just need to assign the new disk before starting the array.

 

Thought so. I'll get it swapped out today. Thanks, everyone!