cant swap my parity disk

[SugoiShades]

Hello, I have an array of 6 1tb disks with 2 1tb parity disks
recently one of the two parity disks started reporting uncorrect sectors and I want to go ahead and swap it. unfortunately unraid wont let me swap it, I go through the normal parity swap procedure and get stopped when I try to start the array with the new/replacement disk selected saying "disk in parity slot is not the biggest"
which makes sense, but after checking all of the attributes of all my disks in my array (old parity and new parity included) they all have exactly 

1,000,204,886,016 bytes total (I got this from the identity tab in each disk)
the only difference between the old parity and the new parity disk is that the new one is that the new one is a SSD (I know it wastes performance, but I'm fine with it. I'm going to replace the drives in my array one by one with these SSDs)
is it getting hung up on how the SSD doesn't have physical sector size defined or something goofy like that? if so, what do I do to swap it in or force it?
I'm not submitting pictures with the initial post because I'm not sure what'll be relevant info and what would be bad to share (looking at parity swap tutorials, all of them blurred out their device model numbers for the disks for some reason. I'm not sure if that's safe to share?)

[trurl]

No need for Parity Swap (which should probably be renamed) when all you want to do is replace parity. 

 

https://wiki.unraid.net/Manual/Storage_Management#Replacing_failed.2Fdisabled_disk.28s.29

[SugoiShades]

would I still run into the issue of the drive being not detected as the correct size?

[trurl]

If you want more advice, or just want us to take a look

 

Attach Diagnostics to your NEXT post in this thread 

[trurl]

Just now, SugoiShades said:

would I still run into the issue of the drive being not detected as the correct size?

Not clear without Diagnostics why that is happening 

[SugoiShades]

okay, here's the diagnostics file and a image of the error. it just happened again when I tried to replace the parity in the way you suggested

kamina-diagnostics-20221226-1916.zip

[trurl]

Is the original parity disk still attached? Is that SSD supposed to be the new parity disk, or is it the original parity disk?

 

Why are you trying to use SSDs in the array anyway? SSDs in the array cannot be trimmed, and can only be written at the speed of (both) parity disks.

 

[SugoiShades]

for reference/ I'm not sure if the diagnostics relayed this, the CT1000BX500SSD1 is the SSD I'm trying to use as parity. the old parity disk was pulled from the machine when this was generated so it's not present in the report, but it's another HGST drive like all the others. same size and all that.

[SugoiShades]

the original parity disk is not attached. the SSD is supposed to be the new parity disk. I know it cant be trimmed and is slowed down. my plan is to replace my entire array overtime with SSDs

Edited December 27, 2022 by SugoiShades

[trurl]

Attach the original parity disk and post new diagnostics

[trurl]

RAID controllers are not recommended with Unraid

[SugoiShades]

SDB should be the original Parity disk
SDL is the SSD I'm replacing it with
(I juggled the drives around to be the same as when this started. that's why the SSD is no longer SDB)

kamina-diagnostics-20221226-1933.zip

[SugoiShades]

I don't believe I'm using the RAID controller
its just part of the DELL server I'm using

[SugoiShades]

yeah, I was able to verify. I don't use that RAID controller for anything other than connecting the backplane that all of the drive bays slot into to the motherboard of the server. its more for SAS support than it is for hardware based RAID

[trurl]

16 minutes ago, SugoiShades said:

that's why the SSD is no longer SDB

You don't really have much control over the sdX designations. They will usually change if you add, remove, or replace disks. And they might even change just from rebooting. Doesn't matter since Unraid uses the serial number to assign disks.

 

10 minutes ago, SugoiShades said:

yeah, I was able to verify. I don't use that RAID controller for anything other than connecting the backplane that all of the drive bays slot into to the motherboard of the server. its more for SAS support than it is for hardware based RAID

That sounds as if you are saying that the drives are indeed connected to the RAID controller. Have you flashed that RAID controller to IT mode? Doesn't look like it since Unraid is using the RAID driver for it. Sometimes people will resort to making each drive a separate RAID volume of one device, such as RAID0. But that is not recommended either. Not getting the size of drives correct is one of many reasons RAID is not recommended.

 

 

[SugoiShades]

2 minutes ago, trurl said:

You don't really have much control over the sdX designations. They will usually change if you add, remove, or replace disks. And they might even change just from rebooting. Doesn't matter since Unraid uses the serial number to assign disks.

weirdly enough its pretty consistent with mine
I have a DELL T630 server and its always alphabetical as you go down the rows (the top left drive is always SDB & it continues on down the row)
I'm not sure why that is, but I made sure the first two I slot in on the top left row are my parity disks

 

 

4 minutes ago, trurl said:

That sounds as if you are saying that the drives are indeed connected to the RAID controller. Have you flashed that RAID controller to IT mode? Doesn't look like it since Unraid is using the RAID driver for it. Sometimes people will resort to making each drive a separate RAID volume of one device, such as RAID0. But that is not recommended either. Not getting the size of drives correct is one of many reasons RAID is not recommended.

I havent flashed the RAID controller to IT mode, but I know its in a completely unconfigured/default state
as well as I'm not sure how to access it's config, I don't see a boot option for it in the BIOS

the best way I can think of getting around it would be to move the internal Mini SAS connectors off the SAS card and onto the motherboard's Mini SAS connectors?
that seems like a longshot and might mess up my config in unraid since the devices are somewhere completely different.

[trurl]

Changing from RAID controllers to other RAID controllers or to non-RAID controllers also can cause issues. Disk identification (serial number) isn't always presented the same (or at all) by RAID controllers, so Unraid won't recognize the assignments. And RAID controllers might also affect partitioning (which might be a reason the size is wrong)

 

More of the reasons RAID controllers are not recommended.

[trurl]

I have no personal experience with RAID controllers on Unraid. Maybe @JorgeB could tell us more, but it is way past bedtime in his timezone right now.

[SugoiShades]

7 minutes ago, trurl said:

I have no personal experience with RAID controllers on Unraid. Maybe @JorgeB could tell us more, but it is way past bedtime in his timezone right now.

okay, I hope this person can help. I'll also ask about the RAID hardware from the person I got the server from, they might be able to shed some light on it as well. we'll see which of the two responds first.
 

 

10 minutes ago, trurl said:

Changing from RAID controllers to other RAID controllers or to non-RAID controllers also can cause issues. Disk identification (serial number) isn't always presented the same (or at all) by RAID controllers, so Unraid won't recognize the assignments. And RAID controllers might also affect partitioning (which might be a reason the size is wrong)

 

More of the reasons RAID controllers are not recommended.

I never had any intention of using the Hardware RAID functions, so going around this card would be good anyways. do you think me trying to move the mini sas connector would kill the config altogether?
I know it might be reported to UNRAID differently, but would it completely brick it & prevent me from recovering the config if I switch the connector back to the RAID controller? (just in your opinion, I know RAID hardware isn't your area of expertise)

I'll make a backup of my UNRAID USB drive/my config before testing the other Mini-SAS ports on the board if I do try it

[SugoiShades]

nevermind, I'll have to use the RAID card no matter what. the backplane does use 2 Mini Sas connectors to connect to the SAS/RAID card but the motherboard's "SW_RAID_A" and "SW_RAID_B" ports are something I'm not familiar with. I attatched a picture of them in the center/top portion of the image with the SAS/RAID card in the bottom/right portion of the image (just for reference)
I'll see if I can access the RAID settings for the controller from BIOS

[SugoiShades]

one final addition to the thread for the night. this was all I could find in the BIOS
trying to configure the Hardware RAID at all gives this error saying its not in RAID mode
looking at the controller, it says it's in something called HBA mode. looking in the normal BIOS stuff it says my options are ATA mode ACHI mode and RAID mode. Its been in ACHI mode & I intend to leave it there / that's what makes sense anyways right? that's modern SATA

all of this is to say
the RAID portion of the card is not enabled or in use at all
its just passing everything through and treating them like normal SATA devices instead of parts of a Hardware RAID array

which unfortunately doesn't help me
my new SSD is still the exact same size as the old HDD I was trying to replace
and unraid gets pissy every time I try to set it as a parity disk
so hopefully this @JorgeB you pinged can help or one of us has an epiphany overnight or else my array might decide to completely implode. I'll try to start getting data off of it in case it dies

[JorgeB]

Post the output of

fdisk -l /dev/sdX

replace X with old and new parity.

[SugoiShades]

I have news
be it good or bad unfortunately

I put the old parity disk in this drive cloner thing I have & cloned its contents to the new "too small" SSD disk and now unraid took it just fine.
apparently I'm supposed to get it partially formatted before unraid behaves
sorry to waste everyone's time I suppose. closing the thread

[trurl]

Just now, SugoiShades said:

apparently I'm supposed to get it partially formatted before unraid behaves

shouldn't be necessary and parity has no format anyway. Not sure you can count on your solution to work going forward. Have you tried a parity check?

 

9 hours ago, JorgeB said:

Post the output of

fdisk -l /dev/sdX

replace X with old and new parity.

 

 

[itimpi]

2 minutes ago, SugoiShades said:

apparently I'm supposed to get it partially formatted before unraid behaves

Not normally.