BrettWeaver Posted February 3, 2023 Share Posted February 3, 2023 I have recently rebuilt and added on to my unraid NAS. Most of my drives are 3TB, and the parity drive I set up is 6tb. I don't know what happened, but my array spun down and I am seeing errors. What should I be looking for here, and what are my next steps? I've had this server for many years, but only recently started adding and actually using it. Any suggestion would be greatly appreciated. bigdaddy-diagnostics-20230202-2137.zip Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted February 3, 2023 Share Posted February 3, 2023 USB enclosures can change the disk names, one of the reasons they are not recommended for array/pool devices. Would also be concerned about this: Quote Link to comment
trurl Posted February 3, 2023 Share Posted February 3, 2023 Do you have any data on these USB disks yet? Do you still have the original parity drive, or any other SATA disk at least 3TB you could use as parity? Best idea would be New Config without any USB and rebuild parity to a 3TB or more SATA disk, then if there is any data on the USB drives you could use Unassigned Devices to get to it. Do you have backups of anything important and irreplaceable? Quote Link to comment
trurl Posted February 3, 2023 Share Posted February 3, 2023 4 hours ago, JorgeB said: Would also be concerned about this: That can't be right obviously. Wonder where Unraid got that number. Also that 256G SSD, that shouldn't be in the array whether USB or not. Quote Link to comment
BrettWeaver Posted February 3, 2023 Author Share Posted February 3, 2023 (edited) Nothing on the usb drives yet, I don't think. The Parity drive is in the enclosure. Unfortunately, I don't have more space in server. The 130 PB is what got my attention too. And of course, this issue happened during our ice storm here in Texas and I think we lost power for a couple of short periods. Edited February 3, 2023 by BrettWeaver Quote Link to comment
trurl Posted February 3, 2023 Share Posted February 3, 2023 Are you saying you only have room for 4 disks? Quote Link to comment
BrettWeaver Posted February 4, 2023 Author Share Posted February 4, 2023 Yes, unfortunately. That's why I got the USB enclosure. I can still pull the 256 gb ssd, since it was what came with the server. I Quote Link to comment
trurl Posted February 4, 2023 Share Posted February 4, 2023 48 minutes ago, BrettWeaver said: pull the 256 gb ssd Will that give you room for 5 disks? Quote Link to comment
BrettWeaver Posted February 4, 2023 Author Share Posted February 4, 2023 Alright! I pulled The usb enclosure, and reset the drives. Here's how it looks now. I cracked open the server and confirmed I only have 4 spaces for drives which I am using the drives I had previously. They seem to still be up and available. The question is what to do next. After reading, I am seeing that using a USB 3 enclosure is not advisable since it's possible for the devices to reset (which is what I think happened in the brief power outage we had here) and that they are showing as generic devices. How about an eSata connected enclosure? I am not seeing in the forums that most are not against it.... The server itself is pretty powerful and will give me the ability to do more with Docker and Plex. Thoughts? And thank you for help so far, btw. Quote Link to comment
trurl Posted February 5, 2023 Share Posted February 5, 2023 Do you have more SATA ports than you have drive bays? Quote Link to comment
BrettWeaver Posted February 5, 2023 Author Share Posted February 5, 2023 It looks like there is an eSata port open. The other connects to the 4 drives I have already connected. If I had bought 4 ssd I could do this, but I have HDs. An external enclosure which uses eSata would work, right? Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted February 5, 2023 Share Posted February 5, 2023 Just to confirm disks 7 and 8 are being detected as new disk and will be cleared if you start the array, are they new? I would really recommend getting rid of that enclosure or you will likely run into more issues in the future. Quote Link to comment
Solution trurl Posted February 5, 2023 Solution Share Posted February 5, 2023 A single eSATA connection will not work well for multiple disks. Probably the best approach if you are going to limit yourself to that hardware is just to upsize your disks. I always recommend fewer large disks instead of many small disks. Each disk requires more hardware to support it. Large disks perform better than small disks. Perhaps most importantly, each additional disk is an additional point of failure. I have always used small form factor builds, and have just replaced my small drives with larger drives to get more capacity. All my drives were 2TB or smaller when I started, now they are all 8TB, and the smaller disks have been reused in other ways such as offsite backups for the truly important data. I also have a backup server, also small form factor, made up of leftover parts from upgrading my main server. It is all 6TB disks that were formerly in my main server. The backup server gets backups of my media (not important) and is only powered up occasionally. Quote Link to comment
BrettWeaver Posted February 5, 2023 Author Share Posted February 5, 2023 Jorge, Those drives are considered new as I have never put anything on them. I unassigned them. Trurl, I think that's the direction I am going to go. I was just seeing if I could save money by using the enclosure. I am going to start upgrading my drives, and use the enclosure as back up connected to my primary computer. Thanks again, everyone! Quote Link to comment
trurl Posted February 5, 2023 Share Posted February 5, 2023 1 hour ago, trurl said: upsize your disks Just in case you are unsure how to accomplish this. I see many users adding disks, then copying data, then removing disks. Complicated, time consuming, and prone to error. No need to copy anything, just replace/rebuild, one at a time. Quote Link to comment
BrettWeaver Posted February 5, 2023 Author Share Posted February 5, 2023 Understood. The trick was to have the parity drive up to date, correct? That was my initial issue. I inherited this server, and it ran fine on it's own for years. But I am aware that I needed to not only expand, but get a new computer to run this. Hence getting the Dell Server. The issue really started when I realized that after all these years, I could've lost everything if one of the 4 original drives went down! Quote Link to comment
trurl Posted February 5, 2023 Share Posted February 5, 2023 8 minutes ago, BrettWeaver said: The trick was to have the parity drive up to date, correct? You can't rebuild a disk without valid parity and all other disks working well. All disks must be read to calculate the data to write to a replaced disk. https://wiki.unraid.net/Manual/Overview#Parity-Protected_Array Quote Link to comment
BrettWeaver Posted February 5, 2023 Author Share Posted February 5, 2023 So then, until I get the new drives, I'll have to keep the Parity drive on the enclosure, then upgrade each of the ones on the server, and eventually get the parity drive connected directly to the server. Keeping in mind any upgraded HD will need to be under 6tb, unless I get a larger drive as the parity first before going to the next level with the old drives. Quote Link to comment
trurl Posted February 5, 2023 Share Posted February 5, 2023 If you could use that eSATA connection for parity that would be better than USB Quote Link to comment
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