Problem with adding new disk: preclear plugin no longer supported, array currently in unprotected state

[friendlylurker]

Greetings, my fellow Unraid friends.

 

I'm facing a strange situation right now a thought I might reach out to ask before I do something (even more) stupid.

The current situation is as follows: I have an Unraid box still running on 6.9.2 (yeah, I know: shame on me!). It has a storage array of 5 disks right now: 1 parity + 4 data disks. All of them are formatted as XFS and encrypted. Recently my free storage was reduced to 3% which is why I wanted to expand the array. I had a HDD around already, which I kept as a sort of cold spare in case I'd need to replace a disk one day. I definitely precleared this disk when I received it around maybe 10 months ago. I decided to stop the array, add the cold spare as a new drive and restart the array.

 

This is where my problems began: Unraid told me I'd need to format the disk in the Array Operation tab, nothing unexpected at this point. However, when I check the checkbox to format the drive and clicked the Start Button nothing was happening at all. I couldn't see anything in the Web UI and I was also unable to verify activity on the disk or any new processes spawning on Unraid (I check ps, htop, etc.).

At this point I was sort of puzzled what might be going on until I received an E-Mail:

 

Quote

 

Event: Fix Common Problems - xyz
Subject: Errors have been found with your server (xyz).
Description: Investigate at Settings / User Utilities / Fix Common Problems
Importance: alert

[...]

* preclear.disk.plg Not Compatible with Unraid version 6.9.2

 

 

Now I thought: ah, ok. Probably I need to update the plugin. Turned out, it's no longer supported and you should install another one like, binhex-preclear or Unassigned Devices Preclear. I went with the later, as I have Unassigned Devices plugin installed, anyway. Now I stopped the array again and removed the new disk, which was never written to at this point. I started a fresh preclear of that disk, just to be safe and started the array up again in the meanwhile.

 

Now the array is the unprotected state and says that it's emulating the new disk (which again: was never written to at this point). The Array Devices tab says the following right now:

 

Quote

Disk 5 (Device is missing, Contents emulated): Not Installed | Unmountable: Volume not encrypted

 

The preclear of that disk is finished by now and I wonder, whether it's 100% safe to stop the array at this point to add the disk to the array again and then start up the array again, finally.

 

What could I expect to happen at this point?

 

- Will Unraid "restore" my data to the new disk, meaning it will just write a bunch of 00s, as I haven't written anything onto that drive, anyway?
- Will the Parity drive maybe rebuild, or should nothing happen to it at all?

 

I hope somebody stumbled into this situation already some time ago and could maybe share some experience on that topic.

Thanks in advance!

Edited October 8, 2023 by friendlylurker

[trurl]

Attach Diagnostics to your NEXT post in this thread 

[dboonthego]

If I understand correctly, you installed disk5 and formatted it.  Then unassigned it and pre-cleared again using UD?  

 

38 minutes ago, friendlylurker said:

- Will Unraid "restore" my data to the new disk, meaning it will just write a bunch of 00s, as I haven't written anything onto that drive, anyway?

Yes, it will rebuild the disk using emulated contents; which is nothing at this point.

 

Why not get your OS current?

[friendlylurker]

Sometimes luck is with the brave. I've let it restore Disk5, afterwards formatted it and now my array is back to secured and the new disk is working just as expected.