Parity Disabled - Is my new Parity drive failing?

[Feanux]

About a week ago I noticed my Parity drive no longer showed in Unraid. I restarted the server, confirmed the drive still showed in the BIOS, and when I booted back into Unraid the drive showed up but in a disabled state. 

 

I ran a SMART extended test that came back with no errors. When I try a parity check the process never fully completes, it either pauses or states that it completed with no errors but the full disk is never checked and the parity stays disabled. 

 

I've replaced the SATA cable and also connected the drive to another port on the motherboard. All other drives seem to be working fine. I'm unsure of where to go from here, any help would be super appreciated. 

hms-diagnostics-20231101-0707.zip

Edited November 1, 2023 by Feanux

[itimpi]

The diagnostics show that the drive drive dripped offline and subsequently got write errors which is why it was disabled.    The commonest cause for this is the power and/or sata cabling but you say you have checked both of these.    To clear the disabled state the drive needs rebuilding and if you want to do using the same drive you can do this as described here in the online documentation accessible via the Manual link at the bottom of the Unraid GUI.  In addition every forum page has a DOCS link at the top and a Documentation link at the bottom.   The Unraid OS->Manual section covers most aspects of the current Unraid release.

[Feanux]

Thanks for the info @itimpi! Just to clarify, in the documentation I want to follow the steps for "Reset the array configuration" (and keeping the Pool config), correct? I have already tried to rebuild the parity drive by stopping the array, unassigning parity, starting array, stopping array, reassigned parity, started, checked/sycned. This process never fully completed and failed about 1/3 of the way through as well.

[itimpi]

5 minutes ago, Feanux said:

Thanks for the info @itimpi! Just to clarify, in the documentation I want to follow the steps for "Reset the array configuration" (and keeping the Pool config), correct? I have already tried to rebuild the parity drive by stopping the array, unassigning parity, starting array, stopping array, reassigned parity, started, checked/sycned. This process never fully completed and failed about 1/3 of the way through as well.

If the process you outlined here does not complete then it strongly suggests there really is a problem with the drive and it may need replacing.   No point in resetting the array configuration if the rebuild continually fails until you have a replacement.    
 

Having said that I would carefully first check the cabling to the drive, especially the power side and avoid using power splitters if possible because as was mentioned earlier cabling is a far more common that physical failure of a drive.

[Feanux]

Good call on the power, the PSU might actually be pretty old so I can definitely see that being an issue. I ordered a Seasonic Focus GX-750 and it should be here tomorrow. I'll get it hooked up, try the parity check again and see what we get. If that doesn't resolve the issue and I've swapped the SATA cable and the port on the MB it could either be the MB failing (least likely) or the drive (most likely) in that scenario, right?

[trurl]

You should post new diagnostics after you get things connected again so we can see the SMART report for parity.

[Feanux]

On 11/1/2023 at 10:29 AM, trurl said:

You should post new diagnostics after you get things connected again so we can see the SMART report for parity.

 

It was absolutely the PSU. I swapped the old one out and followed the steps to do the parity-sync and it completed on the first try without errors. 

 

I would have thought that more drives would have been affected if the PSU was failing because the parity was in a daisy-chain of other drives. To be safer in the future I put the parity on its own dedicated line and also split the remaining 4 drives into 2 separate lines.

 

Here are the healthy diagnostics.

 

Thanks again for the help @trurl!

hms-diagnostics-20231106-1006.zip

Edited November 6, 2023 by Feanux

[itimpi]

19 minutes ago, Feanux said:

I would have thought that more drives would have been affected if the PSU was failing because the parity was in a daisy-chain of other drives

 

If multiple drives appear to go wrong at the same time then Unraid only disables the number of drives for which you have parity.