I was trying to replace a 450gb drive with a 900gb one. (Just did this successfully a few days ago.)

I precleared the new drive in an empty slot, stopped the array, but when i assigned the new drive and restarted the array, it said "unmountable". Parity sync didn't start to write emulated data to the new drive (that i could see).

 

so I stopped the array, and tried to add the old disk back (which is unchanged). Now that one said "unmountable" too.

 

now i started to freak out a bit. i added the new drive and tried "format", but the array never rebuilt data to the new drive, and i just have an extra empty drive. Now i can't replace the old drive bc unraid says it's too small, but i think it still has all the data on it.

 

What to do?

 

I'm one of those dummies who has my pfsense in a vm (i know i know) so i cant download diagnostics, but heres a pic of the History - looks like parity should still be valid from the old drive.

 

9 hours ago, dealbakerjones said:

w i started to freak out a bit. i added the new drive and tried "format"

Format is never part of a disk replacement, do you still have the old disk intact?

i do! I formatted the new (900gb) drive thinking it was needed to mount. But since the old drive is 450gb, unraid won't let me reassign the smaller drive in it's original place

If you have extra ports you can mount the old disk with the UD plugin and copy the data back to the array.

Ok, when i tried to assign the old disk to a new slot, unraid said it would start the Disk-clear proces, which i think will lose some data?

 

i don't have Unassigned Devices and don't have Internet (pfsense vm is acting up) but i think i can download from github to a thumb drive and install.

 

Could i create a new config with the old disk assignments (unassign the new drive, assign the old drive in its original place, then preserve everything and create a new config)?

You cannot assign it as a new array disk or it will be cleared, to avoid a new config, create a new single device pool and assign it there.

Gotcha. so my steps are:

1. Dowload/install Unassigned Devices (gotta figure this out offline)

2. Create new single device pool

3. Add old drive to this pool

4. Use UD to copy files

If you assign the disk to a new single device pool you don't need the UD plugin.

1 hour ago, JorgeB said:

If you assign the disk to a new single device pool you don't need the UD plugin.

And if you get UD working, you don't need to create a pool. The pool idea was just a workaround for going without UD. UD will be the simpler solution unless you really want a pool.

5 hours ago, JorgeB said:

Format is never part of a disk replacement

Please ask for help in the future when you need to change disks. Mistakes in that situation probably cause the most serious data loss.

 

Some might find this recent thread instructive:

 

Thanks very much, I will try to get UD installed offline this afternoon.

If not, I'll do the new pool and use UnBalanced to copy the data to the new/bigger disk.

Either way I'll post back with findings, thanks for the help  - I am trying to increase my understanding of exactly how parity ops work; I'm starting to think that if I had just left everything for a bit after preclear/assigning the new drive, it would have worked smoothly.

4 minutes ago, dealbakerjones said:

I'm starting to think that if I had just left everything for a bit after preclear/assigning the new drive, it would have worked smoothly.

Since we don't have diagnostics from then can't say much about why the emulated disk was unmountable. Possibly connection problems with other disks in the array made emulation not work.

 

If it said unmountable, then it was rebuilding an unmountable filesystem. Formatting an unmountable filesystem will make it mountable, but it will also make it empty. Formatting the emulated disk will result in an empty rebuild.

 

The correct way forward when you have an unmountable disk is check filesystem. And that may be what we have to do with the original disk before UD can mount it. Or we might have to do that if you go the new pool way if it is unmountable.

 

But DON'T format it!!!

 

20 hours ago, dealbakerjones said:

cant download diagnostics

This is really what you need to concentrate on. We can't give good advice without it, and you need good advice.

Do you have backups of anything important and irreplaceable? Parity can help when a disk fails, but there are plenty of other ways to lose data, including user error.

I don't; this whole past month has been trying to expand my array so I can support a full backup (r620's 2.5" drives just aren't big enough to give me what I need, so all this work has been to give me the extra capacity from an MD1200 and a bunch of 6TB drives.

 

I have come to terms with the idea of the loss of the current disk (a few movies, and maybe a VM - but nothing life essential), but afaict the disk should be intact. We'll see.

 

Big lessons (re)learned - diagnostics always first, and only do one thing at a time

19 minutes ago, dealbakerjones said:

I have come to terms with the idea of the loss of the current disk

I haven't. We haven't tried everything yet. Let's see what we can do with the original disk first.

Ok i added the new 900gb drive to it's place in the array (disk3), added the old disk3 (450gb) to a new pool, and started the array.

 

old disk 3 (450gb) says unmountable, this is the disk log:

 

Diagnostics.

3 hours ago, trurl said:

This is really what you need to concentrate on. We can't give good advice without it, and you need good advice.

You obviously have an attached keyboard and monitor. Click the Diagnostics link to find out how to get them from the command line.

i can get them - whats the safest way to get them onto a thumb drive? i have a drive showing in Unassigned Devices, do i mount this in its own pool?

Unassigned Devices plugin

i don't have it, and i don't have Internet back (posting from phone). i got UD onto a thumb drive, but not sure how best to mount it into the array safely (or save diags to the drive so i can put on my phone to post)

Oh! i could pull them from the share, but i can't copy the diagnostic zip onto the share, i get a permissions error (ssh)

8 minutes ago, dealbakerjones said:

Oh! i could pull them from the share, but i can't copy the diagnostic zip onto the share, i get a permissions error (ssh)

I don't understand how you can have permissions error, you are root user.

 

I am really having a hard time understanding how you are working with your server at all without a network. What do you mean by "share" anyway if you don't have a network?

 

The diagnostics should be saved to your flash drive, and you can just shutdown, take the flash drive out, and plug it in to whatever you have and copy it.

ah thanks! got it

jeeves-diagnostics-20240131-1951.zip

You have a pool named 'two'. Is that the old array disk we are trying to get the data from ?