Hope for some help

On the latest unRAID (8700k CPU), added an LSI 9211 -8i card as had only 4 working SATA on mobo. Connected to a new refurbished white label drive with a segate serial number, 18TB. After boot, on mount, the webui would time out and the unRAID would be unresponsive. It seemed to happen after mounting the new disk (#4). I ran a preclear (I normally don't) and that was successful. I also copied files to it and read normally as unassigned disk. I managed to mount it after the preclear. Now I've had to reboot as unBalance stopped responding yet data being copied. Again it is crashing on mounting. I've attached diagnostic data in case someone can help pin down the problem. I can't mount 4 disks, only the previous 3 disks else it crashes (+a parity disk).

3570k-diagnostics-20240205-2110.zip

Not entirely clear.

 

"Mount" is when the OS makes the filesystem on the disk ready to access. When you start the array, all the disks are mounted at that time.

 

Is that what you mean?

 

You mention preclear later on, was that actually done later on? And then mount after preclear, but a clear disk can't be mounted since it has no filesystem yet (hasn't been formatted).

 

The diagnostics were taken just after reboot, syslog doesn't tell anything that happened before reboot. And the array isn't started so none of the disks are mounted. So can't really tell if any disks have any data. Is disk4 supposed to have data yet?

 

 

Sorry for not doing this correctly.

By mount I meant "Starting the Array" - "Mounting the disks" is the last update I see in the bottom left corner.

To clarify: I first added the new disk, formatted it, and tried to start the array (as a new disk to the array). Crash. So I wanted to make sure the disk was good and ran preclear. All successful. Formatted disk, Started the array, everything ok.

Then had to reboot and again I can't start the array with the 4 disks. It becomes unresponsive. I can't do diagnostics at that point, can only hard reboot.

If I post sys.log on here will it help with the troubleshooting?

4 minutes ago, novitzky said:

To clarify: I first added the new disk, formatted it, and tried to start the array (as a new disk to the array).

Still missing some clarity there. Do you mean you added it to a new data slot in the parity array, then started the array and formatted the new data disk? That is the only sequence that would work as intended. Did you do it some other way?

 

Some of the rest of what you said after that also is unclear, but I will leave that for later.

1 minute ago, trurl said:

Do you mean you added it to a new data slot in the parity array, then started the array and formatted the new data disk? That is the only sequence that would work as intended.

Actually, even that wouldn't work unless the disk had been precleared, which you say you hadn't done yet.

 

When you add a disk to a new data slot in an array that already has valid parity, Unraid must clear the disk if it hasn't been precleared. That would take some time to write zeros to the entire disk. and only after that would you be allowed to format the disk so it could mount and be ready for access.

 

Again sorry for seeming stupid, but this is the first time I've run preclear. If I recall correctly, I usually format new disk with the array not-started using unassigned devices so that there is a partition, else I can't start the array. So I did this with the previous disks. This time, the array would crash on start, so I wanted to make sure the disk is physically ok before trying again.

I only installed preclear this weekend to ensure the new disk was physically fine. I haven't used it before.

Just now, novitzky said:

I usually format new disk with the array not-started using unassigned devices so that there is a partition, else I can't start the array

A formatted disk isn't a clear disk. So if you add a formatted disk to a new data slot in an array that already has valid parity, then Unraid must clear the disk so parity remains valid. This would take some time to write zeros to the entire disk, and only after that would you be allowed to format the disk in the array so it could mount and be ready for access.

 

5 minutes ago, novitzky said:

I did this with the previous disks.

The only way you could have assigned formatted disks to the array is if there was no parity, or if you did New Config, which would require rebuilding parity so it would be in sync with the formatted disks. Or else Unraid would have to clear the disks so parity would remain valid.... and so on.

Thanks, now that you mention it, I used let it run a parity check after adding a new disk. And I had a couple of new config problems when I first started on this last year, but i thought that was related to my firefox use. I remember now there being a ?blue dot stating "New Disk" when I first added the drive. But the main problem I had was the unresponsiveness / crash of webui. I haven't had it before despite my previously wrong ways of adding new disks. Do you think that unRAID was busy doing something like clearing the disk when it was unresponsive on mounting the disk? The disk seemed untouched after rebooting.

 

 

We should just go forward from wherever you are now and try to make some sense of this.

 

Unassign the new disk and start the array, then post new diagnostics so we can get a clearer picture of how things are.

Great - some success also. After 7 attempts, the array starter with disk #4 (new).

New diagnostics attached.

3570k-diagnostics-20240205-2221.zip

Those diagnostics don't seem to agree with anything you have said.

 

Disk4 is not a newly assigned disk, it is in fact a mounted disk that is more than half full.

 

I have no idea how you got to this point. I wonder if parity is valid.

Did you New Config during any of this?

Yes, I had said in my first post, I had managed to mount disk4 after the preclear, so had  copied some things things across but unbalance stopped responding and I did a hard reset. Then I again experienced the freezing on array starting. I did hard reset 7 times and then finally it stopped hanging on starting the array (it would show updates until disk 4 mounting).
No new config done.
It says parity is valid. it wouldn't hurt to check.

I guess the diagnostics don't give a clue?

Sorry by "mount disk4" I meant "start the array".

Nothing you say is really making any sense based on the way Unraid must work with the disks to keep the array in sync.

 

If you removed the disk from the array, maybe you could have precleared it without starting the array, and so it wouldn't have known the disk was missing. But then you would have had to format the disk after starting the array with the disk, since a clear disk isn't formatted and has no filesystem to mount.

 

If you did start the array without the disk, then it would have been considered disabled, and when you reassigned it, Unraid would have rebuilt it.

 

I don't think we are going to get a clear explanation of everything you actually did.

 

I am skeptical that parity is valid.

Apologies and thanks for your time

 

https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/manual/storage-management/#adding-disks

Do you have another copy of anything important and irreplaceable? That should be your first priority.

 

Please ask for help in the future before making any changes to disk assignments, or if you have a disk that says it is unmountable.

12 hours ago, trurl said:

the way Unraid must work with the disks to keep the array in sync.

If you make mistakes it could result in lost data.