Lost my parity drive because of a bad non-array drive?

[Jaybau]

I had a hard drive failure on one of the non-array pools (separate pool for backup drives)(checked power, sata cables; used different sata controllers).

 

Because of the drive failure, I couldn't mount the array, nor could I mount any pools.

So I reset the hardware configuration, and preserved the drive assignments, and now I can mount the array/pools.

 

But when I go to start the array (and all the pools), I have the message:

"All existing data on this device [parity drive] will be OVERWRITTEN when array is Started".

 

 

Worse, the drive that failed was my backup drive!  So now I'm left without both my parity drive and without a backup.

Why?

What did I do wrong?

What should I have done?

tower-diagnostics-20240213-1957.zip

Edited February 14 by Jaybau

[itimpi]

I am assuming that you used the New Config tool?     If so and you ticked the checkbox to say parity is valid then the parity will not get overwritten despite the warning as that message does not take account of the checkbox.

[Jaybau]

Upon scrolling down to the bottom of the screen, I see the option to select "Parity is already valid."  This ignores the above action, and won't overwrite/erase the parity drive.

And just to make sure, after bringing the main array online, I manually forced a parity check.

All is good.  Thank you.

Special note for a future enhancement: I do wish a bad drive outside of the main array (separate pool) didn't bring everything down and affect other pools.  Wish the pools were isolated.

 

[trurl]

17 minutes ago, Jaybau said:

Special note for a future enhancement: I do wish a bad drive outside of the main array (separate pool) didn't bring everything down and affect other pools.  Wish the pools were isolated.

Never heard of this happening and since we have no more information from you when it happened, probably won't be able to know what happened.

[trurl]

In fact, it isn't clear that anything like "lost my parity drive" actually happened at all, or what you might have meant by that statement. Seems like your parity was fine, not lost. What we don't know is why you thought you should do New Config.

[trurl]

On 2/13/2024 at 11:04 PM, Jaybau said:

used different sata controllers

Was the previous or new controller a RAID controller? The problem you experienced sounds very like one of the many reasons RAID controllers are not recommended.