Possible failed flash drive

[Ookami313]

Hoping to get some advice and help. Was working on my server last night with no issue. Was able to update some dockers and rename new episodes that had been grabbed. Came back about an hour later and for some reason SABnzb and Sonarr were reading as not connected so I switched to the tab I have open for the Unraid dashboard and noticed that at some point both the CPU and memory had hit 100% usage, and the dashboard was frozen and unresponsive. Went to my server to try and login directly and the login screen was unresponsive. Unfortunately had to do a hard shutdown on the system and when it came back up, I kept getting a no bootable device found error. Tried going onto the BIOS and saw no flash drive listed in the boot sequence menu.

 

First, is it possible to read the drive on my windows machine? I tried to plug it in, but the system would not recognize it so I'm not totally sure if it's because the drive is used for a Linux system (still an amateur when it comes to Linux) or if it was because the drive has failed.

 

Second, assuming the drive has failed is there any way to recover and gain access to my system again? I do have a backup of my flash drive, but it's on the array as I had the backup plugin do a daily backup of the flash drive when my appdata share was backed up. Truth be told I don't know if I did a backup to the Unraid website when my system and account were linked after the update to 6.12, and I'm not sure how to verify.

 

Anyway, any help and/or assistance would be greatly appreciated. I've basically come to the realization that I'm probably screwed, but I'm holding out a little hope. Thanks.

[JorgeB]

3 minutes ago, Ookami313 said:

First, is it possible to read the drive on my windows machine?

Yes, if it's not readable it likely failed.

 

4 minutes ago, Ookami313 said:

Second, assuming the drive has failed is there any way to recover and gain access to my system again?

Create a new flash drive and start the array so you can get the backup, see here if you don't know the assignments:

 

https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/manual/changing-the-flash-device/#what-to-do-if-you-have-no-backup-and-do-not-know-your-disk-assignments

 

[itimpi]

The Unraid boot drive should be readable on any system as it is formatted in FAT32.   If you cannot read it on another system then it has probably failed.

[Ookami313]

Thanks for the information.

I've started the process by creating a new boot flash disk with the USB creator, but reading the instruction provided it is saying to modify the file /boot/config/disk.cfg on the flash drive and if necessary, change the startArray="yes" entry to startArray="no". However, when I go into the new drive, I'm not seeing the disk.cfg file. In fact, there is no boot directory, only a config, EFI, and syslinux. Is this a file that get created after the initial boot up?

 

Thanks.

[JonathanM]

Look in the config folder.

/boot only exists on a running system, it's not on the flash drive.

Think of /boot as the windows drive letter like E:\

[Ookami313]

This is what I have in the config folder:

[JonathanM]

Since you can't recover the drive assignments you will need to follow JorgeB's advice.

On 3/27/2024 at 3:01 PM, JorgeB said:

Create a new flash drive and start the array so you can get the backup, see here if you don't know the assignments:

 

https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/manual/changing-the-flash-device/#what-to-do-if-you-have-no-backup-and-do-not-know-your-disk-assignments

 

[Ookami313]

4 minutes ago, JonathanM said:

Since you can't recover the drive assignments you will need to follow JorgeB's advice.

 

OK, I will start there minus the disabling of the array auto start. Due to the fact that I have more drives in my array than the trial version gives I assume that the recover tool for my license is done via the main page. Sorry, I've never had to recover my license before, the flash drive that died is the original I've used since I started using Unraid. Thanks.

[JonathanM]

18 minutes ago, Ookami313 said:

Due to the fact that I have more drives in my array than the trial version gives

Trial version is unlimited AFAIK

[JonathanM]

Once you recover your backup, overwrite the config folder on your working USB with the backup, and do the disable auto start there. Your backup should contain your license file, which can be transferred when you boot up with your backed up config.