Hi! My array suddenly shows the parity device as disabled. How do I fix it? How did this happen? Is there a way to prevent this from happening in the future?

 

EDIT: Because it shows the parity as disabled, I haven't rebooted or done any basic troubleshooting out of fear I'll have data loss. Please, do advise how to proceed. Before this the server was working fine.

 

 

Edited December 29, 20241 yr by AlbertoGa

Parity contains none of your data so it being disabled does not affect your data unless a data drive fails in the meantime..   It should all still be there after a reboot although the parity drive will remain disabled until action is taken to correct it.

 

I can see that you started getting what looks like a cabling/power issue on the parity disk shortly after mid-day on 12th and shortly after that started getting write errors on the parity which is what will ha e caused it to be disabled. drive.   Shortly after that you started getting read errors on other drives that also look like cabling/power issues and eventually these stated getting read errors.   The SMART information for the  drives does not show drive faults so no indication the drives themselves have failed.

 

Since most drives appeared to be affected in the end I would be looking at what they share.   You want to check that your HBA is well seated and that there are no power issues.  While you are at it check both the SATA and power cabling.

Thank you!

 

I'm not using an HBA, all drives are plugged directly into the motherboard via sata. Regarding power, I use splitters. But given that this is not the first time cabling has caused issues, I think I'll powerdown and replace the PSU and all the power cables with a sata ribbon. I think I'll shutdown the server and order a PSU.

 

Once I do that, what actions do you refer to?

Quote

the parity drive will remain disabled until action is taken to correct it.