Hi all - to preface all this, I'm an idiot. Thanks for understanding that. 

 

I recently started the process to upgrade my perfectly good, working system to have more capacity. I have backups of the system in this config. 

 

I had two 10tb parity drives, and I started by upgrading one to an 18tb drive. This worked successfully. I then started the process to upgrade the 2nd parity drive and this seemed to go ok. I then added a third 18tb as a new data drive and things started to go awry. 

 

I never pre cleared or zero'd these drives! I was just powering down the system, pulling out the old drive and popping in a new one, not even unassiging the drives in the gui before doing this. Hubris, as they say. 

 

I got through the two parity rebuilds but upon adding the third new 18tb things went wrong. I added it to the array successfully, replacing an old 6tb data drive and I then powered down the system after a parity check to add the old 6tb drive as a new data drive. Upon reboot, the new 18tb was unmountable.  This freaked me out - I mistakenly thought I had a hardware issue with the sas to sata cables so I swapped the drives around to try and get a succesful mount on boot. This didn't work.  I then, absolutely moronically then formatted this drive. Boom. It now sits in the pool as Drive 1, showing a free 18tb of space. The drive it replaced was a 6tb drive that was full. I still have the 6tb drive in it's original state. 

 

And here's the kicker - during this whole process the array was writing new data. I even ran my mover to push some data from the cache onto the new 18tb drive!

My question is - what can I do? How can I reinstate the 6tb that it replaced? I have backups from before I started this whole process, both of the flash drive and a appdata backup. Do I build a new flash drive with the flash backup and reinstate the old hardware config? If I do that, do I need to know which drives were parity 1 and parity 2 (I don't!)?

 

I think at this stage I have bitten off more than I can chew and would really appreciate some help from someone who knows what they are doing. 

 

I still have access to the server in it's current fucked state, I can provide any info you need. 

 

This seems to be an option, but I'm a little nervous at this stage to try something without a second opinion.

 

Thank you. 

 

A humbled idiot. 

 

 

38 minutes ago, knicknack said:

How can I reinstate the 6tb that it replaced?

If the old disk is untouched, you can do a new config with it, re-sync parity, then attempt the replacement again.

Ok thank you Jorge. What's the process to do a new config? I also transferred about 200gb of data from my cache onto the new 18tb drive using the mover as the previous 6tb drive was absolutely full. Is this data gone?

Tools - New Config.

 

You can move the new data from that disk to another disk in the array now, or copy the data from the new disk to the array later, using the UD plugin.

Ok I'm giving this a go - I'll report back in two days when the parity has been checked. It has started successfully, thank you so much. 

Update - before the parity process started I was able to access my files. I didn't use this opportunity to get them off the array and instead started the parity check. Learn from my mistake here and copy the files while you have access to them. 

 

The parity process failed and filled the log file which froze the server. After a hard shutdown I rebooted the server and the disk I reinstated has failed and I now can't access the data on the drive. Unraid also isn't emulating this disk which I don't understand. 

 

At this stage I'm cutting my losses and have begun copying what data I can access off the array. 

 

My questions at this point are around rebuilding the disk I lost. Once I've completed copying data I can't afford to lose, is the process to install a new empty disk (which I have available to me) into the failed drive location in the array and try and rebuild from parity?

 

My concern is when I formatted the drive in the array this action was written to parity and I will be rebuilding a drive to a formatted state. Is this the case?

 

Is there anyway to check what the parity drives will actually be rebuilding?

 

Thank you.

Please post new diagnostics.
 

Here they are - thank you Jorge

offworld-diagnostics-20241203-2202.zip

Look like you aborted the parity sync? Disk that was sdh, a 6TB Seagate, appears to have power/connection issues, check/replace cables.

The server had frozen (I'm realising that perhaps only the GUI was frozen) so I powered it down manually. That would have aborted the parity sync. I'm currently copying data off the array and when that's complete I'll power down and change the drive to a different bay. Thanks Jorge

I copied all the data I could access off the array succesfully and changed the drive to a different bay. Unraid was able to find it but I was unable to put it back into it's previous position as Unraid said the disk was too small for the position in the array (as I had updated the drive to an 18tb during the previous processes). 

 

I'm realising that I've made some fatal mistakes here - by upgrading to the 18tb, then freaking out and formatting, then starting a parity check I've written the no data state of Disk 1 into the array. I've just rebuilt a new 18tb from parity and it has 6tb of data shown on the disk but only 20gb of it is accessible through the lost and found directory on the drive. 

 

I think all of this data is lost - fortunately the most important of which I have backups. At this stage is there anything else I can try to recover the data on Disk 1?

 

Thanks.

If you still have old disk1 you can mount it outside the array and copy the data.

Hey Jorge - it's all there!

 

Can I copy this back onto my new drive in the array and then tell unraid to look for the data again? The file structure hasn't changed. 

 

Thank you.

You just need to copy it to the array, it will automatically be part of the respective shares.

Ok thanks Jorge. Currently the 18tb that I will copy to in the array has about 6tb of junk files on it. Should I stop the array and format this drive to clean these up?

Up to you, but if they are really junk, might as well delete them now, or re-format the disk.

 

 

Ok Jorge - how can I determine if they really are junk? When I browse the drive it only has the lost+found directory and only 20gb of viewable files. Is there any way to see if there is anything else on the drive? 

 

Thanks. 

If old disk1 is complete, and those files are from the bad rebuilt disk, I would just delete them.

Hey Jorge - all copied back onto the array! Thanks for your help. No data has been lost. I've learnt a lot. Thank you.