I have a drive failure, so I ordered a replacement which came in today. However, the replacement drive is showing as being ~1k larger than the parity. Is there any way to force a data rebuild?

 

-Lucas

 

Update:

 

I found this:

 

You must replace a failed disk with a disk which is as big or bigger than the original and not bigger than the parity disk. If the replacement disk is larger than your parity disk, then the system permits a special configuration change called swap-disable.

For swap-disable, you use your existing parity disk to replace the failed disk, and you install your new big disk as the parity disk:

 

Stop the array.

Power down the unit.

Replace the parity hard disk with a new bigger one.

Replace the failed hard disk with you old parity disk.

Power up the unit.

Start the array.

 

Here is an image of my mail unraid page: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17676078/unraidError.PNG

 

Do I just go to devices and switch the two drives, and unraid copies parity? Then unraid starts a data rebuild?

 

-Lucas

The parity disk, and disk 2, were probably installed, at one time,  on a different machine with a Gigabyte Motherboard and have HPA on them. Please search the forums for 'HPA removal' and you will find a wealth of info. I suppose you could do a swap disable, but Getting rid of the HPA is probably better. I'll let someone with more knowledge give the final word.

You are probably spot on. I think my current parity drive was installed in a different computer at some point. It looks like removing HPA makes unraid think it is a new drive and rebuild, so I cannot fix this until I am in a full working state.

 

-Lucas

You are probably spot on. I think my current parity drive was installed in a different computer at some point. It looks like removing HPA makes unraid think it is a new drive and rebuild, so I cannot fix this until I am in a full working state.

 

-Lucas

Others may disagree, but if it were me, I'd change the new drive size to match the parity drive, rebuild normally, then start dealing with the HPA issue. In my opinion, the less you mess with the array before you recover the data the better. Reducing the drive size is done pretty much the same way as expanding it, so the same HPA threads still apply, just adjust the numbers appropriately.

You are probably spot on. I think my current parity drive was installed in a different computer at some point. It looks like removing HPA makes unraid think it is a new drive and rebuild, so I cannot fix this until I am in a full working state.

 

-Lucas

Others may disagree, but if it were me, I'd change the new drive size to match the parity drive, rebuild normally, then start dealing with the HPA issue. In my opinion, the less you mess with the array before you recover the data the better. Reducing the drive size is done pretty much the same way as expanding it, so the same HPA threads still apply, just adjust the numbers appropriately.

I would do as suggested.  Make the new replacement drive look smaller by adding an HPA to it, then recover the data, then, once stable, deal with the HPA issue. 

 

Joe L.

I would do a parity swap and then deal with the HPA. This eliminates creating HPA just to remove it later. There is something strange going on because the image shows parity as valid but some of the data disks are reported a bigger than the parity drive.

Thanks to everyone for the advice. The road I started on last night was the following:

 

Rebuild data to the drive unraid flagged as error (it passed a couple of tests, so hopefully it still has some life in it).

Backup disk config.

Swap parity.

Swap error'd drive with old parity drive.

 

Currently the parity is being rebuilt, so as long as that drive doesn't fail again, I should be golden in about another 10 hours. After reading these posts when I woke up this morning, I think the best option would have been to enable HPA on the new drive; however, I have already started this path. I might as well see it through.

 

-Lucas