After running flawlessly for nearly 4 months, today I decided to install a new 3TB drive that I bought on Amazon.

 

Before shutting down, I poked around a bit to reacquaint myself with the system. I literally have not had to touch it since the initial setup and config back in December, everything has been running that well. It's my main file and media server, SAB/Sickbeard/etc host, and the backup server for my wife's MacBook and my Win7 PC.

 

While navigating around, I clicked on the //tower/flash share in Windows Explorer, and saw a mess of garbled file and folder names. Thinking this was strange, I connected via PuTTY and saw the same thing in /boot. I then went to unMENU's user scripts menu and saw that my user scripts were all accounted for. Next, I went to the edit config files screen and it appeared that the scripts and .cfg files were all present and accounted for.

 

At this point, I made my mistake: I assumed that since I could see the various scripts and configs in unMENU and the array was working just fine, a simple reboot would fix whatever was going on with  the /flash share. Not so.

 

After shutting down and installing the new drive, nothing came back up. I also noticed that the light on the flash drive was not flickering like it usually does during boot. I shut everything back down, plugged the flash into my Win7 PC, and saw the attached.

 

So, it looks like my flash drive it toast. It's really strange because, as I said, I've hardly had to touch the thing since building it 4 months ago, and there has been no recent power outages or anything else like that.

 

Needless to say, I'm feeling a little sick to my stomach about this. Here's the setup I need to recover:

 

• v5b14 free version
  
• 1TB parity (this is the one I was going to replace with the new drive after the preclear)
  
• disk1: 1TB; disk2: 500GB
  
• Several custom packages (I think I have a list), and Python servers running on disk1 (no cache)
  

 

I assume I can just re-download 5b14 and build a new system. Questions:

[*]How exactly do I bring up the new system so that it recognizes my existing data and shares? I have screenshots of all of my shares setups, but I don't have any of the actual cfg files.

[*]I was planning on upgrading my license at some point, but since the license is tied to the flash drive GUID, I'm reconsidering. If I stick with the free version, what should I back up in case this happens again?

[*]What in God's name did I do wrong?

 

Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

-Rick

as long as you assign your parity drive correctly, what slots the others drives are in will not make a difference. 

 

I use the dropbox addon and once a week - save a copy of my flash to the dropbox folder as i have had one flash drive die already (was a used one, current is brand new).

 

You have probably not lost any data on your drives, so all is not lost

 

Good luck

 

Myk

 

Thanks. I ended up going out and buying two identical flash drives, and I'm setting them up now.

 

Obviously when I assign the drives to parity/disk, I'll be sure to use the exact same setup as before. The only part I'm concerned about is re-setting-up the user shares so that they exactly match the old configuration. Is there any risk if I don't get this exactly right once I start the array?

 

Also, I'll amend my previous statement: this experience hasn't turned me off buying a license for a device GUID. Obviously it's not unRAID's fault that my (5-month-old!) flash drive crapped out. It has taught me to back up the entire flash drive, and when I am ready to buy a license, get the two-pack.

 

-Rick

 

EDIT: I started it up, and the system automatically detected my old shares. That was an unexpected surprise. I still need to redo the share settings, but the fact that they were all detected saves me some work.