Dear All,

 

My unraid PC is experiencing repeated setbacks. A new 8TB HDD lasted 4 months then issued CRC errors. I had it replaced under warranty and the new disk has upon insertion failed a preclear. This HDD no longer even appears in the Unraid  GUI, its as though it has been physically disconnected! Seperately from this another HDD, a 4TB currently used for parity, which is less than a year old has given up as well. I did have HDD connectivity issues some months ago and addressed it by replacing the power cables, the data cables and the PCIe card. I would have to be very unlucky to have one of these components fail again within 6 months surely?

 

Dont understand and would appreciate any insights please, the diagnostics file is attached. I dont get it because I read about other Unraid users who talk about up to 10 years of worry free Unraid use.

 

Many thanks

Red Stag

 

henderson-diagnostics-20250207-2210.zip

CRCs are always connection related, so I'd try replacing the cables again, making sure not to tie them all in a bundle.

 

How hot is the PCIe card getting?

You have a card with ASMedia 1166 controller. If it is a version with more than 6 drives, it uses a port multiplier which is not recommended. Also there may be firmware issues that can explain the problems. See this thread.

Dear Wody, thank you, I very much appreciate you making the time to respond. I re-read that thread and the language in it carefully and advise that there is nothing in THAT LANGUAGE which causes me to conclude that the ASMedia is an issue. The language does not suggest strongly ENOUGH that there is an issue. Below is the language

 

"6 ports: Asmedia ASM1166 (PCIe 3.0 x4 physical, x2 electrical) *

        

        * There have been some reports that some of these need a firmware update for stability and/or PCIe ASPM support, see here for instructions.

 

         These exist with both x4 (x2 electrical) and x1 PCIe interface, for some use cases the PCIe x1 may be a good option, i.e., if you don't have larger slots available, though bandwidth will be limited:"

 

I pick up that connections are physical (x4) and electrical (x2) and the firmware issue. Prior to installing the ASMedia PCIe card I updated the firmware.

I did not interpret "physical vs electrical" to mean "in all likelihood the physical connections will work fine albeit perhaps a little slow. As regards the electrical connection goes this approach is not recommended and there is a more than reasonable chance that it will result in issues and might well result data loss."

 

Extremely frustrated but thank you for responding

Red Stag