Long story short. I had and array drive fail(8TB). Then got new larger drives(12TB) and had to do a parity swap. While doing the Parity Swap, my old parity drive died - What are the odds...

Anyway, as far as i can understand, all data on my 8TB drive is now gone for good.

 

Is there a chance i can still save all my other data? And how do I do?

 

Any help is truly and greatly appreciated.

Thanks, J

All the data on the drives that have not failed will be intact.   That is one of the benefits of the Unraid array type in that each array drive is a free-standing file system that can be read independently of the others.

 

Are you sure that the original drive failed rather than simply being disabled (i.e. marked with a red ‘x’ due to a write failure)?   Just asking as it may still be possible to get data off that drive.

Thanks. That’s at least some semi good news. 
 

The drive is dead. Not showing in bios (or my sas controller). “Click click”. I think it was the 2 x Parity swap (40+ hours) that killed it… (first parity swap copy completed, but I never got the “start array”, only “copy” again…. In theory the new parity disk should have the data, but…

 

As I understand, I need to rebuild the array. But I can’t find out what exactly to do without breaking anything :-S

 How far did you get through the parity swap process before your old parity drive failed?   Was it during the phase where it is copying the parity information to the new drive, or when it was in the rebuild stage of trying to put the failed drive contents onto the old parity drive?

First copy went to “100% completed”. But I never got the “rebuild array”. 
 

Then I rebooted and I just got “copy” again. The drive failed during the second time Copy. 

I think that there is a good chance that we can provide directions to force Unraid to accept the new parity drive as valid and make it start emulating the failed drive which would mean no data loss at all.   I would suggest waiting until @JorgeB comments as he is the best authority on unusual variations on standard procedure.

That would be a lifesaver! Jorge helped me before a lot with other stuff. Great guy. Thank you. 
 

Best, J

1 hour ago, IWasJustHere said:

my old parity drive died - What are the odds...

Do any of your drives show SMART warning ( 👎 ) on the DASHBOARD page?

 

Do you have Notifications setup to alert you immediately by email or other agent as soon as a problem is detected?

 

Attach Diagnostics to your NEXT post in this thread.

7 hours ago, trurl said:

Do any of your drives show SMART warning ( 👎 ) on the DASHBOARD page?

 

Do you have Notifications setup to alert you immediately by email or other agent as soon as a problem is detected?

 

all my drives were good. No warning on either. I monitor manually. I’m n the last failed parity drive I monitored constantly and was not getting hot (around 43c when dead). But good idea to set up alerts. Thanks. 
 

For anyones interest, they were both WD Red. (5200). One had 35.000 hours, one had 52.000 hours. 

7 hours ago, trurl said:

Attach Diagnostics to your NEXT post in this thread.

Thanks. Here you go

tower-diagnostics-20250308-0804.zip

Assuming disk3 is the failed disk:

 

-Tools -> New Config -> Retain current configuration: All -> Apply
-Check all assignments and assign any missing disk(s) if needed, including the new disk3, replacement disk should be same size or larger than the old one
-IMPORTANT - Check both "parity is already valid" and "maintenance mode" and start the array (note that the GUI will still show that data on parity disk(s) will be overwritten, this is normal as it doesn't account for the checkbox, but it won't be as long as it's checked)
-Stop array
-Unassign disk3
-Start array (in normal mode now), and post new diagnostics

Thanks! I’ll cross my fingers:)

I followed your instructions. After new config, I can't start array. Too many or wrong disc?

 

You didn't do a new config, or all disk icons would be blue, try again, make sure you hit apply.

Done  New Diagnostics attached. Thanks. 

tower-diagnostics-20250308-1145.zip

The array is not started, start it in normal mode and post new diags.

Here you go!

tower-diagnostics-20250308-1210.zip

Emulated disk3 mounted but is mostly empty, is that expected?

 

Wait, disk3 is not emulated, you didn't follow the instructions.

Arghh! I was sure I did:(

It should be 8tb full. 

Try doing it again, and make sure you follow the instructions correctly, but having parity updated with the empty disk will likely cause some issues.

Ok.

Just to make sure, I'll do this again?

---

-Tools -> New Config -> Retain current configuration: All -> Apply
-Check all assignments and assign any missing disk(s) if needed, including the new disk3, replacement disk should be same size or larger than the old one
-IMPORTANT - Check both "parity is already valid" and "maintenance mode" and start the array (note that the GUI will still show that data on parity disk(s) will be overwritten, this is normal as it doesn't account for the checkbox, but it won't be as long as it's checked)
-Stop array
-Unassign disk3
-Start array (in normal mode now), and post new diagnostics

---

Correct?

Correct.

31 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

Correct.

Here we go again

tower-diagnostics-20250308-1353.zip