My Disk 6 has a red X next to it and the pop up message says the device is disabled and being emulated. I don't know how to interpret the disk status, but diagnostics are attached.

 

Does it look like I can salvage it by rebuilding it, or should it be replaced?

tower-diagnostics-20250311-1615.zip

Diags are after rebooting so we can't see what happened, but SMART looks fine, I would recommend replacing the disk cables to rule that out, and then assuming that the contents of the emulated disk look correct, you can rebuild on top:

 

https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/manual/storage-management#rebuilding-a-drive-onto-itself

Not having much luck here. So I checked Disk 6 (emulated) contents - seemed OK, so I attached it to another cable and started rebuilding. But now on checking I have another disk, Disk 3, that is disabled. It's on the same SAS to SATA breakout cable as Disk 6 was (one of those SAS SFF-8087 to 4x SATA forward breakout cables), before I swapped cables.

 

I've ordered a new cable, but it will take a few days to arrive. In the meantime, I've attached diagnostics  - this time without rebooting. Would appreciate any information about what's causing the disk to be disabled, to see if it is/was indeed a cable problem.

tower-diagnostics-20250312-0014.zip

Disk3 doesn't appear in the SMART with these latest diagnostics. Seems to have a serial number very close to disk6. Both emulated disks are mounted with plenty of data.

 

Did you perhaps disturb disk3 connections while trying to fix disk6?

2 minutes ago, trurl said:

Disk3 doesn't appear in the SMART with these latest diagnostics. Seems to have a serial number very close to disk6. Both emulated disks are mounted with plenty of data.

 

Did you perhaps disturb disk3 connections while trying to fix disk6?

(Serial numbers are I believe correct, in case that's a concern. I have a screenshot from about a year ago that shows the same numbers.)

I don't think I disturbed the disk3 connection - didn't have to touch it directly to change cables, but I suppose it's possible that the (shared) breakout cable is sensitive to any movement. What should I do now?

 

This is what I can see in the Disk3 SMART settings in the GUI, if that's any use.

 

(Sorry, getting late here. Will get back to this later. Appreciate the help.)

The only reason I mentioned serial numbers is the slight possibility (perhaps even mythical) of a bad batch of disks from the manufacturer. But SMART looks OK.

Waiting anxiously for my new SAS to SATA breakout cable to arrive, but now Disk 6 has read errors again and has been disabled. So now I have 2 disabled disks, with their contents being emulated. I do have dual parity, so I think I'm a bit safer than I otherwise would be, but I'm hoping to resolve this soon.

 

To summarise, Disk 6 got disabled after read errors. I rebuilt it, but during the rebuild Disk 3 also got disabled after read errors. For a few days Disk 6 was OK, but now is disabled again with read errors. Diagnostics are attached.

 

Assuming this is indeed all due to cable error, when the new cable arrives, I'm intending to replace the current cable then rebuild each disk (one at a time), unless the diagnostics indicate some other SMART problem. (Then I'm going to order another breakout cable as a standby.) Does this sound OK?

 

 

tower-diagnostics-20250317-0953.zip

It does also look like a power/connection issue.

 

 

11 hours ago, sonofdbn said:

Disk 6 got disabled after read errors

Unraid only disables a disk when a write to it fails for any reason. It is possible that a failed read might cause Unraid to get the data from the parity calculation and try to write it back to the disk, and if that write failed the disk would be disabled.

I'm now trying to rebuild Disk 3 onto itself, but I get this warning message for both Disk 3 (understandable) and my disabled Disk 6:

"All existing data on this device will be OVERWRITTEN when array is Started".

 

What's going to happen to my Disk 6 data? Not going to proceed for now.

Since that disk is disabled it would also be rebuilt.

But I didn't go through the stop/unassign/start/stop/reassign process for Disk 6. So unRAID will just rebuild both at the same time? I had thought unRAID would be more conservative - as in one rebuild at a time. But I suppose there's no real additional risk.

 

So I can just go ahead?

5 minutes ago, sonofdbn said:

But I didn't go through the stop/unassign/start/stop/reassign process for Disk 6

In that case, it should not rebuild, possibly the warning is wrong, you can also unassign the disk to make sure, and should do that first if you haven't confirmed the emulated disk is mounting and contents look correct, but if it all looks good, might as well try to rebuild both at the same time, no increased risk, since they are already both disabled.

19 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

possibly the warning is wrong

Just confirmed, it's a bug.

57 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

confirmed the emulated disk is mounting and contents look correct

The diagnostics posted Sunday indicated both emulated disks were mountable

2 hours ago, JorgeB said:

Just confirmed, it's a bug.

 

Thanks, yes, I'm now rebuilding Disk 3 and Disk 6 stays emulated. A bit of an edge case, so not many users are likely to see the two messages.

 

Thanks for all the help.