March 19, 20251 yr Hello Unraid Community! Apologies if this a duplicate post. I tried to post this before without signing in and didn't see anywhere where my post had made it through or received any emails about it. I'm having an issue where I can't rebuild a failed drive due to a missing unassigned drive. To provide some context and background: A couple of weeks ago I tried to add another drive to my unraid server, but fail to account for not having enough PCIe lanes to use and format the drive. I opted to uninstall the drive instead of getting errors about it being unmountable. This ended up causing the perpetual "missing" drive. Probably fatal flaw, but I figured it was fine for a little bit until I had some down time to figure out how the remove this "missing" drive. Fast forward to now, I, unfortunately, had a drive die. I have a replacement for it, but unraid won't let me start up the array for a rebuild because "Too manywrong and/or missing drives". Is there a way to get around this? There was never a drive there and with my understanding of parity, it should be possible to rebuild. However, please feel free to correct me if I'm missing something! Thank you!
March 20, 20251 yr Community Expert 1 hour ago, LukasArmstrong said: tried to add another drive to my unraid server How far did you get with that? If you didn't preclear the disk, then Unraid would have wanted to clear it when you added it to the array. This would have taken some significant time as it wrote zeros to the entire disk. When clear, then you would be allowed to format it in the array. Did any of that happen?
March 20, 20251 yr Community Expert 1 hour ago, LukasArmstrong said: uninstall the drive instead of getting errors about it being unmountable It would be unmountable until formatted in the array
March 20, 20251 yr Author Quote How far did you get with that? To completely honest, it a couple of weeks ago, so I don't remember the exact details but I didn't get far at all with that process. I vaguely remember it being: - Added Drive - Unraid detected drive and wanted to format. - Imeddiately got an error about it being unmountable. That when I realized I didn't have the lanes for another drive and opted to remove the drive. Edited March 20, 20251 yr by LukasArmstrong I suck at formatting. I'm sorry ;-;
March 20, 20251 yr Community Expert Let's start with this one. Did you preclear the disk? 10 minutes ago, trurl said: If you didn't preclear the disk, then Unraid would have wanted to clear it when you added it to the array. This would have taken some significant time as it wrote zeros to the entire disk.
March 20, 20251 yr Community Expert Just to make sure you were using the standard procedure to add a disk. You didn't do New Config did you?
March 20, 20251 yr Author Just now, trurl said: Just to make sure you were using the standard procedure to add a disk. You didn't do New Config did you? Nope
March 20, 20251 yr Author 6 minutes ago, trurl said: Did you preclear the disk? No, I intended on letting unraid clear the disk for me
March 20, 20251 yr Community Expert Did it clear the disk? It would not have actually done anything else with the disk until it had cleared it, which would have probably taken hours depending on the size of the disk.
March 20, 20251 yr Community Expert OK, I guess we aren't really going to find out what happened with that disk, so we can't know if parity is valid without it (seems doubtful) without trying it out. Do you still have the original disk2? Is it the unassigned disk sde (S#NP1E)?
March 20, 20251 yr Author 13 minutes ago, trurl said: OK, I guess we aren't really going to find out what happened with that disk, so we can't know if parity is valid without it (seems doubtful) without trying it out. Do you still have the original disk2? Is it the unassigned disk sde (S#NP1E)? This might be a little confusing so please bear with me. I still have the disk that I originally tried to add a few weeks ago. I wasn't sure it if was precleared, so I installed it to my desktop and found it was precleared or at least gparted doesn't know what do with it (image of gparted added). As for original disk2, I no longer have that disk. I have already shipped it off to be RMA'd. It actually started failing so hard that it started to prevent my NAS from even starting.
March 20, 20251 yr Community Expert Solution OK, let's see if parity can emulate disk2 without that other disk you "didn't" add. You must follow these instructions very carefully. Go to Tools - New Config, Retain All, Apply. Check that all disks are assigned correctly. Assign new disk2. Check BOTH Parity valid checkbox and Maintenance mode checkbox, and start the array. This will accept all assignments, but won't change any disk. Stop the array, unassign new disk2, start the array in normal mode. This will disable disk2 so we can decide if it can be rebuilt. Then post diagnostics.
March 20, 20251 yr Author I followed your instructions exactly. Here is the diagnostics you requested. tower-diagnostics-20250320-1720.zip
March 20, 20251 yr Community Expert Wow! Emulated disk2 is mounted and has 11TB data. You can examine the contents. When you're ready, stop the array, reassign disk2, start the array to begin rebuild. Unrelated, your Docker/VM setup could be improved. We can work on that after rebuilding disk2.
March 20, 20251 yr Author You're amazing! Thank you so much! Disk 2 is rebuilding. I'll report back tomorrow or so when the disk as fully rebuild so you can school me up on my Docker/VM setup.
March 23, 20251 yr Author Hey Trurl, I wanted to report that my disk has completely rebuilt. Everything is working as expected. Thank you so much again! On 3/20/2025 at 5:26 PM, trurl said: Unrelated, your Docker/VM setup could be improved. We can work on that after rebuilding disk2. However, I was curious about what tips you have for me about how to improve my Docker/VM setup. I can attach a new Diagnostics if you'd like.
March 23, 20251 yr Community Expert 28 minutes ago, LukasArmstrong said: attach a new Diagnostics yes
March 23, 20251 yr Community Expert Your appdata, domains, and system shares have files on the array. Ideally, these shares would have all files on cache or other pool, with none on the array, so Docker/VM performance won't be impacted by slower array reads and especially writes, and so array disks can spin down since these files are always open. Nothing can move open files, so you have to disable Docker and VM Manager in Settings before these shares can be worked with. Set these shares to Primary:cache; Secondary:array; Mover action:array->cache Then run mover, wait for it to complete, post new diagnostics.
March 23, 20251 yr Author Actions completed. I'm still getting warnings about files on app data, domains, and system being unprotected. Though I believe this is due to having only 1 drive in the cache pool. I'll try to consolidated my drives to make room for a another sata drive for the cache pool. tower-diagnostics-20250323-0825.zip
March 23, 20251 yr Community Expert 21 minutes ago, LukasArmstrong said: I'm still getting warnings about files on app data, domains, and system being unprotected. Though I believe this is due to having only 1 drive in the cache pool. It is Many people do not bother with redundancy on the pool, and instead use the appdata backup and VM backup plugins to make regular scheduled backups to the main array.
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