Hi, I am completely new to Unraid. I started with a fresh system. All new parts. I ran standard tests on RAM before setting up OS and then tests on all drives in Unraid OS. No issues or errors. No data has been harmed in the making of these mistakes. I am not looking for data recovery. I just want my used parity drives to show up again and be usable.

I had Unraid up and running without issues in the OS. Had some issues setting up a Docker, lagged for a couple days due to day job and annoyance, then decided to go with a larger main parity drive and installed a fresh drive for that. When installing the new parity drive, once the OS started and I was assigning drives I chose the new largest drive and then could not find the old parity drive. Thought it weird but started the array anyways without finding the old drive. Probably not the proper way to add parity drives. It seemed to work, but then I was annoyed at not finding the original parity drive. After a restart minutes later, my new parity drive was also gone and an array drive missing. Restarted the PC and the array drive had returned, but both parity drives were still missing. I changed SATA cables, changed PSUs, switched to using a SATA PCIe card, and nothing made the parity drives come back. Plugged one of the parity drives into my Desktop PC with a USB SATA box and it showed up in device manager but not under drives. It had a partition still and seemed in good health. So what gives? What has happened and what do I change to find and use my drives again for parity?

Again, I have no data on them and they are brand new drives. The only running hours on them are the ones I have logged, I checked.

janus-diagnostics-20250328-1208.zip

Do the missing disks show up in the board BIOS?

Yes, the larger newest parity drive is connected via SATA to the board and in BIOS right now shows full size and serial.

Boot Unriad again, and let us know the model and size, and also which SATA port is connected to.

Hold up. The drive is now showing up in OS under Historical through Unassigned Devices app.
Seagate IronWolf Pro 12TB, connected to SATA port 1.

All other drives are on the SATA PCIe card. The 12TB was connected there minutes ago.
I have moved both parity drives from direct connect on the board to PCIe a couple times testing and now it shows up...

Edited March 28, 20251 yr by Chandelin

Is this one of those situations where I don't trust it and I restart to see if it still exists after? Should I shut down and move the other parity drive to direct connect with the board and see if it has come back?

18 minutes ago, Chandelin said:

Hold up. The drive is now showing up in OS under Historical through Unassigned Devices app.

That still means it's not being detected.

 

12 minutes ago, Chandelin said:

Should I shut down and move the other parity drive to direct connect with the board and see if it has come back?

You can try.

1 hour ago, JorgeB said:

That still means it's not being detected.

The 12TB shows as an option to assign as the parity now. After restart it still exists.

 

The 4TB original parity drive is still invisible to the OS but shows in the BIOS.

Edited March 28, 20251 yr by Chandelin
I used wrong terminology first try.

Parity doesn't mount since it has no filesystem. If it shows as an option to assign and stays assigned that is what you want.

Well, technology is magic, and you can't always see the problem or solution. Both drives are currently in the process of a parity sync. I am baffled as to the error of my ways. Both drives are currently directly connected to the board via SATA ports 1&2, where they were originally when I lost them... The rest of the array are still on the SATA PCIe card.

Now I am just silently worried about the drives disappearing for the next month until my fears are proven wrong with time.

It may be the new PSU I installed today is better and more reliable than the two I returned before.