I've just had a drive fail and I've been trying to replace it and had run into a string of issues I've not had with previous drive replacements. Here's what happened.

! - one of my drives failed mid-use, so I shut down and got another (larger) drive to replace it.

2- I put the drive in as "unassigned" and tried to pre-clear it, but the pre-clear plugin was no longer in my unraid. So, I stopped, re-downloaded it and set the device to pre-clear.

3- For some reason, there was no longer any timer showing how much had been pre-cleared, or showing haw much longer the device would take until completion.

4- After about a day and a half, the operation was no longer showing as ongoing (ie, there were no writes being made to the disk).

5- When I then tried to assign the disk to replace the failed disk, the unraid shut down, showing the error of "Too many wrong and/or missing disks!" showing the both the new and the old disks as "invalid" The computer shows the new disk and having 1 Smart error, even though when I run a Smart test. it passes with 0 errors.

6- I have tried as many ways as I know of to add the new disk, but keep getting the error. Please point me in the direction of the logs needed to help determine the issues and I will send them Help would be greatly appreciated. (I tried to export a log, but it only had entries for today, not from when the issue started.

Please post the diagnostics.

Sorry, in my frustration I forgot the basics

Unraid 6.12.6 on Linux

tower-diagnostics-20250912-1017.zip

The server currently has disk5 disabled and disk6 missing. Since there's only one parity, you cannot start the array with two invalid disks, I assume disk5 is the one that got disabled.

What happened to disk6? Also, no extra disk is being detected besides parity and disks 1 to 4, so the replacement disk 5 is also not getting detected. Check/replace cables for disks 5 and 6

OK, disk 5 is now showing, and disk 6 is non-existant.

That's one of the issues I ran into, the non existing disk is stopping the array, but I do not know how to remove it from the array.

I could do a "new config" but that would reset parity right? and I was hoping to rebuild disk 5.

Is that out of the question now?

18 minutes ago, lockrob2000 said:

and I was hoping to rebuild disk 5.

For that you need disk 6. Swap cables with a different disk and see where the issue follows; if it follows the disk it may be bad.

There is no disk 6.

The entry is a leftover from a disk that no longer exists.

How to remove it from that array?

The only way to remove disk6 is to also lose the option to rebuild disk5, disk6 is still part of the array, and with single parity and without disk6, you cannot have another invalid disk.

Well, I bit the bullet and started the "new config" and disk 5 is showing "unmountable ; unsupported partition layout"

Is there a way to save it?

Also, is there a way to generate a repot of the video files that are left after all this?

6 hours ago, lockrob2000 said:

Is there a way to save it?

Not without the missing disk6

On 9/13/2025 at 7:46 AM, JorgeB said:

disk6 is still part of the array, and with single parity and without disk6, you cannot have another invalid disk.