47 minutes ago, kmk-kmk said:

for a hardware error, it just doesn't feel right that the same two sectors fail.

I've seen this before, typically a controller issue; for some reason, they flip those same bits after a reboot, sometimes 2, sometimes 5

Interesting...thanks for sharing your experience.

In your experience with this type of controller issue, is it prudent to just try another controller (chassis in this case) of the same make/model (one-off type issue) or do these errors tend to be a large batch type of issue (entire batch of controller chips). I'm trying to assess if it's likely worth trying a replacement chassis of the same make/model, possibly in the same manufacturing batch as the one i have.

To try to rule out hot swap slots, i moved the three array drives to the other three bays and re-ran parity - same issue, same sectors. The drives seem to be much quieter as well, which is rather unexpected.

My next steps are:

• remove extra data drive from array (the one with no data)

• rerun parity, to try to rule out that extra drive

• break current array, creating new one with the 2 other drives (researching how to best do this without risking data loss)

• rerun parity on newly created array

• if no issues, copy data from now unassigned data drive from old array

• rerun parity

I would suspect that the same controller with the same firmware will have the same issues; different firmware may no longer have it.

Ah, excellent point wrt firmware, i'll research that. Thank you!

Apologies for not updating for a while. It's been busy. Here's some relevant history:

• moved the array drives to the other 3 hot-swappable slots in the chassis, reran parity, same two error sectors

• removed the spare drive from the array and recreated parity (in prep to try creating a new array with the other two drives)

  • During this, the parity drive threw a smart error; i let parity creation complete

• Ran extended smart test on all drives, all ok no errors

• Ran correcting parity on array (now 2 drives), no errors...huh, interesting

During this, i purchased a license, and subsequently had some issues with that. The fantastic response from creating a support ticket got that straightened out, after a reboot or two.

Right now, i'm preclearing one of the other disks, in hopes that the parity will remain good (long shot, i know). Current eta is ~21hours.

The next scheduled parity check is Monday night (us/east). I'm eager to see how that goes. I should know Tues am if it got past the usual point of finding errors (usually ~3-4hrs, 7%)

Regarding firmware, i haven't found anything on how to update the Terramaster F6-424 Max firmware. I'm thinking of trying two approaches:

1. boot linux from a usb and see if there are any firmware updates

2. clone the original Terramaster OS usb and boot from the clone to see if that updates any firmware (keeping the original pristine)

Any suggestions are appreciated, and thanks for your assistance to date!

It appears that rewriting the parity drive was the solution. Since then, 3-4 parity checks passed without errors.

I don't understand why a correcting parity did not solve the issue, but rewriting the whole disk did. Nevertheless, i'm happy that things seem to be working normally now.

Thank you for all the assistance!

8 minutes ago, kmk-kmk said:

It appears that rewriting the parity drive was the solution.

That's strange, but I'm glad it's resolved.