Hi all,

I noticed today that my parity disk is disabled. I've been doing my best to understand what is happening before posting. It seems the parity disk was disabled on November 7th. I don't think there are any SMART attributes in warning for this device. I see in the system log several disk write errors on November 7th, some of them followed by "attempt to access beyond end of device". I'm presently running a Read-Check on the array.

The drive in error is the ST14000NM0121 (sde).

I appreciate anyone's time and advice!

Uploading Attachment...diagnostics-20251124-1630.zip

USB not recommended for assigned disks for many reasons. You seem to have encountered some of those reasons. Parity disconnected so it was disabled. It has since reconnected as a different device, but it has to be assigned and rebuilt, preferably without attempting to use USB for assigned disks.

Why weren't you using SATA port?

1 hour ago, trurl said:

connected so it was disabled. It has since

ahhhhh, I see. I saw that the device appeared under Unassigned Devices recently and didn't understand why.

The device in question is a 14Tb desktop expansion hdd with only a USB port. When I built my Unraid system, I tried to buy as few new parts as possible. I do have a SATA connected HDD as the main "working drive". Assuming the USB would be worse for data transfer, I assigned the USB device as the parity drive. In my understanding the parity drive is in use less frequently so I thought it would manage. Some degree of my understanding was wrong though.

Perhaps the expansion hdd would serve better as a backup instead of a parity device?

P.s. since reading your reply, I found several articles online that describe "shucking" desktop hard drives in order to expose their SATA connections. I might look into that too.

Edited November 25, 2025Nov 25 by cawcawx3

6 hours ago, cawcawx3 said:

parity drive is in use less frequently

Parity is written each time an array data disk is written