Hi,

I have been having problems for probably the last month with my Unraid server. Everything was running smooth until my Parity drive 1 started throwing SMART errors. Not a lot but enough that I thought it would be smart to replace it before it became an issue.

When I was rebuilding the new Parity drive, I had a random Disk flag as "Device content emulated" and "unmountable". Looking it up, the only real way to get it back online was to stop the array, remove the drive, start the array in maintenance, stop it again, add the drive back and start the array to initiate a rebuild.

Ever since then, every time I have been trying to rebuild one disk, another one or 2 random ones drop out. As you could tell this is a pretty infuriating game of whack-a-mole.

I have upgraded the firmware on my 9300-16i, I have replaced the Flash USB with a better quality and bigger Samsung one, but this issue still comes up.

The XFS repair says "Dirty log detected" but I don't know how to deal with this.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Note: in the attached syslog, it is around 17:09 when the latest culprit of "Disk 4" started acting up.

syslog.txt FS xfs_2.txt FS xfs.txt

Attach Diagnostics ZIP to your NEXT post in this thread.

1 hour ago, Kosturi said:

I had a random Disk flag as "Device content emulated" and "unmountable". Looking it up, the only real way to get it back online was to stop the array, remove the drive, start the array in maintenance, stop it again, add the drive back and start the array to initiate a rebuild.

So when the rebuild completed, was the result an enabled disk that was still unmountable? We recommend repairing unmountable (check filesystem) before rebuild, especially if rebuilding to the same disk. Disabled/emulated, and unmountable, are different and independent conditions that require different solutions.. Rebuild will fix disabled/emulated, but it will not typically fix unmountable.

6 minutes ago, trurl said:

Attach Diagnostics ZIP to your NEXT post in this thread.

tower-diagnostics-20260211-2310.zip

Looks like you were trying check filesystem from the command line, and the way you were doing it will invalidate parity. You should do it from the webUI, it will use the correct command.

3 minutes ago, trurl said:

So when the rebuild completed, was the result an enabled disk that was still unmountable? We recommend repairing unmountable (check filesystem) before rebuild, especially if rebuilding to the same disk. Disabled/emulated, and unmountable, are different and independent conditions that require different solutions.. Rebuild will fix disabled/emulated, but it will not typically fix unmountable.

Yes when the rebuild is completed, typically the drive is okay, but as shown in the screenshot, during the process another disk flags like disk 4, and just goes in a limbo state, and if i stop and start the array it will say disabled. Otherwise it will go orange and say emulated.

3 minutes ago, trurl said:

Looks like you were trying check filesystem from the command line, and the way you were doing it will invalidate parity. You should do it from the webUI, it will use the correct command.

I was using this tool to check the drive

1 minute ago, trurl said:

Looks like you were trying check filesystem from the command line, and the way you were doing it will invalidate parity. You should do it from the webUI, it will use the correct command.

Or were you trying to check filesystem on an Unassigned Device? According to your diagnostics, sdn is not currently assigned. Maybe it was an assigned disk that disconnected.

OK, it looks like that disk is the same disk that was assigned as disk4, and it has disconnected. Not sure why you were trying to check filesystem on it, it wasn't unmountable.

All these problems are almost certainly not disk problems. And you can't expect to rebuild anything until these problems are fixed.

Also

2 hours ago, Kosturi said:

Parity drive 1 started throwing SMART errors

might not have been a bad drive either. What SMART error specifically?

Stop rebuild and wait while I analyze your diagnostics further.

Just now, trurl said:

Not sure why you were trying to check filesystem on it, it wasn't unmountable.

Fortunately, you didn't actually get check filesystem to write to that disk, since that would have invalidated parity.

The syslog you attached in your first post is the same as in your diagnostics, and doesn't show us anything that happened before you rebooted and started rebuilding (unmountable) disks 3, 9.

So can't tell what went wrong with those.

SMART report for sdn (formerly disk4) looks OK, and syslog seems to indicate a problem communicating with the disk. SMART for disks 3, 9 also looks good.

Possibly emulated disks 3, 9 would be mountable if disk4 could be read. Parity calculation requires all other disks to be read to get the data for emulated disks.

Disk 9 is on a different controller than disks 3, 4. I guess both could be overheating though.

How are these disks powered? Ideally no more than 4 disks per PSU cable, MOLEX - SATA power splitters are better than SATA-SATA power splitters.

Go to Disk Settings and disable autostart. Then...

Shutdown, check connections, ALL disks, SATA and power, both ends, including splitters. Each connector should sit squarely and firmly on the connection, with enough slack in cable so it isn't pulling on connection. Don't bundle data cables.

Reboot and post new diagnostics.

1 minute ago, trurl said:

The syslog you attached in your first post is the same as in your diagnostics, and doesn't show us anything that happened before you rebooted and started rebuilding (unmountable) disks 3, 9.

So can't tell what went wrong with those.

SMART report for sdn (formerly disk4) looks OK, and syslog seems to indicate a problem communicating with the disk. SMART for disks 3, 9 also looks good.

Possibly emulated disks 3, 9 would be mountable if disk4 could be read. Parity calculation requires all other disks to be read to get the data for emulated disks.

Disk 9 is on a different controller than disks 3, 6. I guess both could be overheating though.

How are these disks powered? Ideally no more than 4 disks per PSU cable, MOLEX - SATA power splitters are better than SATA-SATA power splitters.

Go to Disk Settings and disable autostart. Then...

Shutdown, check connections, ALL disks, SATA and power, both ends, including splitters. Each connector should sit squarely and firmly on the connection, with enough slack in cable so it isn't pulling on connection. Don't bundle data cables.

Reboot and post new diagnostics.

Okay, I will have to wait until I am home from work to play around with the cables.

I will have to double check but if i recall correctly the first 4 are direct SATA power and the last 8 are Molex to Sata. I am using the Jonsbo N5 case.

I am using a LSI SAS 9300-16I 12GB/S HBA card, and have a fan mounted directly on the heat sink.
I did read somewhere people saying to potentially look at upgrading to the 9305, as it is a dedicated chip for 16 ports, as opposed to the 9300 16I which is functionally 2x 8 port chips put together.

I have stopped the rebuild and stopped the array for now. I will disable to autostart and everything, and have a look at the physical connections when I get home.

Thanks for looking into this.

As for the Syslog, I thought I set it to be continuous, though it seems to generate a new one every reboot.

7 minutes ago, trurl said:

Disk 9 is on a different controller than disks 3, 4

corrected

1 minute ago, Kosturi said:

As for the Syslog, I thought I set it to be continuous, though it seems to generate a new one every reboot.

Setup Syslog Server. If you already did, you have to get the syslog from wherever you told it to save it, then zip and post it.

Post a screenshot of your Syslog Server settings.

14 minutes ago, trurl said:

Setup Syslog Server. If you already did, you have to get the syslog from wherever you told it to save it, then zip and post it.

Post a screenshot of your Syslog Server settings.

looks like it didn't save my settings from last time, probably my mistake.

I started the array in maintenance mode and did the webGUI check disk and this is what it gave me

3 minutes ago, Kosturi said:

I started the array in maintenance mode and did the webGUI check disk and this is what it gave me

Post new diags after the repair attempt, before rebooting.

2 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

Post new diags after the repair attempt, before rebooting.

tower-diagnostics-20260212-0245.zip

The reason I asked you to disable autostart is because I didn't want anything else to happen before I got new diagnostics. I guess I should have been more explicit.

31 minutes ago, Kosturi said:

I started the array in maintenance mode and did the webGUI check disk

No point in trying anything else because

1 hour ago, trurl said:

Parity calculation requires all other disks to be read to get the data for emulated disks.

Get back to us when you have done this

1 hour ago, trurl said:

Shutdown, check connections, ALL disks, SATA and power, both ends, including splitters. Each connector should sit squarely and firmly on the connection, with enough slack in cable so it isn't pulling on connection. Don't bundle data cables.

56 minutes ago, Kosturi said:

have a look at the physical connections when I get home.

1 minute ago, trurl said:

The reason I asked you to disable autostart is because I didn't want anything else to happen before I got new diagnostics. I guess I should have been more explicit.

No point in trying anything else because

Get back to us when you have done this

Okay, my bad. Array is stopped now, I will leave it now until I check all the physical connections

Yeah, those diags still have read errors on another disk, possibly more, besides the disabled ones.

13 hours ago, Kosturi said:

Okay, my bad. Array is stopped now, I will leave it now until I check all the physical connections

Okay so I opened it up and checked all the cables and they are all secure with slack. I reseated both sides just to be sure.

HDD 1-4 5-8 9-12 are all on 3 separate bays feeding a backplane. They are both Feb by sata power as a primary and molex as an aux power feed.

Edited February 12Feb 12 by Kosturi

14 minutes ago, Kosturi said:

Okay so I opened it up and checked all the cables and they are all secure with slack. I reseated both sides just to be sure.

HDD 1-4 5-8 9-12 are all on 3 separate bays feeding a backplane. They are both Feb by sata power as a primary and molex as an aux power feed.

Here are the diagnostics after the reboot with the array not started

tower-diagnostics-20260212-1657.zip

Looks oK so far, start the array and post new diags.

17 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

Looks oK so far, start the array and post new diags.

Shockingly enough, Disk 4 looks to be behaving again. I have also stopped the rebuild it triggered on the array startingtower-diagnostics-20260212-1902.zip