Hello,
My system ran for several years without problems and I happy with Unraid, thanks for that!

But now I got a problem with a failing drive, so I got another (used) drive from a friend which on badblocks and smart says it's all fine.
But once I try to rebuild the old drive on it, it failed two times at around 50-60% with 1024 errors, after the first fail I tested it again and changed the sata cable (which worked with another drive for months before)

Should I assume the it's the drives fault or am I missing something?


Now I can't afford buying a new replacement drive at the current prices... and considering I got free space, I am thinking alternatively to move the data from the failed drive onto the others, and ditch it.
Is this possible in the current state of the array?

Thanks for any help in advance!

tower-diagnostics-20260226-2036.zip

Looks like a connection problem. It has disconnected and is now an unassigned device.

But you might run an extended self-test on it.

Do you still have the original drive? In what way was it failing?

Yea that's why I tried changing the sata cable, though I can't find it under unassigned drives anymore until after a restart of the NAS.
I still got the old device but when I plug it into the docking station of my main PC it just clicks a few times and also doesn't show up in GParted, so it seems it really was the drive that failed. (It's also 10 years old now)
I am running the extended test right now, I guess it'll take a few hours on a 4tb drive?

1 minute ago, bobylein said:

I guess it'll take a few hours on a 4tb drive?

Yes, and it only updates the "completed" in 10% increments so don't think it has stopped if it stays on one number for a while.

Well it looks like the drive is done for...
So is there a way to "shrink" the array down while one drive is missing? I wasn't finding information on that scenario inside the documentation

WDC_WD40EFRX-68WT0N0_WD-WCC4E0483893-20260227-0034.txt

3 hours ago, bobylein said:

Now I can't afford buying a new replacement drive at the current prices... and considering I got free space, I am thinking alternatively to move the data from the failed drive onto the others, and ditch it.
Is this possible in the current state of the array?

I usually suggest copying the emulated data somewhere off the array.

All disks are read to get the emulated data, and if you don't also try to write to the array, the other disks aren't involved in the writing, and nothing is changed on parity and the other disks. So it is faster and somewhat safer.

If you must put the data on the array, copy is still better than move because the emulated contents don't have to be updated to remove the data, and if there are problems along the way, the emulated data is still there.

You should probably disable Docker and VM Manager in Settings and don't write anything else to your array until you are finished.

Go to Settings - Global Share Settings, and Exclude the emulated disk from User Shares just in case.

You can use the built-in File Manager to copy files from the emulated disk to other disks in the array.

After all the files are copied, you can New Config without the disk and rebuild parity.

I am going to do that now but I can't choose disk1 to be excluded in global share settings, I guess I could set 2 and 3 to be included or that the disk is excluded automatically?

Thanks for the support so far!

You have to stop the array to make changes in Global Share Settings.

Or possibly you can't select a missing disk. Including the other disks should have the same effect, it will exclude all disks not included.

You don't really have to worry about that as long as you

On 2/26/2026 at 7:18 PM, trurl said:

disable Docker and VM Manager in Settings and don't write anything else to your array until you are finished.