I have been dealing with this for about a week. I am pretty sure i have read everything on this forum and others that deal with this topic.

this is all started when i was upgrading capacity on several disks. on the last one, i pulled the wrong drive and after realizing it was the wrong one (~10mins), i put it back into the server and removed the right one. i replaced the proper one and started the rebuild. both drives (disk 11 and disk 12) were having to be rebuilt, which i didnt think it was an issue. after the rebuild (~3 days) the disks became "unmountable no filesystem", so the troubleshooting began. what i have done...

1. disk 11

   a. rebuild

   b. ran GUI XFS check file system Check (never found primary or secondary superblocks) (~12hours)

   c. ran GUI XFS check file system FIX (never found primary or secondary superblocks) (~12hours)

   d. ran console XFS repair with -L to try again (never found primary or secondary superblocks) (~12hours)

Right now...

• no SMART errors

• system is in maintenance mode

• system is emulating disk 11 (still in unmountable no filesystem state)

• system is running GUI check file system Check on emulated drive

• i have the original drive but it is smaller capacity and the system wont accept it because of the smaller size

2. disk 12

   a. rebuild

   b. ran GUI XFS check file system Check (found errors) (~5mins)

   c. ran GUI XFS check file system FIX (fixed and became mountable) (~10mins)

At this point, what can i do? is disk11 just corrupt and SOL?

diagnostics-20260402-0747.zip

2 hours ago, kattak said:

i replaced the proper one

Which was the proper one? 11 or 12?

Start the array in normal (not maintenance) mode and post new diagnostics.

2 hours ago, kattak said:

i have the original drive but it is smaller capacity and the system wont accept it because of the smaller size

So drive 11 was replaced. Be sure to keep the original drive as it is, it should still be readable and you can probably get files from it as an Unassigned Device. Looks like you don't have that plugin installed so you will need it.

Which was the proper one? 11 or 12?

12 was the proper one. the one i was initially trying to upgrade. 11 was the one i pulled accidentally and reinserted

diagnostics-20260402-1110.zip

Looks like repair of disk12 was very successful, nothing in lost+found.

So the original drive was disk12? Why did you mention the "original drive" when you were explaining what you did with disk11?

For future reference, if emulated disk is unmountable, you should check filesystem on the emulated disk BEFORE rebuilding, especially if you are going to rebuild on top of the same disk. The emulated contents are exactly what rebuild will result in.

You don't want to rebuild an unmountable filesystem on the same disk that might actually still have your good data on it.

3 hours ago, kattak said:

ran console XFS repair with -L to try again (never found primary or secondary superblocks) (~12hours)

Several ways to get the command line wrong for that. Better if you stick to the webUI for check filesystem, it will use the correct command.

What command did you use?

What command did you use?

xfs_repair -vL /dev/md11p1

That is the correct command.

So the "original disk" doesn't have disk11 data on it? It is disk12 data?

Do you have backups?

So the "original disk" doesn't have disk11 data on it? It is disk12 data?

the original disk11 is intact and has disk 11 info on it. i went from a 4tb to 6tb.

Do you have backups?

no backups, this is just a PLEX server, its not critical information, so i will just be losing time and bandwidth to get it the data back. i just didnt want to, if i didnt need to

If original disk11 still has its data, you could just format disk11 in the array, and copy its data from the original disk as an Unassigned Device.

so format disk11 and use unbalance to move the data over from the unassigned device? i dont have an open slot on the server, it has to be done within the array right?

or shrink the array and then add drive to new open slot?

Edited April 2Apr 2 by kattak

2 minutes ago, kattak said:

so format disk11 and use unbalance to move the data over from the unassigned device? i dont have an open slot on the server, it has to be done within the array right

An unassigned drive is one that is NOT part of the array. Rather than try anything clever and you have no free slots it is probably easiest to plug the old drive on via USB (probably using a USB->SATA dock or adapter). Less chance of doing anything wrong that way, and anyway being able to temporarily plug a drive in is always useful for purposes such as backups.

ok, ill give that a go. i think i have a dock laying around here somewhere. thanks, ill update soon

ok, so i might have done this in the wrong order or missed a step...

1. i formatted disk11

2. I got the disk recognized and with my dock

3. i copied the files from the old disk to the newly formatted disk11

i guess after the format and file copy i assumed it would work, but the disk is still showing as emulated. i stopped the array, but if i start it again it will start trying to rebuild. Should i have disabled parity?

diagnostics-20260403-1140.zip

According to the syslog, the rebuild was canceled:

Apr 2 14:28:34 BrandtServer kernel: md: recovery thread: exit status: -4

According to the syslog, the rebuild was canceled:

that was before i did all the steps listed above. i had to kill it to format the disk

Until you finish the rebuild, the disk wil be emulated.

4 hours ago, JorgeB said:

Until you finish the rebuild, the disk wil be emulated.

Rebuild will result in the same contents as the emulated disk. If you copied files to the emulated disk those files will be on the rebuild.

But we can't really tell anything about your filesystems since those diagnostcs are without the array started in normal (not maintenance) mode. Start the array in normal mode and post new diagnostics.

ok, so everything is back up and running. Thanks for the help.