Hi,

Hoping someone might be able to assist whether I have accidentally killed 4 drives all at once somehow. Today I unplugged and removed several drives (the ones in question) from my server case in order to rearrange the cabling and position of them, to allow for the installation of a few additional drives. Of these drives, three were part of the array and one was an unassigned drive. I have attached a snippet from the unRAID GUI of the missing drives.

After booting up the server and seeing the missing drives I tried some basic troubleshooting to work out if it was a cable issue or drive issue. I tried:

1. Running the HDDs via two separate SATA power cables to check if this was the issue. One of the SATA cables was connected to some unaffected drives in the raid. Upon booting up none of the four drives were found, however the SATA cable daisy chaining off the other HDDs were functioning fine. To me this indicates the power cable is not the issue. See "Server Photo 1".

2. In case the data cable or HBA (LSI 9211-8i) was the issue I moved two data cables from existing HDDs to two of the four HDDs that were not functioning. Upon starting up the old HDDs were no longer found in the raid (as expected) but the two HDDs I had connected were not picked up. This indicates to me it is not the data cable. See "Server Photo 2"

Ruling out the power cable and the data cable to me it looks like four drives have died, unless there is a configuration issue in unRAID causing this. All HDDs are WD Red Plus.

If anyone has any suggestions on how I can confirm whether the four drives are fully dead that would be much appreciated, and also any idea of if there is a way to attempt to recover data from the disks? Please note my understanding of unRAID & Linux is quite limited, so I don't really know how to troubleshoot within the OS itself - apart from setting this server up I've only ever dealt with Windows.

Thanks!

Edited April 9Apr 9 by The_Marsh

Attach Diagnostics ZIP to your NEXT post in this thread.

13 hours ago, trurl said:

Attach Diagnostics ZIP to your NEXT post in this thread.

Apologies, please see the diagnostics zip file attached.

tower-diagnostics-20260409-1908.zip

have you checked the BIOS to see if the drives are detected? I would double check the cables.

3 hours ago, MowMdown said:

have you checked the BIOS to see if the drives are detected? I would double check the cables.

BIOS is not picking up the HDDs. I pulled out the power & data cables to all HDDs in the case and just connected up the four non-working HDDs and booted up, picture shows the BIOS not reading them. I connected these to data cables going directly to the motherboard, not to the HBA.

Guess this means the drives are cooked? Crazy for four to go all at the same time. Is there much opportunity for data recovery, I don't know anything about this sort of thing.

Also attached a fresh diagnostics download with the below setup.

tower-diagnostics-20260410-1036.zip

Edited April 10Apr 10 by The_Marsh

4 dead drives all at once? I would say highly unlikely.

Did you try a different power cable? or just connecting a single disk with a known working power and SATA cable?

Make sure you're not using any power splitters either.

19 minutes ago, MowMdown said:

4 dead drives all at once? I would say highly unlikely.

Did you try a different power cable? or just connecting a single disk with a known working power and SATA cable?

Make sure you're not using any power splitters either.

Yes, I have pulled power and data cables from functioning HDDs and put them into those four. I was using power splitters, but have just tested without them and still the same unfortunately.

I also tested the four drives in the below docking station connected to a Windows PC with nothing showing up in Disk Management.

Simplecom SD322 Dual Bay USB 3.0 Aluminium Docking Statio...

Designed for direct insertion of two 2.5 inch or 3.5 inch SATA HDD/SSD USB 3.0 SuperSpeed Interface, transfer rates up to 5Gbps Backwards-Compatible with USB 2.0, transfer rates up to 480Mbps Solid

Possibly a failing PSU.

If it is then the most important immediate step is to stop using that PSU entirely to avoid killing the remaining drives.

Beyond that, professional data recovery is likely the only realistic path since electrically damaged drive PCBs are generally beyond DIY repair unless you can source an identical PCB donor with a matching firmware chip — and even that is hit or miss.

The CX450M has had a troubled history on PSU tier lists.

Actually this particular model is quite decent overall, rated at C+ on the PSU tier list which is quite OK for a value priced PSU.

The only thing is that according to this review it has excessively high OCP on the minor rails https://www.techpowerup.com/review/corsair-cx-m-series-450-w/12.html

It is a critical safety compromise.

From the review:

"OCP on the minor rails is set very high, especially at 3.3V.

This is not good at all, as it can lead to damaged components in case something goes wrong."

Edited April 10Apr 10 by Lolight

4 hours ago, Lolight said:

Possibly a failing PSU.

If it is then the most important immediate step is to stop using that PSU entirely to avoid killing the remaining drives.

Beyond that, professional data recovery is likely the only realistic path since electrically damaged drive PCBs are generally beyond DIY repair unless you can source an identical PCB donor with a matching firmware chip — and even that is hit or miss.

The CX450M has had a troubled history on PSU tier lists.

Actually this particular model is quite decent overall, rated at C+ on the PSU tier list which is quite OK for a value priced PSU.

The only thing is that according to this review it has excessively high OCP on the minor rails https://www.techpowerup.com/review/corsair-cx-m-series-450-w/12.html

It is a critical safety compromise.

From the review:

"OCP on the minor rails is set very high, especially at 3.3V.

This is not good at all, as it can lead to damaged components in case something goes wrong."

Thanks for the tip, I've now replaced the PSU with something better on the tier list. I've tried the drives again and no dice, so I've now accepted that these are gone.

I don't think the cost of data recovery is worth it for these files, there was nothing critical on there as far as I can remember. I guess time to write off my losses and start again. From here I just need to go Tools => New Config, is that correct?

Yes, Tools --> New Config is the correct starting point to reassign your remaining drives and rebuild your array configuration.

One thing worth addressing before you do -- that generic USB drive is a liability.

Back it up now through Main --> Boot Device --> Boot Device Backup.

Then start looking for a replacement while the system is stable -- not when it fails.

The USB Flash section guide covers what to look for and the companion thread lists specific verified MLC drives on eBay with item numbers ready to go.

Hope you can RMA the drive.

Since that was a modular PSU, are you sure you were using the cables that came with the PSU? There is no standard pinout for modular PSUs and using cables that were not included with the PSU has fried many drives.

13 hours ago, Lolight said:

Yes, Tools --> New Config is the correct starting point to reassign your remaining drives and rebuild your array configuration.

One thing worth addressing before you do -- that generic USB drive is a liability.

Back it up now through Main --> Boot Device --> Boot Device Backup.

Then start looking for a replacement while the system is stable -- not when it fails.

The USB Flash section guide covers what to look for and the companion thread lists specific verified MLC drives on eBay with item numbers ready to go.

Thanks for the tip, I'll have a look into this.

10 hours ago, ijuarez said:

Hope you can RMA the drive.

Unfortunately all out of warranty . It's OK though, I think this is an important lesson I have learnt - don't touch what isn't broken!

8 hours ago, trurl said:

Since that was a modular PSU, are you sure you were using the cables that came with the PSU? There is no standard pinout for modular PSUs and using cables that were not included with the PSU has fried many drives.

I thought I had used a corsair power cable as it was the only spare one I had so would make sense it was for the empty slot in the PSU but potentially you are right. I can't be sure so I've quarantines my unknown cables in the event I have to reuse this power supply for any reason.

1 hour ago, The_Marsh said:

I thought I had used a corsair power cable as it was the only spare one I had so would make sense it was for the empty slot in the PSU but potentially you are right. I can't be sure so I've quarantines my unknown cables in the event I have to reuse this power supply for any reason.

Just to clarify -- in your original post you only mentioned rearranging drives and cables, with no mention of introducing any new cables into the modular ports of the PSU.

Even if that spare cable is genuinely a Corsair cable, Corsair modular cables are frequently not interchangeable between their own models.

The CX, RM, HX and other series have used different pinouts on physically identical connectors at various points, and even different generations of the same model can differ.

Edited April 11Apr 11 by Lolight