Hi All,

 

I am sure that this is covered in a FAQ somewhere, but while I dig through everything - perhaps someone might see an obvious piece I am missing.

 

I am running ver 5.0 B14, and had a mainboard failure. Unfortunately I also lost my parity drive (was in the form of a raid on the failed boards lsi controller).  I have replaced the board with a newer board but no HW raid controller available. I have all drives running off the onboard SATA, and all are visible, however I cannot start the raid, it sits indicating 'starting array'. Unfortunately I do not have a current screen capture of the drive order, though I have one thats a bit older thats missing a few new drives. Refering to that it appears that the drives are listed in teh correct order by ID, but are labeled differently ( SDB is now SDC, SDC is now SDD  and so on). 

 

So - new board, missing original parity, and multiple drives showing differently... I read somewhere this is not good - any thoughts on how to navigate?

 

Edit - after a power down, and moving some cables, the drives are now lining up appropriately (sda, sdb etc). At all times the disk 1 / disk 2 disk 3 assignments appear to line up appropriately so no re-assigning needed (I misunderstood one of the articles I read the first time around).  I have a red ball for the missing Parity drive (expected) and when I start the raid, I get green balls for all drives and an orange ball saying Starting...  and it sits there.

 

- Is this simply a case of needing to add a new Parity drive? I have one standing by... 

- Do I need to 'trust my array' or restore the config somehow? 

 

Still not clear, but reading further. I absolutely need some of the data on this server - like 10 yrs of kids pics for instance, thus the reluctance to act first and ask later!!

Thanks in advance,

SG

 

Edit (again) - OK more reading - added a precleared 2 TB to the mix as it seemed like it would not harm anything. Got an option to start and rebuild parity - said ok and it looks like this may work...

syslog.zip

You can safely ignore the shifting drive letters (SDB, SDC, etc.). Your new motherboard may be initializing the drives in a different order which will cause the drive letter assignments to change. unRAID uses the drive serial numbers, not the drive letters, to keep track of which drive is assigned to which drive slot (parity, disk1, disk2, etc.).

 

It sounds to me like all you need to do is add a new parity drive. Since the old hardware RAID parity drive is no longer available, you'll have to replace it with a SATA one. At this point, all unRAID knows is that disk0 (the parity drive) is missing, and that is indicated in your syslog. It is also possible to make unRAID forget about the missing parity drive and start the array without parity protection, but it doesn't sound like this is what you want to do.

 

The process is simple:

1 - Power down, install the new parity drive

2 - Power up, assign the new drive to the parity slot

3 - Start the array. Let the parity sync complete (this will take a long time)

4 - Run a parity check and let it finish (this will also take a long time)

 

As long as the parity sync and parity check both complete without errors, then you should be good to go. If you do see any errors, post another syslog here. Keep in mind that your data is at risk until all 4 of the above steps complete successfully, so it is in your best interest to get the new parity disk set up as soon as possible.

 

It is always a good idea to double-check your thought processes before taking action...so well done!

Thank you very much for your reply. 

 

I am currently (patiently) monitoring the parity check, as the initial parity build went perfectly, and so far no errors on the check. Data is available, though not accessing anything until complete. Your steps match what I ended up doing.

 

SG

Glad to hear it! Thank you for changing your thread to 'solved'.