June 15, 201214 yr Hi all, I'm planning to change 3 of the drives in my unraid setup, one of which is the parity drive. I've bought two 2tb seagate barracuda LP drives which i plan to use one for parity (replacing an existing 1tb drive) and a data drive (replacing a 500GB drive). I then plan to use what was the 1tb parity drive to replace another 500GB drive, so 3 swaps in all. My thought was to do the parity drive first? Allow parity to rebuild before attempting to swap any data disks. Then replace the two data disks individually allowing them to be rebuilt by parity. Please can someone confirm if this is the correct and quickest approach? *NOTE the drives being replaced are not failed, just upgrading the size.
June 15, 201214 yr That's the correct path. Note that you HAVE to replace parity first, because it needs to be at least as large as your array's largest drive Also, you should preclear both of the new drives before adding them to the array.
June 15, 201214 yr Just as a note and a matter of piece in mind, I would do a parity check before and after the rebuild of the parity drive. I'm just paranoid.
June 15, 201214 yr Just as a note and a matter of piece in mind, I would do a parity check before and after the rebuild of the parity drive. I'm just paranoid. Yes, otherwise, you'll not know if you can read the parity you've just written.
June 15, 201214 yr Just as a note and a matter of piece in mind, I would do a parity check before and after the rebuild of the parity drive. I'm just paranoid. Yes, otherwise, you'll not know if you can read the parity you've just written.
June 15, 201214 yr OR you could buy a plus or pro license, then you do a swap of the parity drive to use a 2TB, then after that, just ADD the 2nd 2TB drive
June 16, 201214 yr Author OR you could buy a plus or pro license, then you do a swap of the parity drive to use a 2TB, then after that, just ADD the 2nd 2TB drive Thanks, I have a pro licence, but not enough space left in my server to add another drive
June 16, 201214 yr Author I tried upgrading the parity drive without running a pre-clear first (as i didn't have the preclear.sh on my server yesterday) - but when I assigned the new drive in the UI and clicked "start array and rebuild parity", the server hung. I couldn't connect via the UI, console or putty. Would the server be doing some kind of formatting first which would cause it to be unresponsive? version 5b14 btw. Anyway I left for over an hour and it was still unresponsive, so I powered off and removed the new drive. The server powered up showing parity as missing, so I am now running a pre-clear on the drive to see if that helps (before re-assigning as parity again).
June 16, 201214 yr I believe if you do not start a parity check it will cause unraid to format the drive...not sure if will render the system unresponsive though. I would Preclear before putting any data on a drive that would be as critical at the parity drive.
June 16, 201214 yr I believe if you do not start a parity check it will cause unraid to format the drive...not sure if will render the system unresponsive though. I would Preclear before putting any data on a drive that would be as critical at the parity drive. Parity drives are never formatted. If nothing was responsive, (console or via telnet) the server crashed. Joe L.
June 17, 201214 yr Author OK, so the preclear finished successfully. However when I tried assigning the drive as parity, the server has hung again. I've attached a screenshot of what i saw just before the hang. Has anyone got any ideas what could be causing this? Could it be related to this drive being an advanced format drive, whereas all my others are not? My old hardware might not like this drive?? (Although pre-clear worked ok). Not sure how to debug this as I can't get a syslog when it keeps hanging. Edit: The server will not boot with this drive in place as the parity. It gets as far as the login prompt, then hangs. I took the drive out and the server will boot, albeit with a missing parity.
June 17, 201214 yr Author Well, i've put the original 1tb drive back in and had to initconfig - but now parity is rebuilding OK. So it must be drive related (or i've set something up wrong?). Any ideas what the cause could be?
June 17, 201214 yr Author Well clearly i spoke too soon as the server as frozen again. I guess this must be a hardware issue then... darnit.
June 17, 201214 yr Well clearly i spoke too soon as the server as frozen again. I guess this must be a hardware issue then... darnit. start with a memory check. Also make sure the CPU heatsink is attached correctly and did not get dislodged in your installation of the new disk. I'm seeing 14 disks in your array. (possibly more are installed, but not assigned) Is your power supply up to the task? What EXACT make/model is it?
June 17, 201214 yr Author Well clearly i spoke too soon as the server as frozen again. I guess this must be a hardware issue then... darnit. start with a memory check. Also make sure the CPU heatsink is attached correctly and did not get dislodged in your installation of the new disk. I'm seeing 14 disks in your array. (possibly more are installed, but not assigned) Is your power supply up to the task? What EXACT make/model is it? Hi Joe, i'll have to go and check what type the power supply is, but the whole setup has been working OK for over a year now. Only starting having problems when I was trying to change this disk - which incidentally was an icydock caddy swap so I didnt even need to open the case. I did a parity check around a month ago which completed OK too. Will go and run a memory check now as well.
June 17, 201214 yr Author the memcheck completed successfully. The powersupply is a clio 550w from what I can read. Like i say has been OK until these issues with parity recently. Is it worth downgrading to 4.7 and trying rebuilding parity again just to rule out a b14 issue?
June 17, 201214 yr The powersupply is a clio 550w from what I can read. Like i say has been OK until these issues with parity recently. This one? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817189006
June 17, 201214 yr Author The powersupply is a clio 550w from what I can read. Like i say has been OK until these issues with parity recently. This one? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817189006 that looks like the one. I can only read clio x14 550w on the side without taking the server apart. It was over 3 yrs ago i built this server now
June 17, 201214 yr The powersupply is a clio 550w from what I can read. Like i say has been OK until these issues with parity recently. This one? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817189006 that looks like the one. I can only read clio x14 550w on the side without taking the server apart. It was over 3 yrs ago i built this server now If that is the case, you have a multi-rail power supply. They typically only have a single 12 volt rail for ALL the disks. You have, at best, 18 Amps for all the disks, fans, and possibly the main connector of the motherboard. Even if ALL your disks are low-power (green) disks, that is 28 Amps. (2 Amps * 14). Add another 3 to 5 Amps for the motherboard and fans, and you need 30 to 35 Amps. Do you see anything that might cause weird issues with disks being recognized? Hopefully, I'm wrong about your power supply... but it is easy to see why it might not be working with that many disks and a multi-rail supply. Joe L.
June 17, 201214 yr Author The powersupply is a clio 550w from what I can read. Like i say has been OK until these issues with parity recently. This one? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817189006 that looks like the one. I can only read clio x14 550w on the side without taking the server apart. It was over 3 yrs ago i built this server now If that is the case, you have a multi-rail power supply. They typically only have a single 12 volt rail for ALL the disks. You have, at best, 18 Amps for all the disks, fans, and possibly the main connector of the motherboard. Even if ALL your disks are low-power (green) disks, that is 28 Amps. (2 Amps * 14). Add another 3 to 5 Amps for the motherboard and fans, and you need 30 to 35 Amps. Do you see anything that might cause weird issues with disks being recognized? Hopefully, I'm wrong about your power supply... but it is easy to see why it might not be working with that many disks and a multi-rail supply. Joe L. Hi Joe, thanks for taking the time to reply. No I haven't seen anything weird with disks being recognised, the server has worked fine until i decided to try upgrading the parity drive Having just read the power supply thread though I can see you are right about my power supply. Am amazed it has worked so far. I can only assume that because the server is mostly idle that once booted up the draw is low enough not to cause problems. I'm also using 6 hotswap drive bays which also have small fans in them, so that just adds to the power need! Its odd the issue has just started now, but I'm beginning to think its time to build a new server. My mix of IDE/Sata and PCI controller cards is getting old now and I suppose it was a matter of time before something failed.
June 18, 201214 yr Author Joe - do you think it is worth replacing the power supply to see if that is the cause of the freeze? Seems odd to me that the issue would just start now after so long running OK - but is freezing a common issue with not having enough power?
June 18, 201214 yr Overtaxing a power supply cause cause premature aging. Make sure that you have a single rail that is up to the challenge.
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