I work with a local production company and I helped build a server for our footage. and the server was running well for the last two years until recently a few days ago the server was missing files of footage. So i tried to reboot the server and all of a sudden when I tried turning it back on, it powered on but nothing showed up. As I was waiting it to boot up I was hearing a lot of noise coming from a drive. And I found out that there was a drive that had failed. Should be a simple problem to fix, only there is an even bigger problem. With that drive failing, my parity drive has all been disabled. I ran tests (currently running extended smart self test) and it seemed that the parity is healthy but for some reason its disabled and I have no way of starting the array. Is there any solution anybody could give me to help get the server back up? Even if I have to lose some data i just need it back up, I cant afford to lose all the data.

Attach Diagnostics ZIP to your NEXT post in this thread.

Here is the Diagnostics zip.

kj2server-diagnostics-20260819-1721.zip

Are you sure disk2 is really dead? Is it still plugged in? I don't see it in those diagnostics. See if you can reconnect it and check if you can see it in BIOS.

I already switched it out because at first the server wasn't booting up all they way while it was plugged in and then I unplugged that drive and the server booted up alright. Then while I was waiting for the new drive to come in that I had bought I tried booting up the server again with the drive plugged in and it actually booted up but it still said it was missing. while the drive was plugged in also I could hear a lot of noise from it. Should I try and plug it in again and attach the diagnostics zip again?

SMART report for parity looks very bad don't know why you think it is healthy.

Do any other drives show SMART (👎) warning on the DASHBOARD page?

Other array disks SMART looks OK. I think it's unlikely parity can be expected to rebuild anything so probably disk2 is lost unless you can read it.

Do you have backups? Parity is not a substitute for backups.

42 minutes ago, Francisco Acosta said:

Should I try and plug it in again

2 hours ago, trurl said:

See if you can reconnect it and check if you can see it in BIOS

oh it was looking healthy at first but I just saw the thumbs down, if disk 2 is lost is there a way i can start the array without disk 2 and just take the loss of data? Because the other drives are good.

I will try reconnecting it tomorrow and look into the bios to see if I can see it, unfortunately I have left the office for the day but tomorrow ill try that and give more info once thats done.

6 minutes ago, trurl said:

SMART report for parity looks very bad don't know why you think it is healthy

If you click on parity and go to its Attributes, I think you will see all these problems:

ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAGS    VALUE WORST THRESH FAIL RAW_VALUE
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   PO--CK   100   100   010    -    236
187 Reported_Uncorrect      -O--CK   001   001   000    -    5665
197 Current_Pending_Sector  -O--C-   097   097   000    -    1652
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   ----C-   097   097   000    -    1652

Num  Test_Description    Status                  Remaining  LifeTime(hours)  LBA_of_first_error
# 1  Extended offline    Self-test routine in progress 80%     18252         -

Has it completed extended test yet?

8 minutes ago, Francisco Acosta said:

if disk 2 is lost is there a way i can start the array without disk 2 and just take the loss of data?

Yes, but I guess it is worth at least trying to rebuild disk2 from that (bad?) parity. Do you have a spare 12TB disk?

5 minutes ago, Francisco Acosta said:

unfortunately I have left the office for the day

Bedtime for me. We will see what can be done tomorrow.

Any progress on getting disk2 connected?

One of the great features of Unraid is each data disk in the parity array is an independent filesystem that can be read all by itself. So there is every reason to expect that all of your other data disks have their data intact.

I'm sorry I haven't made it to the office yet. I'm going to try and get there in a few hours, but I also looked at the smart test and its at 80% currently. I want to wait to see what the results are. But once I get there and put the hard drive in I will respond. Also I did buy a new hard drive to replace the dead drive so I have a blank 12 tb drive that I am pre clearing as well. Also thank you for that reassurance, I was panicking thinking that I've lost everything.

You will also need to replace parity after we see if we can recover disk2. So another 12TB might be needed. We will see how it goes.

if we can recover disk2 can i use that new drive for the parity? and i just checked the smart test, its at 90% and the new drive is 82% for the preclear

27 minutes ago, Francisco Acosta said:

if we can recover disk2 can i use that new drive for the parity? and i just checked the smart test, its at 90% and the new drive is 82% for the preclear

If you can determine disk2 is healthy and contains your data, then yes you can add it back to its slot and then add the new disk as parity, just understand that you will no longer have any parity protection during the parity-sync that would follow.

If any other disks die, the data on the then dead disk would need to be recovered with data recovery tools or from a backup

3 hours ago, Francisco Acosta said:

if we can recover disk2 can i use that new drive for the parity? and i just checked the smart test, its at 90% and the new drive is 82% for the preclear

Depends on how we define "recover". One possible definition would be to rebuild disk2 onto that new drive from existing parity plus all other drives. Whether parity works well enough to allow that remains to be seen, but it may be our only hope if original disk2 can't be read.

And if nothing we can do can recover disk2, then you could use that new drive as parity in a New Config that didn't include original disk2.

Parity must have become disabled before disk2 went missing. Do you know how long parity has been disabled?

I do not know how long the parity has been disabled. I can tell you the server started to act up on Sunday of this week and that's when things happened.

12 minutes ago, trurl said:

Parity must have become disabled before disk2 went missing.

I say this because if disk2 went missing first, disk2 would be the disabled/emulated drive.

15 minutes ago, trurl said:

Do you know how long parity has been disabled?

If parity has been disabled for a while, it might be too out-of-sync to do a good rebuild of disk2 even if the parity drive were really good.

31 minutes ago, trurl said:

Depends on how we define "recover".

Another way to recover the data for disk2 would be to get the array to emulate disk2 from the parity calculation and copy the emulated data somewhere off the array, not to other array disks since that would require parity updates which should be avoided considering the poor state of parity.

But of course, the poor state of parity and the fact that it might be out-of-sync, would make it difficult to accurately emulate disk2, whether for rebuilding or just for copying its emulated data.

I'm currently still at 90% on the extended smart self test of the parity drive once that's done I can try re installing drive 2 back in and see if I can see it in the bios. after that if it does not work what would be the steps into try to rebuild it with the new drive? I know that this process may go into tomorrow.

so I guess at this point if I try to get the original drive2 going and it doesn't work would it even be worth rebuilding, knowing that the parity could be possibly out of sync?

also this might be a stupid question, but could you possibly plug one of the data disks into another computer and pull the data off of it like normal or would that not work?