I have had this box just running running running for years without reallly touching it except to reboot. Recently though I have had the disk 1 identified as a red dot vs. a green one, and I noticed that there is no parity check available in the array status area.

DId the disk fail or what ... is happening? And, how do I proceed from here? I've haven't tinkered with anything like this for so long I don't know where to begin.

I have moved your post to General Support (v5 and older). I haven't seen V5 in many years and it is much more trouble to diagnose than modern versions. I think the screenshot is showing that the emulated drive is mounted so that's good news. You should be able to rebuild to a new drive.

See this thread for how to get us more information:

https://forums.unraid.net/topic/9277-how-to-report-a-defect-and-capture-syslog-and-smart-reports/

The link for getting SMART report is broken but I assume it required command line, so see if you can get us the SMART report for the drive in addition to syslog. And hopefully you haven't rebooted since the drive became disabled, since syslog won't tell us what happened before reboot. But it can still tell something.

Thank you! I will head over there. Unfortunately the system has been rebooted severa times.

Are you asking for the syslog and SMART report here?

No need to head anywhere

On 8/29/2026 at 7:57 PM, trurl said:

I have moved your post to General Support (v5 and older)

5 hours ago, pdxrealtor1 said:

Are you asking for the syslog and SMART report here?

yes

On 8/31/2026 at 6:11 PM, trurl said:

No need to head anywhere

yes

Man I thought of this like two hours after I asked - apologies it was clear what you typed I was just being dumb.

I pulled this machine out and the cpu fan was so full of dust I don't know how it didn't catch fire! The clips broke so now the tower has to lean on its side for the cpu fan to remain in place. Ugg.

I may just go NAS box. I'm just not into tinkering with these types of things the last few years.

I looked at NAS boxes and wasn't impressed. I'm more interested in getting the tinker bug going again at this point, and playing with unRAID. No more being dumb - sorry for the laziness earlier.

My version is unRAID server PLUS - version 5.0 - screen shot of home screen attached
Also attached is my syslog and a short SMART report for the problem drive.

I have reports for all drives if you'd like them - chatgpt told me they all look in good shape but they're over 8 years of on time. I am currently running an extended SMART report for the problem drive, so if you want it I'll have it in about 4 hours.

Thanks

Sep 10 151604 wdisk syslogd 1.4.1 r.txt smart_sdd.txt

Edited September 10Sep 10 by pdxrealtor1
Added picture of server home screen

Syslog is after a reboot, so we cannot see the failure, but SMART looks fine, so most likely a power/connection issue. Recommend checking/replacing cables for that disk and then rebuilding on top. After that upgarde Unraid (note that youds wolnd need to conver the the filesystem of all array disks)

9 hours ago, JorgeB said:

conver the the filesystem of all array disks

Does latest Unraid version still mount ReiserFS?

42 minutes ago, trurl said:

Does latest Unraid version still mount ReiserFS?

Nope, they can upgrade to 7.2 since it has the empty disk mover option to help with the conversion, then can update to 7.3.

10 hours ago, JorgeB said:

Syslog is after a reboot, so we cannot see the failure, but SMART looks fine, so most likely a power/connection issue. Recommend checking/replacing cables for that disk and then rebuilding on top. After that upgarde Unraid (note that youds wolnd need to conver the the filesystem of all array disks)

So it looks like I'm testing power and SATA cables. I thought I had done this already, but probably should do it again as suggested.

Any specific order of operations or things to be careful of ?

smart_sdd_after_test.txt

I would just replace them and try rebuilding, assuming the emulated disk is still mounting like it was in the screenshot.

7 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

I would just replace them and try rebuilding, assuming the emulated disk is still mounting like it was in the screenshot.

Thanks- I think that is making sence. I just swapped SATA cables, then SATA ports, and also power cables between two drives and .... no change at all.

What is the emulated disk? Is that Parity? Sorry I'm not so smart when it comes to these things these days.

Do I get another drive of the same size to replace the problematic drive?

It's weird I can read files from the drive and all...... Besides no parity check I can't see how anything is different except the red dot.

Edited September 11Sep 11 by pdxrealtor1

Removed disk, rebooted. Shut down, added drive back, rebooted and started the rebuild process. So far so good.

8 hours ago, pdxrealtor1 said:

It's weird I can read files from the drive and all.

You can read (and even write) the "emulated" disk. Unraid isn't using the actual disk until rebuilt. It is emulating the disk from the parity calculation by reading all other disks to get the data of the disabled disk. Writes of the emulated disk update parity so any writes to the emulated disk can also be recovered by rebuilding.

Parity works pretty much the same whatever version of Unraid and it is basically the same concept wherever it is used in computing and communications. Parity is just an extra bit that allows a missing bit to be calculated from all the other bits. It is a very simple calculation. If interested, go here:

https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/getting-started/what-is-unraid/

then expand the Software Defined NAS section, then expand the How Parity Works section.

1 hour ago, pdxrealtor1 said:

So far so good.

During rebuild, you should see lots of Writes to the rebuilding disk, lots of Reads of all other disks, zero Errors for all disks.

7 hours ago, trurl said:

During rebuild, you should see lots of Writes to the rebuilding disk, lots of Reads of all other disks, zero Errors for all disks.

Thanks. Still oly one read but the rest look like you said they should.

At what time do people start replacing drives? Is there a total on time target, or antoher indicator or is the norm to wait until one dies then repalce?

Also, I know this is probably not the right place but I seem to remember one of the neat things about unRAID was that you could take an old laptop hard drive and add it to the unRAID easitly. But, my question is .... .doesn't that slow down the overall server box having a slower laptop drive in the mix?

If i want to switch mother boards is that a pretty easy thing to do with unRAID? I Have two SATA slots left but the socket came off the motherboard for both ... and my CPU fan is broken so I was thinking about getting a mothboard that would work with the ram and other parts I used to build the machine .... 12 years ago.

On 9/12/2026 at 7:05 AM, pdxrealtor1 said:

a mothboard that would work with the ram and other parts I used to build the machine .... 12 years ago.

Trying to match old hardware might actually be more expensive due to availability.

On 9/12/2026 at 7:05 AM, pdxrealtor1 said:

Still oly one read but the rest look like you said they should

I should have said lots of reads from all other array disks. The only other array disks you have is parity and disk2, both are being read to calculate the emulated data to write to rebuilding disk1.

6 hours ago, trurl said:

Trying to match old hardware might actually be more expensive due to availability.

I ended up grabbing an i7 3770 quad core cpu, 8 more gigs of ram for a total of 12 gb, and a new heatsink cooler for 95.00.

I plan to upgrade to unRAID 6 and use Immich to organize my thousands of photos and videos. I'll use it more of a file/photo backup than an active media server these days.

Thanks for chiming in with some direction. I'll probably be hopping around the various forums while I get the new setup situated. Cheers!

On 9/13/2026 at 3:01 PM, pdxrealtor1 said:

I plan to upgrade to unRAID 6

On 9/11/2026 at 2:48 AM, JorgeB said:

After that upgarde Unraid (note that youds wolnd need to conver the the filesystem of all array disks)

The filesystem on Unraid v5 was ReiserFS. It is no longer supported but it will still work in V6. In order to convert to XFS (recommended for array), and btrfs or ZFS (recommended for cache), you have to copy the data somewhere and reformat each disk.