Ok I might have screwed up badly here. Running unRaid 5.0-beta12. One of my seven data disks suddenly died (WD 3TB EARS), so I searched for the procedure to remove a drive and rebuild parity. I came across this link http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/FAQ_remove_drive which looks official enough. Followed the procedure: Stop the array; login via telnet and type initconfig.

So far so good. The procedure states "the process of parity calculation on the remaining assigned and working drives will begin when you next start the array". Ok, so I powerdown, remove the faulty drive, and boot (was this my mistake/misunderstanding??), expecting that the remaining drives would be still assigned and perhaps parity being calculated. But no, all drives are now unassigned. And silly me, I forgot to take a snapshot of the disk assignment screen. I think I know which disk was parity, but I'm not sure of the order of the data disks.

 

So, am I sunk, or is there a way to recover my data (around 18 TB)? Help, someone, please? 

Do you remember which one is parity? The disk assignment does not matter except for parity. You can assign all drives as data drives and the unformatted drive will be parity.

Thanks for your reply dgaschk. This is a little nerve-wracking.

 

Do you remember which one is parity?

 

I am 99% sure but I want to be certain. Is there a way to confirm which disk is parity? Apparently the parity drive does not have a file system so I was thinking of individually mounting each drive using the mount command from a telnet window and confirming the data disks that way. Not sure of the correct command though. Perhaps:

 

mkdir "/tmp/mountpoint"

 

mount -r -t reiserfs /dev/sdX1 "/tmp/mountpoint"

 

and then determine which drive cannot be mounted or has no data. Does that sound ok?

 

You can assign all drives as data drives and the unformatted drive will be parity.

 

So if I do that there will be no corruption of the data drives? I assign all drives as data and then click "start", correct? Leave "maintenance mode" unchecked? Then after finding the unformatted drive, stop the array, assign unformatted drive to parity, then start the array? Sorry to be a NOOB.

 

Thanks again for your guidance.

 

 

I'm not sure if you have to start the array. If you do, it will not effect the data disks. Just DO NOT format any disk.