So I got married this past weekend, which meant my unraid box got more use than care, i.e. it's been a long time since a parity check or I've checked in on anything but it sure has seen a lot of use scouring through photos for slideshows etc.

 

Just before we took off for our mini-getaway, I thought I'd give the server a rest and shut er down. That's when I noticed the red orb beside disk 2. Uh oh, I thought - well there's nothing I can do about it now.

 

Got back tonight, started up the server to see 3 disks with red orbs. Disks 1-3. I tracked them down as all being on the same PCI-E controller which I thought was interesting. 1 was missing, 3 was missing and 2 was the one that was "bad" from before. These are the only 3 disks on this 4 port controller. 

 

I re-sat the card itself and all of the cables which then brought me to two drives with red orbs. Disk 2 which was complaining like that before I left and disk 1 which claimed to be "missing".

 

So if I head over to devices where disk1 shows pci-0000:02:00.-scsi-2:0:0:0 (no device). If I click the drop down menu, it shows that drive is actually (now?) on pci-0000:02:00.-scsi-3:0:0:0.

 

How did the drive move when the case wasn't open??

 

If it weren't for the issue with disk 2, I would just go ahead and switch the disk 1 assignment. But since nothing had moved to cause the switch, and with the issue of disk 2... I thought I would ask for advice before doing anything.

 

Also, what might be the issue with disk 2? At first it said not installed, now it knows its there but is red.

I have a second controller card I could swap out (different brand/model/chipset). Would I be opening an even larger can of worms by swapping that out -  even temporarily? My guess is yes...

See? Don't get married.

Come on, getting married isn't the problem, I'm married and she's never caused issues with my tech toys, only her own laptop.

 

I think the problem was, over the weekend he used the unraid server. Thats the honeymoon period, shouldn't have needed TV at all! 

 

Back to the matter at hand, I'd say it probably would cause an issue but I'm not 100% sure, I don't know how unraid detects disks but I believe it uses the port to detect them. It does sound fishy, I'd suspect the expansion card as well.

LoL, well there's no going back...

 

And no, that's the odd part - the unraid server was shut down the whole time. I think I'm going to tell unraid where the "missing" disk is and hope for the best that it can repair disk 2 as the parity drive looks good.

 

I just really hope so as stuff on these two drives in question are the most important (go figure). Why couldn't it have been a movie or tv drive?

 

Edit: Ok, so I told it that for whatever reason, my one and only samsung drive moved ports. Now it says configuration is valid but is still stopped. It's telling me if I bring it online, the array will be unprotected. I'm guessing because of the issues on disk2?

 

How should I proceed?  (see attachment) So far I feel like data shouldn't be lost. I'd like to keep it that way!

 

Edit 2: I have a spare 3TB disk I was going to put in as the parity drive soon. If that helps at all in this situation, I could potentially stick it in place of the troubled disk 2... 

 

Edit 3: So I started the array after telling unraid where the samsung (disk1) drive was. Disk 2 is still red and blinking. If I click on  disk2, it says MBR unaligned but a quick search reveals that in and of itself isn't something to worry about. It appears my parity drive is doing what it's supposed to as I can access the contents of disk2 but I'm guessing the sooner I replace disk2, the better.

 

I guess my question is - should I simply pull the 2TB drive, insert the 3TB and let it rebuild? Or is there some way I can get the 3TB drive into the parity position that it was intended for? (Current parity drive is 2TB). I don't see how I can do that with one drive "down" though right?

I guess my question is - should I simply pull the 2TB drive, insert the 3TB and let it rebuild? Or is there some way I can get the 3TB drive into the parity position that it was intended for? (Current parity drive is 2TB)

The safest thing to do in my opinion is to resize the 3TB to 2TB using HPA, and rebuild the failed drive onto it. You are currently running 4.7, which does not support 3TB drives. To accomplish what you want to do eventually (3TB as parity) would require an update to version 5 while your array was degraded, and then doing a parity swap procedure to get the 3TB into the parity slot and rebuilding the failed drive onto the old parity drive. Too many things to go wrong in that scenario, and you wouldn't gain any space for your trouble anyway until you bought another 3TB drive.

 

If you resize your current 3TB, then you can upgrade to 5 after your array is healthy, and update your parity drive to 3TB when you can afford another drive. After that operation is successful and has passed a couple parity checks, then you can remove the HPA on the 3TB data drive and rebuild onto itself and gain the extra TB of space.

You might have just had a controller or connection issue. You could first try this and see if the drive is still OK.

 

Stop the array.

Unassign disk2.

Start the array.

Stop the array.

Assign the same disk back as disk2 again.

Check the status. It should say a start will rebuild the contents of disk2 onto the new drive. If it looks good, check the "are you sure" box and start again.

 

It all goes well, disk2 will be working again and then you can worry about upgrading and using that 3T drive.

 

If it goes badly, disk2 will red-ball again.

 

Thanks jonathanm and lionelhutz

 

I forgot the reason I had not yet put in the 3TB drive was because I wasn't running 5.x (I have it going on a test box right now).

 

I also used your strategy (lion) on a friend's array but didn't think of it here I guess because of the other drive issues.

 

I've unassigned now re-assigned disk 2. It's blue. I'm not sure how to assess "if it looks good". I mean, it's blue, looks fine so here goes nothing!

Just remember the 3 rings of marriage.

The engagement ring,

the wedding ring,

and

the suffering!

 

Just remember the 3 rings of marriage.

The engagement ring,

the wedding ring,

and

the suffering!

 

 

And if you don't want kids right away, preferably right before the wedding ring, please insert the "NuvaRing"

Hahaha,

 

Well the suffering certainly began when we got back to "why can't I watch movies or tv or..."

 

84.5% done the data-rebuild. Here's to hoping everything goes well!

 

I had been kinda waiting for a final release of 5 before making the switch seeing as I don't have great backups of my unraid box should something go wrong. People's experiences with it thus far have been good?

Well, that seems to have done it  folks!  Thanks for your help. I guess it was just my controller having a hissy fit.  Everything seems normal now, and most importantly, the wife is happy! 

I have only ever used v5 and it has been rock solid