December 20, 201213 yr I've searched the best I can (but honestly, there's a MILLION of these threads and they all start to look the same), sorry for another thread... To my knowledge there are no errors within Unraid itself (it hosted the data I gave it just fine, don't use any bells and whistles), I shut it down to add another drive, do some cleaning, etc... When I went to fire it back up, it wouldn't recognize my flash drive in the bios/boot menu (I've tested it and other flash drives are recognized)... Plugged the flash drive into my Win7 machine and nothing... I didn't have a backup of my flash drive... Is that a HUGE deal? (I know for nexttime)... I know I can go out there and replace my flash drive and Tom will provide a new key for it, but my problem this... I have 5 disks (not including the one I was going to add), and I'm not precisely sure what order I put the first 2 in (I labeled the backs of them with everything but what drive Unraid assigned them UGH, but I know all but the first 2). If I replace the flash drive and fire it up, will unraid automatically recognize things or is that crazy wishful thinking? Also, I leave in a week for 3 months... is it crazy wishful thinking I can get it back up and running? Thanks in advance!
December 20, 201213 yr People will need to know what version of unRAID you are running to provide help.
December 20, 201213 yr Once you have a new flash ready, boot the machine. Assign all drives as data drives. Do not install the new drive or assign the new drive to any slot. Start the array and one and only one drive should appear as unformatted. Stop the array and assign the unformatted drive as parity and restart the array. The order of the data disks is not important. If more than one disk appears as unformatted STOP the array and ask for help.
December 20, 201213 yr Author Alright, got my new flash and the new key from Tom (only took about 30 minutes from when I gave him the new GUID, THANK YOU!) I did as mentioned above (added them all as data drives to be safe)... it listed 1 drive as 'unformatted' which was my parity. OK. So I brought the array back down and switched that drive from data to parity, but now I can't bring the array back up... Giving me an error Too many wrong and/or missing disks! with the same disk listed as parity but ten also down as disk4 "Missing" How do I clear this to continue? Thanks!
December 20, 201213 yr Author Also to followup... am I OK to plug in my 6th drive to star pre-clearing it?
December 20, 201213 yr Also to followup... am I OK to plug in my 6th drive to star pre-clearing it? I, personally, would not do ANYTHING until I had my array up and running properly again.
December 20, 201213 yr Author Also to followup... am I OK to plug in my 6th drive to star pre-clearing it? I, personally, would not do ANYTHING until I had my array up and running properly again. Kinda what I thought... but sometimes I do stupid things and wanted to hear it from someone else
December 20, 201213 yr At this point exactly what is in the system? Just the original data drives and a parity drive? No new disks at all right? If so good. I believe, and wait to hear from others before doing anything, but I believe what you will want to do is set this up as a new config and then run parity to build the parity drive. IF you were able to setup all of the drives in the exact same order as they were in before and list the parity drive correctly it would just begin working but with that many drives you may not be able to do this - honestly I try to keep a paper printout of my config handy for such emergencies and keep a backup of my flash too. I've had a couple of flash drives die on me just like you did so before I take my system down I often make fresh backups and printout. Too late this time but you get the idea - belt and suspenders! You should be fine when this is all done but the heart racing isn't good I know ;-) So, what do others say - agree to assign drives, reset the config, then build parity? I'm on 5.x so I cannot give exact menu pages to use...
December 21, 201213 yr Author At this point exactly what is in the system? Just the original data drives and a parity drive? No new disks at all right? If so good. I believe, and wait to hear from others before doing anything, but I believe what you will want to do is set this up as a new config and then run parity to build the parity drive. IF you were able to setup all of the drives in the exact same order as they were in before and list the parity drive correctly it would just begin working but with that many drives you may not be able to do this - honestly I try to keep a paper printout of my config handy for such emergencies and keep a backup of my flash too. I've had a couple of flash drives die on me just like you did so before I take my system down I often make fresh backups and printout. Too late this time but you get the idea - belt and suspenders! You should be fine when this is all done but the heart racing isn't good I know ;-) So, what do others say - agree to assign drives, reset the config, then build parity? I'm on 5.x so I cannot give exact menu pages to use... Right now here's what I have in there (Have another 2tb ready to put in, but not in yet): Parity - 2tb Hitachi Data - (2) 1.5tb Samsung, (1) 2tb WD Cache - 750gb WD I'm just not certain what order I had the (2) 1.5tb Samsungs installed... I know the rest of the configuration. So right now, I've got a blue ball next to the parity drive, green balls on disk1-3 and a green ball on my cache... but also a red ball on my phantom disk4 (actually my parity drive--but follow the above steps to assign them all as data drives to be sure). What's the next step to clear this error ("Too many wrong and/or missing disks!") and make sure my parity's still okay?
December 21, 201213 yr Author Log into the server (telnet or console) and type "initconfig". Answer "Yes" Alright done, now I have a blue ball by the parity and data disk1-3, still a green light on my cache drive. Do I bring the array online now? And will it automatically start the parity check? Wandering around the forums I've seen mention of correcting and non-correcting parity checks, which one would I want to run? Thank you again to all who've helped!
December 21, 201213 yr Log into the server (telnet or console) and type "initconfig". Answer "Yes" Alright done, now I have a blue ball by the parity and data disk1-3, still a green light on my cache drive. Do I bring the array online now? And will it automatically start the parity check? Wandering around the forums I've seen mention of correcting and non-correcting parity checks, which one would I want to run? Thank you again to all who've helped! You are confusing a parity validation "check" with a initial parity calculation. When you typed "initconfig" you immediately invalidated any prior parity calculations on the parity drive. When you start your array now, it must perform an initial parity calculation on your new configuration. It is not doing any checking, but storing the initial set of calculations by reading the data drives and writing the parity disk. Once the initial parity calculation is stored, THEN you can check it, in either a correcting mode, or a non-correcting mode. (in fact, you should check it immediately after the initial calculation, to ensure what you've written can be read) Yes, you can start the array now, and the initial calculation will begin. Joe L.
December 21, 201213 yr One last detail... Since your actual disk configuration has not changed (you did not remove or add any disks) the new parity calculation is probably identical to what is already on the parity disk, but unRAID does not know that since you have a new flash drive. Therefore, it needs to store the new configuration and calculate parity again, even though the data disks did not change.
December 21, 201213 yr Author Wow, I get help from Joe! So since I have to rebuild the parity from scratch then, am I safe to add data disk4 to the server at this time? I figure it could be pre-clearing while the parity it being built... but I don't want to be wrong!
December 21, 201213 yr You can't add it and preclear it at the same time. You could physically connect it at any time. Personally, I would connect it now and then boot up and press start and run the preclear so the disk will be ready quicker. Once precleared you can stop the array, add it as disk4 and then start the array again. The array will start-up and be ready to use again and you'll then have the option of formatting the new disk. Just as a side note, when adding disks never try to format if you see existing data disks showing as unformatted.
December 21, 201213 yr Author You can't add it and preclear it at the same time. You could physically connect it at any time. Personally, I would connect it now and then boot up and press start and run the preclear so the disk will be ready quicker. Once precleared you can stop the array, add it as disk4 and then start the array again. The array will start-up and be ready to use again and you'll then have the option of formatting the new disk. Just as a side note, when adding disks never try to format if you see existing data disks showing as unformatted. Cool that's what I thought/meant... so I can physically add/plug it in so I can start the pre-clear while the array is rebuilding parity, then add it as disk4 later. It'll be a while, but I'll check back in when it's all good to go (crosses fingers). Thanks again to all who chimed in!
December 21, 201213 yr Wow, I get help from Joe! So since I have to rebuild the parity from scratch then, am I safe to add data disk4 to the server at this time? I figure it could be pre-clearing while the parity it being built... but I don't want to be wrong! yes, you can add them, but once assigned they cannot be pre-cleared, and since that step helps burn them in (to detect early failures) you might want to let that finish. Once precleared, it is easy to stop the array, assign them, and then start it up again. You can pre-clear them (un-assigned ) while parity is being initially calculates.
December 22, 201213 yr Author Wow, I get help from Joe! So since I have to rebuild the parity from scratch then, am I safe to add data disk4 to the server at this time? I figure it could be pre-clearing while the parity it being built... but I don't want to be wrong! yes, you can add them, but once assigned they cannot be pre-cleared, and since that step helps burn them in (to detect early failures) you might want to let that finish. Once precleared, it is easy to stop the array, assign them, and then start it up again. You can pre-clear them (un-assigned ) while parity is being initially calculates. Yeah thanks, I had them both running at the sametime (parity build and preclear on new disk)... The build is done and everything's good there... the preclear should be done in the morning and I'll add it to the array then. Thank you all for the help -- couldn't've done it without you.
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