Whilst using Midnight Commander, I got an error mentioning I couldn't write to the disk. I checked in unraid web console and the particular disk had red balled. I freaked and started researching why and how to fix it.

 

I found i should run reiserfsck on the disk (md5) and after an hour or two or three (went for ages) got the following response back:

 

Replaying journal: Done.
Reiserfs journal '/dev/md5' in blocks [18..8211]: 194 transactions replayed
Checking internal tree.. finished
Comparing bitmaps..finished
Checking Semantic tree:
finished
No corruptions found
There are on the filesystem:
        Leaves 482394
        Internal nodes 2924
        Directories 597
        Other files 10016
        Data block pointers 486696232 (0 of them are zero)
        Safe links 0
###########
reiserfsck finished at Sun Jan 13 10:07:26 2013
###########

 

Stopped the array and started it again without the maintenance mode checked and it's still red balled. Attached syslog and smartresults on the drive.

 

After loking a bit more I read the following page which seems to apply to me as the drive is still red balled after everything and it seems to be fine.

 

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Make_unRAID_Trust_the_Parity_Drive,_Avoid_Rebuilding_Parity_Unnecessarily

 

Should I just telnet in and type initconfig with the array stopped to fix the red ball?

 

unRaid version is 5.0-rc9a

syslog-2013-01-13.zip

smartresults.txt

The drive needs to be rebuilt. See here: http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Troubleshooting#What_do_I_do_if_I_get_a_red_ball_next_to_a_hard_disk.3F

Thanks for the heads up.

 

For those interested:

 

Rebooted

Unassigned the red ball

started array

stopped array

reassigned the red ball (now changed to blue)

started array

Rebuild process automatically starts (22hrs for 2TB)

 

Should be done tomorrow night.

 

Thanks again for clarifying.

A "red" indicator will exist when a "Write" to the drive fails.  It will never go away unless the drive is reconstructed, or replaced, or forced back into service.  It guarantees the physical disk contents is incorrect (because the write failed)  Reconstruction (or replacement if actually defective) is nearly always needed to have the contents correct.

 

That might be caused by a bad/intermittent  cable, a bad/intermittent power connection, a bad/intermittent disk controller chipset/card, a bad/intermittent disk drive, an intermittent drive tray, or drive rack backplane, a noisy power supply, a defective power supply, a power supply inadequate  for all the drives connected to its 12 volt rail, cabling to the drive tie-wrapped together to make cross-talk (noise) more possible (looks neat, but possibly can cause errors unless high quality SHIELDED SATA cables are used)

 

Keep an eye on the drive.  Check your syslog for clues why the write to the drive failed.  (this will only be possible if you've not rebooted and the errors have not been rotated out of the logs)   

 

Odds are the drive will fail again (red indicator will appear once more) unless you correct the cause.

 

Joe L.