I'm in the process of upgrading the parity drive in my system and one of the data drives (#19) started performing the click of death and after about 5 minutes dropped out of the array. Once it had dropped out numerous errors were reported. The parity sync was running at around 49.7% which given the size of the failed drive (2TB) and the free space on it implies that it was not actually reading any data from that drive. The parity sync is now happily continuing. A full parity check (with error correction) was done four days ago with no errors.

 

Will I be able to replace the failed drive once the parity sync is finished, or will I need to put the old parity drive back in then replace the failed drive before upgrading the parity drive again? As the attached image shows, the failed drive hasn't red-balled. I'm not particularly worried - just curious really.

if you saved a copy of the config directory you can put the old parity disk back along with the old config/super.dat file, but if not you'll need to set a new disk configuration and force unRAID to NOT re-calculate, but instead to think parity is valid.  (Contact Tom @ lime-tech for help )

 

Right now the parity being calculated with a failing drive is likely useless.  (It will only let you re-construct the zeros the drive is likely returning to the OS, and not the actual contents.)

 

Joe L.

I do have a copy of the entire USB stick fortunately. I'll copy the required file/s back and see how it goes. I take it that the vast majority of parity is actually good but the entire parity disk is compromised due to the errors from Disk 19 corrupting the parity calculations.

 

The parity sync has finished and Disk 19 is now red-balled. On reboot it isn't even detected so either it's knackered or I need to check the sata/power cables. Incidently, I did install a new AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 last night and this is one of the disks that I had my greasy little fingers all over.

 

Thanks for your advice.

Be VERY careful about your next steps -- you must do it exactly right or you won't be able to rebuild #19

 

As Joe L outlined:

 

(a)  Shutdown the server

(b)  Put your old parity disk back in

©  On other system, replace the flash drive contents with the complete contents that you had saved

(d)  Put a new disk in for #19

(e)  Now boot up the system -- it should recognize the new #19 and will rebuild it

 

After that's done, THEN you can upgrade your parity disk again

Thanks for your help gents. I followed your instructions and everything is working great now. Parity is upgraded and I'm now adding the old parity drive back in to the array.

Good ... and thanks for the update.    Always nice to get some feedback.