I've had my unRAID 4.2.3 system running fine for about 9 months now.  Today while deleting some large files from disk #2 on a 10 data disk+1 parity array, unRAID disabled disk #2.  I've shut down the system, removed the disabled disk, started up unRaid, started the array, stopped the array, shut down unRAID, reinstalled the disk, started unRAID.  Disk 2 has a blue ball next to it, there is a note in the Command Area that has a red ball and says Stopped. Disabled disk replaced.  The Start button and the Restore button are grayed out.  Refresh, Spin Up, Spin Down, Reboot, and Power down buttons are available.  There are no activity LEDs flashing on any of the 11 disks.

 

I've tried to figure out if this is what I should expect from the documentation but I can't get it. 

 

So, do these indicators tell me that the "clearing" operation is occuring and I just need to sit tight for whatever amount of time that might be required to clear a 750GB disk and rebuild data (how long might that take?) OR is disk 2 dead and I just need to get a replacement to restore the array.  I did the hdparm thing on disk 2 and disk1, an identical disk, and all the data looks exactly the same for both disks.

 

Thanks,

If it is Stopped, then nothing is happening.  If it were Clearing, it would indicate that, and by continually refreshing the screen you would see the increasing percentage done.  In this case, the Start and Restore buttons are grayed out until you check the little "I'm sure I want to do this" box.  See the link in this FAQ entry for screen shots and related commentary.  This procedure will rebuild the drive.

 

However you may not need to rebuild the drive.  See the Make unRAID Trust the Parity Drive page.

 

Before doing either procedure, I would test the drive first, with both a reiserfsck (see Check Disk Filesystems page) and a smartctl test and SMART report for the drive (see this and this).

 

I would like to recommend that if this ever occurs again, you obtain a copy of the syslog *before* you shut down or reboot.  Because the syslog is only kept in memory, it is lost on reboot or power off.  The syslog could have told us what went wrong, it probably recorded the errors that occurred.  From that syslog, we can usually tell whether the drive is bad or not, or if something else went wrong.

Rob,

 

Thanks very much for the very thorough reply. I was pretty sure that nothing was going on.I'll do alll that stuff if all those utilities can be run from Vista Ultimate OS.  Sorry about the syslog miss--I have had zero trouble with my array and so am not very savvy about what to do first.

 

Dan

OK, so I did the reiserfsck and the results showed no problem. Even though fsck showed my files still on the disk and no corruption, I decided to reformat disk 2 and am rebuilding the array at this time. I was in the process of deleting most of the files on this disk anyway as a part of my leaving the HD DVD files and moving entirely to BD for 1080p movies.  Hopefully all will be well in another 6 hours or so. Thanks again to Rob for excellent advice.

 

 

Dan