Really not sure what is going on. Had an issue last week where by one of my drives red balled and then I had a number of write errors on the drive when I tried to rebuild the drive.

 

I have just received two new hard drives, one to replace the drive with an issue and the other as a back up should I get an issues in the future.

 

Just put in the two new drives.

 

Was having some issues on the first boot and was getting some "link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0) (Drive related)" errors when booting.

 

I checked all the cables were plugged in ok and everything seemed ok.

 

Rebooted and didn't get any of the issues. Went to preclear the two drives.

 

Got the first one ready to go with no issues, when I sent the command for the second drive the script froze and eventually got a "does not exisit as a block device" error for the drive. It then wasn't there if I checked on the webGUI or if I listed it in preclear.

 

The syslog for this is here:

 

http://pastebin.com/zG5pZM7Y

 

After rebooting I got the same link is slow to respond errors and when I got in to booting I couldn't see the drive again syslog here:

 

http://pastebin.com/mqkpNatA

 

At a bit of a loss here, don't want to start the preclear until I am sure both drives will be working fine. Could the cable be the issue?

Are you getting any boot issues if you disconnect (both power and data) the troublesome drive?

 

It's possible you have a bad SATA cable;  but it sounds like a bad drive that may be interfering with the SATA bus and causing boot issues.

 

Will try a different cable next guessing that might be the issue. Looking at which drive is causing issues it is in the same position as the old drive that failed and I am just using the same SATA cable and power connector.

 

 

A new cable seemed to sort it, booted twice without issue. Makes me wonder if the original drive that I had thought had failed was also a cable issue. Ah well.

I'd certainly test the "failed" drive -- do a pre-clear cycle on it or use the manufacturer's diagnostics.  You can always add it back to the array if it's okay.