Hi guys, I'm experiencing a frustrated situation with my Unraid Server. Last night I came across with two red balls on two disks with the missing disk label. Both of them are data disks. My Parity disk is fine. Of course the array could not be started. The system gave the message "Too many wrong and/or missing disks".

 

History:

- Months ago I upgraded succesfully from 4.7 to 5.0

- I ran the parity check before doing so, no errors.

- 5.0 was working succesfully since last night

- red balls appeared at the same time.

 

Please advise what to do next. I hereby attach the syslog.

 

Thnanks in advance,

 

Andreas.

syslog2013-12-28.txt

Check your sata cables

Also check power connections. Look for any physical connection similarity shared by the disks. Do they appear in BIOS?

Disks do not appear in BIOS. All my disks share the same H/W components (SATA controller, Power Supply). I guess I have to replace my SATA cables on these disks and see how it goes...

I replaced SATA cables with new ones... same thing happens. Disks are not found by the server. Is it possible that I have a failure on both disks at once? Very rare I would say.

You could also try swapping SATA ports and power supply connectors with the drives that are working and see if you can see them in the BIOS that way. Maybe unplug your unRAID flash and just see what the BIOS shows as you try different combinations. Maybe the drives are good but the SATA ports are bad or there is some problem with the power supply or connections.

+1 on checking BIOS. Be sure that the disk drives are in AHCI mode and not IDE mode.

 

 

Hi guys. I swapped the power inputs. Same result. The only thingremaining is to switch the sata on the controller (built onboard). I will give it a try and I will let you know. If I remove the disk and put it in an external case, would this be seen by windows?

If I remove the disk and put it in an external case, would this be seen by windows?

 

Yes, but you'll need to install the free LinuxReader to read the file system.

http://www.diskinternals.com/linux-reader/

Hi again. I put the external disks in an external case and they are read just fine. They are 100% readable. I guess that the sata ports on the motherboard are defected. How can this be fixed? If I install a PCI-Express sata controller would this mess up my array, since the sata ports will differ?

Hi again. I put the external disks in an external case and they are read just fine. They are 100% readable. I guess that the sata ports on the motherboard are defected. How can this be fixed? If I install a PCI-Express sata controller would this mess up my array, since the sata ports will differ?

No, it will not effect the array. SATA ports are not important.

These are pretty good and cheap enough.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816101792  (new version)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816101358  (old version)

 

these cables

http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=102&cp_id=10254&cs_id=1025406&p_id=8186&seq=1&format=2  (x2 if you want 8 hard drives on it)

 

Makes it so you do not have to worry about motherboard ports anymore. I only keep parity and cache on mobo.

+1 on checking BIOS. Be sure that the disk drives are in AHCI mode and not IDE mode.

 

Seems that the problem after all was the Storage configuration in BIOS. After following the above hint the disks were recognised by BIOS. What really doesn't make sence to me is the fact that BIOS setup was changed without my intervention. Anyhow disks are recognised. Thank you all for your support and time you spent for this incident.