I have a Seagate 1.5TB drive as parity.  Today it became disabled.  I'm not sure what happened.  I'm surprised if it has actually died at such an early age.  Not sure what to do.  Is my only option to replace it?

 

I've posted a syslog.

failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x40)

 

The server sees a SATA device, links up at 3.0Gbps every time, but cannot seem to negotiate correctly with it, keeps getting that failed to IDENTIFY error.  It tries to reset it over and over, and finally gives up.  Perhaps the firmware is corrupted?  Or maybe a SATA cable connector has slipped partly off?  Or is not fully seated, if in a backplane?  Otherwise you may be right, it just suddenly failed.  SMART can't help if the kernel can't identify and assign a device symbol to it.

I'm running SeaTools.  Initially, SeaTools reported that SMART was not enabled on the drive.  I thought this to be interesting.  Passed the short test.  About 40% through the long test and so far no errors.  Will run SpinRite next.  So far, so good.  I don't understand yet why unRaid disabled this drive.

unRAID had no choice but to disable it, because it was missing according to the syslog above.  The kernel could connect to something SATA on ata1 at 3.0gbps, but there is no evidence it could even tell what it was, a failure to identify it.  So for all intents and purposes, the drive was NOT connected to the computer, and unRAID had to call it Missing.

 

Now that SeaTools is running and apparently has identified it and is controlling it, something must be different.  Did you possibly jiggle or reseat the cable or connectors?  You must have had to reboot of course, to boot SeaTools.  If that was the *only* change, then something is flaky somewhere.

 

The problem still seems to have been in the communications to, and control of the drive, so I don't believe that any surface testing will help.  You may want to complete the long test, just for your own confidence in the drive, but nothing good or bad about the surface is related to the failure to identify and control the drive earlier.  As good as SpinRite is, there's nothing it can do here to help.  You don't have a media surface problem, you have a connection problem.  It could be a bad cable, bad connector on the cable, bad connector on the drive or card, bad SATA port, something too hot (drive or SATA port), or a power problem.

All good points.  It makes sense the distinction between surface issues and connection (cable, controller, etc..) issues.  The SeaTools long test completed without error and I'm 20 hours into a spinrite scan (40 to go  ).  I'm expecting that spinrite will complete without error too.  At least this way when I dive in to diagnose the connection issue I'm assured that I'm starting with a good drive.

 

I removed the drive and am scanning on another machine so that I can continue to use my unRaid server in the mean-time.  I have other controllers, cables, and possibly another motherboard that I can try.  Things have been getting flaky lately anyhow.  unRaid has become unresponsive about 5 times in the last couple of weeks during file copies.  I've had difficulty getting the server to reboot.  And now this.

I have had many issues with poor sata cables. I just bought a ton of sata2 locking cables from monoprice.com. really cheap price, excellent cables.

My goal is to replace all sata and older sata2 cables with new cables. (since they have so many colour choices, I chose one colour per controller, making it easier to figure what is connected to the controller.

 

Side Note:

Also replacing all my cat5, cat5e(date back a long ways), cables with new cat 6 cables.

I am rather sure there would be less tech support here, if more people did that.  It is natural that everyone wants to increase their performance, and push the limits, but this requires better hardware AND cabling.

 

Note to smino:  I haven't forgotten your other thread, just haven't had time yet to get back to it.

Did I mention I also RMA' two drives this month. One of them was in unRaid, the other on the system I am moving off of! ARGH!

Thanks Rob.