Hi guys,

 

I hadn't had my unRAID server on in a while (old system no where near "green" so I don't run it 24/7) and when I did the array was stopped and said New parity drive installed.

 

I haven't installed any new drives and the parity drive is not that old so I'm not sure what happened...

 

I "guess" what I need to do is a "refresh" and see if it will come back online but I wanted to check with the experts.  My data disks might be OK as they show up with a green icon.

 

I'm running 4.3.3

 

So what should I do?  Just run "refresh".  Update to 4.4 then run refresh?  Run some sort of disk check first?  Spin in circles and wave my arms?

 

I've attached my syslog in case anyone can determine what happened.

 

Thanks so much for any help you can (and have previously) provide!

 

 

I do remember you and your system.  I still have a Firefox tab open to your previous thread, hoping some day to get back to it, and begin documenting the problems.  At the time, I did not have enough time, and I tend to work on a LIFO basis, work on the most current and recent, and if caught up (that's a joke!) begin to go back to projects farther in the past.  Yours is a long way back.  I'm sorry.

 

You need to start by replacing cables.  The IDE cable for sure is bad, needs to be a good 80-wire flat ribbon cable.  It looks most likely to me that the SATA cable to the Maxtor 500 is also bad, or its connectors, on the cable or on the drive controller card or on the drive.  Also try connecting it to a different port on the card.  If a new cable, different port, and careful re-seating of all connections does not eliminate the errors in the syslog related to the Maxtor 500, then you may need to replace the SATA controller card.  Once all 3 drives are on good cabling, running at normal speeds, without all of the drive errors and very low speeds they are currently running, capture another syslog and we can go from there.  That parity drive is just spewing error messages all through the syslog, making it harder to read.

 

I'm curious about the following line:

Kernel command line: root=/dev/sda1

Are you using a kicker disk to boot this?

Hi RobJ

 

Thanks (again) for the reply and WOW you have a great memory!  I'm a moderator over at the My Movies forum and use the same "trick" with Firefox (had 87 tabs open once and system slowed to a crawl LOL) but still can't remember them!

 

I've replaced the IDE cable - brand new flat cable.  I'm not sure how to tell if is running at the correct speed as this is all Greek to me... but is this the entry that shows it is running slow?

 

hdb: host side 80-wire cable detection failed, limiting max speed to UDMA33

 

If so I don't think there was any change detected when I changed the cable.  Any ideas?

 

I've tried new 2 new SATA cables on the offending drive with no change in the parity drive's status.

 

I swapped ports with one of the data drives and the offending parity drive just to see what would happen.  The parity drive's icon remained blue and disc 2 turned red.  (Also got a warning that the Disk in the parity slot is not the biggest but I believe that is to be expected right?)

 

Would this be an indication that the SATA port is dead?  Is it detecting the drive's info and temp but just won't transfer data?

 

And yes, I am using a floppy kicker disk as my motherboard wouldn't seem to support booting from a USB device (ASUS P4G8X - hey it "was" high end when I bought it in the last century LOL)

 

Well at least there is some "progress" as the syslog is much smaller...

 

Thanks for all your help!

 

boyce1

 

That looks much better, except for the IDE cable.  Whatever you did, the SATA cable or connection is fixed.  Your system should be able to run unRAID now, although very slowly because of the IDE cabling.  I would verify that the cable is definitely an 80-wire, not 40-wire (see this picture, 80 on top and 40 on the bottom).  (Sorry, you probably know that, but I believe in being thorough.)  Then check the IDE connectors on the drive and on the motherboard.  Look for bent pins.  If you cannot find anything wrong, then this drive and the parity check are going to be rather slow.

 

Before starting the array, it would be good to obtain SMART reports for all 3 drives, and run the SMART long test on each, and grab another set of SMART reports.  With drives that old, you need to know what your status is, what you will be working with.  The SMART long tests may take up to a couple of hours each.  See the Console commands for hard drives, smartctl section.

 

To bring the array up, click the 'I'm sure I want to do this' box under the Restore button, then click the Restore button.  That should reset the configuration, and display 2 blue balls for the data drives.  Then Start the array, and it will rebuild the parity drive.  (unless I've forgotten something!)

Thanks so much Rob, I'll give it a shot in the morning - I spent WAY to much time at a Steelers fan's house to try anything tonight!!!