What bothers me is we don't understand why his parity would be bad. Note that what I suggested was not to rebuild his disk1, but to uninstall it and check if the array will properly simulate it before doing so. It is still unclear (to me) whether unraid is actually simulating a disk1 from bad parity, and it is unclear from the steps described, how parity could be bad.

 

Is it at all possible unraid noticed disk1 is unformatted, and indicated this in the present disk cfg file, thus not bothering simulating disk 1 at all? It was off that chance I recommended to restore the disk1 config WITH DISK1 PHYSICALLY DISCONNECTED. That config file should contain the same disk setup as he currently has.

Also, agree with BJP about cloning the disk1 with dd. If you have a spare, use that and if not, go buy one. It is good practice to keep a spare disk on hand ready to go in case a drive dies. You want to always minimize the amount of time your array runs unprotected.

It also bothers me that if the parity disk was not written to...which was not because when I started the array with the old USB it did not even show the disk......unraid should be able to reconstruct disk 1 having disk 2 and disk 3 healthy.

I have three disks out of four.

Unless there is a file in the flash drive that is not letting it happen.

 

Right now I am much frustrated. I wish I could fix it today bcs I will be busy this weekend. And kids without Plex is a disaster........LoL........wife without her pictures.....I am a dead man..

 

I will email Tom.. hopefully he will reply to me soon.

In the main time..I will se if I have time to go buy a new Hard Drive.

Thanks a lot guys, Ill keep you posted.

It sounds to me that when you started unRAID and it thought that disk1 was a parity disk because you had put an old configuration on the disk, the automatic correcting parity started and ended up overwriting the start of the information on disk 1, thus corrupting the partition table (possibly - I am not sure if a parity disk has a partition table) and the start of the reiserfs file system.  If I am right about this then there will certainly be some data loss, but as long as you stopped the correcting parity check quickly it could be minimal.

 

I would think that the steps to go are:

- Find a spare disk and do a sector-for-sector copy of the current disk 1 to it.  That way you can work on the clone knowing you will do no further damage.  You want to keep your current disk 1 unchanged if at all possible until you have finished any recovery activities.

- Get the partition table restored if necessary on the copy of disk 1.  Nor sure of the exact steps, but there have been posts about this.  Joe L. tends to be knowledgeable about the steps required if I remember correctly.

- Use reiserfsck to rebuild the superblock for partition 1 on the cloned disk, and then use reiserfsck in --rebuild-tree mode with the option to scan the whole disk set.  This should find any files that are still intact.

I did something similar (well I tried to rebuild a data drive on top of a full cache drive) here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=28814.0.  I stopped it shortly after the rebuild started.  Not much of instructions on my Thread by the way.  And I wasn't trying to rebuild everything just recover anything I could off the physical drive.  So if and when you deside you can't rebuild the existing disk you might try to recover whatever data you can off of it.

 

Basically I went out and found out how to image my drive to another empty drive (my cold spare) with "dd" from posts on this forum and other sites (sorry don't ask me what I used as I don't remember).  Then I ran the "reiserfsck" commands including --rebuild-tree on the image and got back all but 100-200GB of a FULL 2TB cache drive.  Then I copied those files back to my array from the image drive.  Once I was sure all the media files were playable I reformatted the original drive and it became my cold spare.

Thank you guys, I just need to go out and buy a HD. Haven't have time, I am at work

My question again...What happened to the idea of ......one disk goes bad....you can rebuild it.....I have 3 out of 4 disks....

Thank you guys, I just need to go out and buy a HD. Haven't have time, I am at work

My question again...What happened to the idea of ......one disk goes bad....you can rebuild it.....I have 3 out of 4 disks....

You should be able to do that.  I saw your email and replied, you see it?

Thank you guys, I just need to go out and buy a HD. Haven't have time, I am at work

My question again...What happened to the idea of ......one disk goes bad....you can rebuild it.....I have 3 out of 4 disks....

I think that went out the window once you started switching usb drives with different disk configurations.  If you would have just stopped the array. removed the bad drive. insert the new drive. Start the array without assigning the new drive.  The array would have told you that you are missing a disk. Stop the array. assign the new drive in place of the bad drive. start the array and rebuild.  Then it would have worked.

Thank you guys, I just need to go out and buy a HD. Haven't have time, I am at work

My question again...What happened to the idea of ......one disk goes bad....you can rebuild it.....I have 3 out of 4 disks....

It is not clear that you do in fact have 3 out of 4 disks, since the actual state of your parity data is unknown.

I think that went out the window once you started switching usb drives with different disk configurations.  If you would have just stopped the array. removed the bad drive. insert the new drive. Start the array without assigning the new drive.  The array would have told you that you are missing a disk. Stop the array. assign the new drive in place of the bad drive. start the array and rebuild.  Then it would have worked.

 

Absolutely!  Booting with the WRONG flash drive ... which I suspect had an earlier configuration based on the same set of disks (or perhaps a subset of them from before you added a 4TB parity drive) is what caused your problem.    Had you not done that, recovery would have been simple.

 

As for the lost data (wife's pictures, etc.) -- do you not have backups of your important data

 

But guys, how exactly would his parity become bad? He claims he didn't rebuild parity in the current configuration, and while in the invalid configuration, unraid would not write to the parity drive either...

But guys, how exactly would his parity become bad? He claims he didn't rebuild parity in the current configuration, and while in the invalid configuration, unraid would not write to the parity drive either...

Why isn't it able to simulate disk1 then? Maybe some missing details somewhere in the story.

Well, at least I had a theory to offer: Unraid has noted down disk1 as being unformatted in the config file, and therefore does not believe there is any data that can be rebuild onto it, and therefore decides not to simulate it.

 

I could be wrong, but if there is a backup of the good config file avaiable, I would try restoring that. It would be the same configuration of disks as he has now, so should not hurt.

in the first screenshot it looks like there were some writes to the parity.  Not sure how many writes are needed to screw up the data.

But guys, how exactly would his parity become bad? He claims he didn't rebuild parity in the current configuration, and while in the invalid configuration, unraid would not write to the parity drive either...

 

There's missing information here.  One way UnRAID would have -- correctly -- written to the wrong "parity" drive is if the BAD configuration on the WRONG flash drive was based on the same drives that are currently in the array.  i.e. suppose it was the same set of drives EXCEPT the 4TB parity drive ... perhaps from a time when parity was one of the 3TB drives.    Then when the system was booted from the old drive, it knew that it had last been shutdown incorrectly; but saw the same set of drives it's configuration information "knew" about -- so simply started a parity check ... writing to the parity drive it "knew" about (which on the CORRECT flash drive was now a data drive, since the parity drive had been replaced with a 4TB unit).

 

No way of knowing (without confirmation from razr37) if that's what happened -- but it would explain what UnRAID did.    Razr37 => Did you update your parity from a 3TB to a 4TB drive and add the old parity drive to your array as a data drive ??

 

The lesson I'd say is clear from this is NEVER boot to the WRONG flash drive !!

 

... especially if the flash drive had been previously used with a subset of the actual drives still in the array.    If all of the drives in the config on that old flash drive are still present, there's no way for UnRAID to know that this is no longer the configuration.

 

The lesson I'd say is clear from this is NEVER boot to the WRONG flash drive !!

 

... especially if the flash drive had been previously used with a subset of the actual drives still in the array.    If all of the drives in the config on that old flash drive are still present, there's no way for UnRAID to know that this is no longer the configuration.

 

This is great but we are encouraging people to keep backups of their USB disks. We need to be clearer.

in the first screenshot it looks like there were some writes to the parity.  Not sure how many writes are needed to screw up the data.

 

Those writes were to both data drives and parity, meaning the parity does not become invalidated. Each time a bit is flipped on a data drive, that bit is flipped on parity, this would have been the same if disk1 had been valid.

 

There's missing information here.  One way UnRAID would have -- correctly -- written to the wrong "parity" drive is if the BAD configuration on the WRONG flash drive was based on the same drives that are currently in the array.  i.e. suppose it was the same set of drives EXCEPT the 4TB parity drive ... perhaps from a time when parity was one of the 3TB drives.  Then when the system was booted from the old drive, it knew that it had last been shutdown incorrectly; but saw the same set of drives it's configuration information "knew" about -- so simply started a parity check ... writing to the parity drive it "knew" about (which on the CORRECT flash drive was now a data drive, since the parity drive had been replaced with a 4TB unit).

 

From his description, this is exactly what happened. But nowhere in this process do we explain how his current/intended parity drive got invalidated.

 

Let's try and help him first, then we can bash him for not keeping a backup later..

But guys, how exactly would his parity become bad? He claims he didn't rebuild parity in the current configuration, and while in the invalid configuration, unraid would not write to the parity drive either...

 

There's missing information here.  One way UnRAID would have -- correctly -- written to the wrong "parity" drive is if the BAD configuration on the WRONG flash drive was based on the same drives that are currently in the array.  i.e. suppose it was the same set of drives EXCEPT the 4TB parity drive ... perhaps from a time when parity was one of the 3TB drives.    Then when the system was booted from the old drive, it knew that it had last been shutdown incorrectly; but saw the same set of drives it's configuration information "knew" about -- so simply started a parity check ... writing to the parity drive it "knew" about (which on the CORRECT flash drive was now a data drive, since the parity drive had been replaced with a 4TB unit).

 

No way of knowing (without confirmation from razr37) if that's what happened -- but it would explain what UnRAID did.    Razr37 => Did you update your parity from a 3TB to a 4TB drive and add the old parity drive to your array as a data drive ??

 

I did update parity to a 4 tb drive ove two months ago and the old parity became disk1.

I NOW understand that I should not have been used the old flash....but

I am not hiding anything, I want help, I do not want to mislead you..It would be silly

If the new(2 months old) parity disk was not in the equation while everything happened.......how is it not usable now?

I get that disk1 is bad but the rest??

No way of knowing (without confirmation from razr37) if that's what happened -- but it would explain what UnRAID did.    Razr37 => Did you update your parity from a 3TB to a 4TB drive and add the old parity drive to your array as a data drive ??

I was going to say look at the original thread linked in the first post, but it seems he actually created a ftp instead of http link in that first post.

 

Anyway, here is a link to a post in that original thread where he does in fact confirm that the current drive1 was once the parity drive.

This is great but we are encouraging people to keep backups of their USB disks. We need to be clearer.

 

Certainly true that backups need to be CURRENT.  I actually don't recommend maintaining a backup flash drive -- I DO recommend having a spare flash drive with a key for it; but as for the actual UnRAID files, etc., I suggest simply copying the current flash drive contents to a folder on your PC at regular intervals (Mine is done automatically via a backup script on my PC).  Then, if you need to use the backup flash drive, copy everything (except the key file) from your backup folder on the PC to the flash drive ... and THEN boot to it.

 

The lesson I'd say is clear from this is NEVER boot to the WRONG flash drive !!

 

... especially if the flash drive had been previously used with a subset of the actual drives still in the array.    If all of the drives in the config on that old flash drive are still present, there's no way for UnRAID to know that this is no longer the configuration.

 

This is great but we are encouraging people to keep backups of their USB disks. We need to be clearer.

 

Exactly. And if you read..I first tried a backup from 4 days ago of the flash drive.....that did nto work...tired an older one....

But lets move on, we are just trying to get the data back and learn from the experience....

Pictures????were backed up in my wife's computer.....I bought a new laptop for her the same day I bought the 4 tb drive....forgot to sync the folder with the new computer....my bad

Maybe the parity would be good to rebuild the disk1 data with, but it would be best to try that experiment on a new disk and set the other disk1 aside in case the experiment doesn't work. Probably Tom would have to advise on how (if possible) to get unRAID to try to rebuild disk1 since it doesn't seem to think there is a disk1 currently.

Thank you guys, I just need to go out and buy a HD. Haven't have time, I am at work

My question again...What happened to the idea of ......one disk goes bad....you can rebuild it.....I have 3 out of 4 disks....

You should be able to do that.  I saw your email and replied, you see it?

 

I do not see your reply. Could you forward it again? Please

razr:

 

First, I would suggest you boot in 'safe'  mode because I don't have any knowledge of what your webGui add-on does.

 

Next, Stop the array, unassign disk1, then Start array.  unRaid will see disk1 is missing and disable it.  Now does the disk still show as unformatted?  If not, do you see your files when browsing the disk1 share?  (But don't write anything just yet please).