Hi there community - i've been having some problems with upgrading my array and was hoping for some guidance before I action any further.

 

I've been running unraid for some years now, and have done the below process successfully before, but i'm having a problem this time. 

 

I run a 6 disc array, and after a zero error parity check,  I replaced data disc 3 (a working 1TB drive) with a new WD Red 4TB drive.  Existing parity drive is Seagate 4TB.

 

Upon installing the drive and booting up, everything seemed ok, i.e. all green dots.  However when trying to get the 4TB rebuilt, new disc 3 (4TB) just wouldn't seem to format, clicking refresh just brought back the old screen saying it needed a format.  This was odd  I did a clean reset, and then what seems to be a problem, as follows: 

 

Parity disc is blue, it tells me it is a new disc; and

 

New Disc 3 is orange.

 

Then I though, ok, i'll just reconnect the old disc 3, and rerun parity, start again.  When I connected old disc 3, the array does not accept this disc and it tells me it is invalid.

 

Now, I believe if i went ahead and checked parity, i would lose the ability to rebuild disc 3, so I'm not sure where to go from here.  My current parity disc, although blue, is 100% up to date.  From searching the support there is no way to force the array to accept the parity as valid to rebuild disc 3.    I have also checked the cabling connections, more than once, but have not physically replaced any sata cables as yet.

 

Any pointers would be much appreciated.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

EDIT: Have swapped out the parity SATA cable with a new unused one and no luck on the reboot.  Why does the array think there is a new parity disk!?

 

syslog.txt

May  6 09:59:30 Tower logger: installing plugin: *

May  6 09:59:30 Tower logger:

May  6 09:59:30 Tower logger: Warning: simplexml_load_file(): I/O warning : failed to load external entity "/boot/config/plugins/*.plg" in /usr/local/sbin/installplg on line 13

May  6 09:59:30 Tower logger:  xml parse error

May  6 09:59:30 Tower emhttp: unRAID System Management Utility version 5.0-beta14

I've never seen that before in a syslog. Do you actually have a file in /boot/config/plugins named "*.plg"?

 

No, I don't have a *.plg file.  It might be related to the PMS plugin launching in the go script? the line in the go script is  "installpkg *.tgz"

 

But I'm only speculating.  I don't think it is the cause of the problem.

 

On reflection, could this be hardware related, in particular the USB stick, as that has been the cause of oddities in the past?

Currently copying data from old disk 3 to an external hard drive.  Would be grateful for some guidance from ppl that might have had this sort of thing before.  Does anyone think replacing the flash drive might be of use?  Anyone know of a way to ignore the new parity drive setting so i can rebuild my disk 3?  If i can't find a solution and disk 3 is backed up I might just have to roll the dice and click run parity check. 

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About that line in your 'GO' script...     Is that there for a particular reason?

 

I'm not sure that's actually the cause of your problem, but it sure has everyone confused!

If there's no unique-to-you need, can you delete it?

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Also, there's something else odd in your syslog. (Sorry, I have to get to work and can't dig further), but it LOOKS like your initial system boot finds FOUR drives and mounts them, but then later unRAID finds FIVE drives.

You might check your BIOS to see that all your drives are properly defined.

The SATA Cable check was a good idea...you might also try swapping SATA ports on the motherboard to see if the problem disk changes (indicating the port on the MB is at fault).

And how about power? Are the power connectors seated properly on all the drives?

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Then you have a ton of 'developer' oriented plugins...I'm not as familiar with which versions of those are current, but if you boot unRAID in 'SAFE MODE', that would allow you to fix the disk issues without a lot of plugins getting in the way.

A couple of thoughts ...

 

(a)  Look carefully at the exact size of your parity drive and the new 4TB drive.  If the new drive has more bytes than the parity drive (even one byte), it can't be added.  This normally is not an issue; but some folks have pulled drives from external casings that had small HPA's on them -- so the drive was a few bytes smaller than a native 4TB.  If that happens to be the case with your parity drive, that would at least explain why it's giving you problems.

 

(b)  Do NOT do ANYTHING with your old disk 3.  As long as you don't touch it, the data is still there and there are other options besides rebuilding the data onto the new drive.

 

©  You DO have a lot of plug-ins/add-ons that could be somehow interfering with the normal process.  I'd try the rebuild without those.

 

(d)  One simple option: 

          ->  Do a New Config with all of the drives you want in the array (including the new one) but NOT the old disk 3.

          ->  Run the initial parity sync, so your array is protected;  then do a parity check to confirm all went well

          ->  Attach the old disk3 to a Windows PC, install the free Linux Reader [ http://www.diskinternals.com/linux-reader/ ]; and then copy all of the data from it to your array (to the new disk if that's where you want it, but it really doesn't matter)

 

@DaleWilliams & @garycase

 

Firstly I am most grateful for your assistances.

 

Where I am at is that I disabled all plugins, checked the new drive size versus the parity (it was the same), checked the BIOS (read further comments below), and  put the old disk 3 into my main PC and copied its contents to an external harddrive for double protection.

 

Then I ran with @garycase's suggestion of a new config, and rebuilding parity, and i have all green dots except for parity which is now yellow, and it tells me parity is being rebuilt.

 

Assuming parity is rebuilt I will copy over the contents of old disk 3 back on to the array.

further comments

 

For the sake of completeness on the forums, and for the fact and in particular the comments around my plugins, i  only run 4 plugins, all of which i have taken from the forums here.

 

1. Playstation Media Server, which is the go script query that came up more than once.  This is taken straight from this link, http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/PS3_Media_Server and has always worked great.  I don't really need it these days, but in the past it was really helpful.

2. Cache directories

3. Sickbeard + SABNZBD+.  these really bring my NAS to life, and are installed on disc 5. Funnily enough, this is the disc that @dalewilliams indicated looked funny and took ages to mount, which was always my experience and I had always attributed to thes two plugins.  These plugins *might* have caused the issue, or alternatively, when reviewing the BIOS, the "sata operation mode" for all disks was set to IDE, not AHCI.  I didn't change anything because everything has been working fine and I believe in the rule that if it isn't broken, don't try and fix it. 

 

These comments only added for completeness.  I will update this thread once more information is available.

 

Thanks again community - I hope you are enjoying your weekend!

 

AHCI is recommended for greater performance and stability. Changing the setting should not effect the array.

So far the Parity Sync appears successful, and with all green dots, I now have a parity check underway.

 

Oddly, this new disk 3 doesn't seem to have populated my user share folder structure, and when trying to copy a file across (under the user share) limits it doesn't default to this disk as it should under the high water setting. 

 

Is this a bug, should i just recreate the folder structure manually?  Thanks again, I think i am nearly there.

Sounds like the parity sync went well -- just wait for the parity check to complete to confirm that.

 

While you CAN copy data during the parity check, I wouldn't recommend it.  It slows down both the parity check and the copy significantly -- it'll actually take less time to do them sequentially.

 

As for the share's => if you've set specific Includes for your shares, be sure to add the new drive.  If not, then they'll automatically be used the next time a high-water change is required.  UnRAID will continue to use the currently set drive until it hits the next high-water mark -- at that time it should change to your new drive (and then the appropriate folders will be created).    You can, if you wish, simply create the appropriate high-level folder(s) on the new drive and copy directly to that if you want to start using the drive, but it's not necessary.

 

Again, thanks to everyone that helped, the array parity checked fine, i reactivated plugins and the user shares are working.