June 26, 201412 yr Wow, I got myself into a jam...I hope someone can help... In my unRAID 5.0 server, I upgraded 4 of the disks from 2TB disks to 3TB disks, one at a time of course. Each time I replaced a hard drive, I let the system rebuild it from parity, but where I went wrong was that I just went from one drive to the other without checking parity in between rebuilds. I figured that I could just check parity when all 4 of them were upgraded, but I now know that that won't work. I replaced disk #2, #3, #5, and #6, in that order, of a 23 disk array. When I was done upgrading all of the drives, I then checked parity and everything was ok (green dots), but when I looked at the drives with a file browser, disk #2 seems to be perfect, and disk #5 was blank anyways, so those 2 are ok. The problem is with Disks #3 and #6, both of which were full. Disk #3 is totally empty and disk #6 is empty if I look at it with Windows, but Midnight Commander sees the files there, though all of the files are color coded in red with a "?" in front of the file names. If I try to copy the red files to another drive, MC says "cannot source stat file - permission denied". I still have the 4 2TB drives intact that I pulled from the machine, so theoretically all of my files are still there, BUT, Yareg does not see the disks in Windows for some reason. Yareg always worked fine for me when I was using unRAID 4.xx, so has something changed in 5.0 that will not allow me to access the files in Windows 7 (32 bit or 64 bit) any more? I have a chassis with 24 hot swap bays...should I just put the 4 old drives back in? And if I do, how should I proceed? Or, what is the easiest way to recover from my disaster? Edit: BTW, I know how part of the problem was caused...When I first finished installing all 4 drives and went to check parity, drive #5 came up red ball and the parity check was aborted. I then replaced the 3TB disk with another 3TB disk, let it rebuild, and then checked parity - this time parity came up fine and error free, but my assumption is that when disk #5 turned out to be bad, when disk #6 was rebuilt it was using bad information.
June 26, 201412 yr Since you have the 4 original disks you at least know you haven't lost any data. As far as I know nothing changed between 4.7 and 5.0 that would prevent you seeing the contents from Windows, but this is not something I've ever tried, so can't confirm. If you want to get yourself back where to a good standing again you can run New Config from the Utils tab of the GUI. This will wipe out the parity data and you will have to manually reassign each disk and then parity will be built and you will need to check it. With 5.0 disk location doesn't matter, but obviously you want to make sure you know which is your parity drive and which is your cache drive, so it's usually a good idea of do a screen capture of the main GUI page before you attempt anything. When I've done similar disk upgrades in the past I will usually add the new disks to the array along with the old ones, then use MC to move the data over. Then redo the New Config to recreate and test parity. I know it takes longer, but since it's not something I do very often I prefer the slow safe approach. I also like that this allows me to easily fill the new disks (i.e 1.5 2TB disks onto a 3TB disk or 2 2TB disks onto a new 4TB disk).
June 26, 201412 yr Author Thanks for the reply, bkastner! If you want to get yourself back where to a good standing again you can run New Config from the Utils tab of the GUI. This will wipe out the parity data and you will have to manually reassign each disk and then parity will be built and you will need to check it. So, I should: 1. stop array 2. replace disks #3 and #6 (since disk #2 is ok and disk #5 was blank) 3. Start array to recognize new disks 4. stop array again 5. run the New Config util 6. reassign all disks again (I took a snapshot of the assignments, so I will assign all disks to their original positions) 7. build parity 8. check parity and once I am convinced that everything is working fine, then I can replace disks #3 and #6 with new 3TB disks, making sure to check parity after *each* disk installation. Does this sound right?
June 26, 201412 yr Thanks for the reply, bkastner! If you want to get yourself back where to a good standing again you can run New Config from the Utils tab of the GUI. This will wipe out the parity data and you will have to manually reassign each disk and then parity will be built and you will need to check it. So, I should: 1. stop array 2. replace disks #3 and #6 (since disk #2 is ok and disk #5 was blank) 3. Start array to recognize new disks 4. stop array again 5. run the New Config util 6. reassign all disks again (I took a snapshot of the assignments, so I will assign all disks to their original positions) 7. build parity 8. check parity and once I am convinced that everything is working fine, then I can replace disks #3 and #6 with new 3TB disks, making sure to check parity after *each* disk installation. Does this sound right? Steps 2 to 4 should not be needed as the 'new config' option wipes all disk assignments anyway (unless you need it to work out disk assignments). I would start off by not assigning parity until all the data disks are as you want them. The reason is if that if any disk unexpectedly shows as 'unformatted' it may mean that you incorrectly assigned your parity disk as a data disk.
June 26, 201412 yr Author Steps 2 to 4 should not be needed as the 'new config' option wipes all disk assignments anyway (unless you need it to work out disk assignments). I would start off by not assigning parity until all the data disks are as you want them. The reason is if that if any disk unexpectedly shows as 'unformatted' it may mean that you incorrectly assigned your parity disk as a data disk. Done... When I've done similar disk upgrades in the past I will usually add the new disks to the array along with the old ones, then use MC to move the data over. That is what I would do too except that ALL slots are already filled - 23 data disks, parity, and cache. I am in the process of upgrading all disks to 3TB and 4TB disks. Anyway, thanks to both of you, I am back "on the path" to a properly working system again. I have the old disks reinstalled and am building parity from scratch as we speak. Then I will be sure to test parity before making any changes, and then test parity between each disk upgrade. It will take longer that way, but I will feel a lot more secure than I was feeling a few hours ago... Many thanks for you help!!! I would still like to know why Yareg no longer works with unRAID 5.0 disks...Something must have happened that changed the disks since 4.7.
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