Christmas Nightmare (Multiple Drives Missing)

[01111000]

Recently, one of my old drives gave out.  I bought a new 3TB WD Red from NewEgg, but that arrived damaged.  That drive is on it's way back. 

 

Earlier this week I bought another two WD Reds from BH Photo and Video and began preclearing the drives to replace the failed one.  The Preclear on one of them was successfully completed and I just went to assign that drive to use it in the array.  To my surprise, two of my other drives are now missing and the Array shows an invalid configuration.  I just stopped the array. 

 

Here's what I see:

 

I do believe that those two drives are on the same 4 port controller card and are not on the main 6 ports on the Motherboard.  How do I proceed?  I'm sure that the data is intact and that this is some sort of wiring or hardware issue with the controller.

[StevenD]

I would try a new controller before anything else. Of course, check all your connections and powersupply.

[RobJ]

Before you shut down or reboot, grab the syslog!

 

Which is the bad drive you are replacing?

[01111000]

Disk 3 is the disk I want to replace, the 2TB Seagate.

 

Syslog attached.

syslog.zip

[Frank1940]

I would try a new controller before anything else. Of course, check all your connections and powersupply.

 

And reseat the controller board.

 

 

Triple check the SATA power cables to those two drives.  I assume that you have been inside of the box to install the new drive.  It is not unusual to loosen SATA power cables when installing new drives-- particularly, if the replaced drive is in the middle of the cable.  (I know I have done it myself!!!) 

[01111000]

I would try a new controller before anything else. Of course, check all your connections and powersupply.

 

And reseat the controller board.

 

 

Triple check the SATA power cables to those two drives.  I assume that you have been inside of the box to install the new drive.  It is not unusual to loosen SATA power cables when installing new drives-- particularly, if the replaced drive is in the middle of the cable.  (I know I have done it myself!!!)

 

What's confusing is that the drives were available when I first booted the array.  Would the drives be available and then suddenly be dropped if cables were the issue?  How do I go about reassigning the drives after a reboot?  I'd like to minimize the potential data loss.

[danioj]

 

Here's what I see:

 

 

I hope things are working ok with you. Can't suggest anything because it is beyond my experience level. I would like to know however (when you get a minute) what interface you are running. I have Dynamix and unMenu installed and none look like that!?

[RobJ]

I would try a new controller before anything else. Of course, check all your connections and powersupply.

 

And reseat the controller board.

 

 

Triple check the SATA power cables to those two drives.  I assume that you have been inside of the box to install the new drive.  It is not unusual to loosen SATA power cables when installing new drives-- particularly, if the replaced drive is in the middle of the cable.  (I know I have done it myself!!!)

 

What's confusing is that the drives were available when I first booted the array.  Would the drives be available and then suddenly be dropped if cables were the issue?  How do I go about reassigning the drives after a reboot?  I'd like to minimize the potential data loss.

 

I think we were hoping that the last 2 drives would return after reseating all related cables and controllers.  If so, then we can return to your original situation.  The critical info we need would be what is wrong with Disk 3?  Is it bad sectors?  Would it allow a parity check or other drive rebuild to go all the way through?  If after reboot the drives show up, then you may have to do a 'Trust My Array' procedure, although there is a possibility of data loss, no matter what direction we go.  Can files be copied from Disk 3?  We need more info.

 

Depending on the state of the array, one thing you will probably need to do, but not sure of the steps or timing yet (and I'll be busy today), is start the array in Maintenance mode and run reiserfsck on each of the drives, to make sure there's no file system corruption.

 

That syslog piece was after a syslog rotation, so the critical info was already gone unfortunately.  It just showed that the 3 drives had been dropped by the kernel, but without clues as to how or why.  When drives simultaneously (but we don't know for sure what the timing was), then it's possible the controller crashed or jiggled loose, dropping all of its drives at the same time.

[01111000]

I think we were hoping that the last 2 drives would return after reseating all related cables and controllers.  If so, then we can return to your original situation.  The critical info we need would be what is wrong with Disk 3?  Is it bad sectors?  Would it allow a parity check or other drive rebuild to go all the way through?  If after reboot the drives show up, then you may have to do a 'Trust My Array' procedure, although there is a possibility of data loss, no matter what direction we go.  Can files be copied from Disk 3?  We need more info.

 

Depending on the state of the array, one thing you will probably need to do, but not sure of the steps or timing yet (and I'll be busy today), is start the array in Maintenance mode and run reiserfsck on each of the drives, to make sure there's no file system corruption.

 

That syslog piece was after a syslog rotation, so the critical info was already gone unfortunately.  It just showed that the 3 drives had been dropped by the kernel, but without clues as to how or why.  When drives simultaneously (but we don't know for sure what the timing was), then it's possible the controller crashed or jiggled loose, dropping all of its drives at the same time.

 

So I shut down the server and reseated all the cables and the card.  I also disconnected one of the new WD drives I bought because I figured it could have been a power issue as well.  When the server came back online, all was good, with Disk 3 still Red Balled.  I just reassigned that position with the other new, successfully precleared, drive and the rebuild was successful.  I'm running a preclear on that old 2tb (the one that Red Balled) to see if it's salvageable. 

 

I'm currently looking to invest in a M1015 to replace the card I currently have.

 

Thanks for all of the support.  This community is what makes unRAID so great.