Missing and disabled disks

[ReCoN]

My array was showing a disabled disk, unfortunately I rebooted before taking a syslog. Whilst I was checking the cables and re connecting them an additional drive showed up as missing.  Now I have 3 drives showing as missing and one as disabled. What can I do to start rectifying the situation?

[FreeMan]

Start by providing a syslog if you can get one off the machine.  Since you were checking cables & reconnecting, I'm assuming you shut it down first, so the syslog of what was going on may now be gone.

[ReCoN]

Yes the whole thing was shut down. I have attached it anyway.

syslog-2014-12-27.txt

[RobJ]

Here's what I can see - you have a VMware system with no motherboard ports and 2 SAS disk controllers.  The first controller has 6 drives attached on the 1st 6 ports, and all came up fine.  The second controller looks very similar to the first, and was initiated OK, but has absolutely no drives attached, and there are no errors to provide any further clues.  I suspect the missing drives are on the 2nd controller, but don't appear connected, or perhaps they aren't powered.  I'd open up the system and take a closer look.

[ReCoN]

That is correct. I actually hadn't reconnected the cable correctly to the second m1015 card so I reconnected that and the 2 missing drives showed up leaving just the original missing drive and the disabled drive. Firstly I noticed one drive was showing as disabled so I switched it with another in the same hot swap bay to eliminate it being a cable problem. What happened was the the disk still showed as disabled and the drive put it its place is now missing. Wherever I move these 2 drives the devises that take their place show as missing and the disabled drive remains disabled. I have tried switching all the cables around

[ReCoN]

I have now connected the missing and disabled hard drives directly, I.e not in the hot swap caddy and they still showed as missing. I then swapped them in the hot swap  bay with 2 other drives and booted the system. There was no change in visible disks. I then added the 2 drives connected outside the hotswap bays into the empty spots and both are showing as missing giving 3 missing and one disabled. I am completely pulling my hair out over this. Really appreciate any help!

[ReCoN]

So, I have now removed all the hard drives from the hotswap bays and connected them directly. Also i have booted straight into unraid in a non virtualised environment. The 3 drives (2 missing one disabled) still showed as missing and disabled. I then switched the cables with devices known to be working and also tried connecting directly to the motherboard this didnt resolve the issue. The drives also did not show up in the bios when connected to my workstation. I have attached a syslog of the drives connected directly to the hard drive controllers and running unraid without esxi. 

syslog-2014-12-30.txt

[ReCoN]

Bump

[dgaschk]

If the drive do not appear in BIOS they will not be available for the OS. There is a physical connection problem or the drive is dead.

[ReCoN]

Initially only one drive showed as disabled, I presume this drive has failed.

 

The 2 that are missing only showed up as missing once I swapped connections to rule out a bad connection. Could that cause a drive to fail?

 

If we presume the disks have failed is it a case of switching in new drives then rebuilding? Could data be recoverable from the failed disks?

[trurl]

Initially only one drive showed as disabled, I presume this drive has failed.

 

The 2 that are missing only showed up as missing once I swapped connections to rule out a bad connection. Could that cause a drive to fail?

 

If we presume the disks have failed is it a case of switching in new drives then rebuilding? Could data be recoverable from the failed disks?

It is only possible to rebuild a single disk if all other disks including parity are good. Not your situation.

 

Not convinced any drive has failed. Very unlikely multiple drives fail simultaneously unless there was some smoke and sparks you haven't mentioned.

 

It might be possible to recover data from a failed disk, but it has to be seen by the BIOS. Likely a problem with something other than the drives. SATA or power cables, controllers. You have probably just knocked something loose. Try reseating the controllers and all cables.