v5.0.4

Server is off now.

 

I had a red ball on a 2TB disk the other day. I went through the process of shutting down the server, grabbing a pre-cleared warm spare from my office, removing the bad disk, replacing it with the warm spare, powering up the server, adding the disk to the array, then beginning the rebuild. Damn thing was going to take 35 days. I pulled that disk and tried another older disk that wasn't part of my warm spare pile. It rebuilt at a normal speed (finishing in ~30 hours), but failed after about five hours. So I left that failed rebuild disk out of the array and copied all data off of that "disk" to my desktop machine. By "disk" I mean from parity and however that process works.

 

I then ran a single pre-clear on both of the disks (original red ball and the slow builder), and saw multiple reallocated sectors on red ball. Slow builder had no major issues from a smart test after the pre-clear, so it went back into the server. Slow build again.

 

So here I am. I'm about 100% sure all of the data I copied to my desktop is valid. I opened maybe a couple dozen files and they were fine. I'd like to put yet another disk into the server, but not rebuild data. Just copy the data back onto the array. Is that even a good idea?

 

I've looked through the FAQ, but that info seems really old, and I'm not sure what I'm asking to do so I can't search for the FAQ entry...

 

"I don't know what I don't know."

Attach a syslog.

The server is off. Will a newly booted server even have relevant info in the log?

Recreate the issue and then posts a syslog.

I know you have a great deal of more experience than I, so this comment is typed with as much respect as can be mustered in text.

 

But why?

 

I don't have an issue to solve. I'm curious if what I'd like to do is possible and a good option. Maybe I posted in the wrong subforum? If it's not a good plan, I'll just wait for the replacement to arrive.

 

Respectfully,

 

JL

How do you know you don't have an issue? Why is it slow rebuilding?

It's possible that the slow rebuild is caused by your other disks. If you don't want to try to recreate the issue and post a syslog, then post a smart report of your other drives.

The data you copied from the emulated disk (i.e. the disk created by parity and the other drives) was exactly what would have been rebuilt anyway -- so it's as good as it gets 

 

If you simply want to do a New Config and use a new disk altogether instead of doing a rebuild, that's fine.    Just copy the data you backed up back to the server and you'll be fine.