First of all thanks for any help in advance. Though I've had my unraid server for a few years, I'm still struggling to understand how to service it.

 

My server was off for a few months and when I went to turn it on everything booted up as normal. I decided to do a parity check with corrections and found 38 errors before the server start to become non-responsive. I was able to do a clean shutdown and restarted parity with corrections, again finding the 38 errors that were corrected with no further problems and parity check was completed. I proceeded to do a second parity check with corrections and started to find problems with disk 5 and additional errors. I was able to stop parity check and my server is just sitting idle before I make my next move. I've enclosed a log for review that shows a lot of errors happening on disk 5.

 

I don't have the skill to determine whether it's the drive, cable, controller, etc. causing the problem. I'm trying to learn how to do a S.M.A.R.T. test on the drive 5, but honestly without GUI to guide me, I'm pretty slow. I've been reading miscellaneous threads on the topic for the last couple days trying to self educate but would definitely appreciate any advice on what I should do next. Also I'm sure I need to provide more information, so please let me know what is needed and I will be sure to post it as soon as possible.

 

Thanks kindly,

 

Tommy

 

Original Limetech MD-1510 Server

Intel Celeron Dual Core E1200  @ 1.60GHz

2GB Ram

 

(Please excuse any typos as I use voice recognition software that sometimes creates errors)

syslogs_2015-03-20_.zip

Disk 5 most likely has a loose sata cable to it which is causing all of your grief.  I would reseat all of the cables to the drive and to the controller, taking care to not disturb any other cables

 

Thanks you so much Squid for replying so quickly!!! Truly outstanding...

 

I didn't want to turn anything off until I got this kind of direction. I'll do a clean shutdown and follow your recommendation.

 

I've enclosed a print screen that shows what I was seeing from the web GUI for review as well.

 

Best regards,

 

Tommy

I would pull a smart report from disk5 (if you use unmneu/myMain, you could go to the myMain "smart view" and see smart issues for all of your drives).

 

Your first correcting check finding 38 errors, then the next one finding the same 38, means to me that one of the disks - disk5 at high suspicion - was returning bad data. The first 38 were likely wrong, and the second 38 corrected the first 38.

 

Could be a bad cable but could easily be a bad drive. I find nothing is worse for drives that keeping them cold for months / years at a time with no use.

Thanks for the additional info bjp999!

 

I shut down my server last night and plan on checking the cable as recommended by Squid later today. Currently I am just using the basic stock web GUI. I had used Simple Features previously before upgrading to 5.0, and if I remember correctly it was pretty simple to install. I'm currently doing research on how to install unMENU to make sure I clearly understand what I'm doing. The ability to do a SMART test without getting into command line would be great. If I may ask, what would be the best way for a novice to install unMENU from a Windows environment (if possible)?

 

Again, thank you so much for your greatly appreciated assistance.

 

Best regards,

 

Tommy

Hello everyone,

 

I was able to re-seat the cable for disk 5 and restarted the server, making sure not to disturb any other cabling. Everything fired up without issue and I was able to access the stock web GUI quickly. All drives were green and I proceeded to do a parity check. Everything looked good but shortly after I lost access to the server via the web GUI. After several attempts I was able to access the server and accidentally hit the stop array button instead of the cancel parity parity check. This caused all the drives to turn blue and I believe my only options were to start parity again or power-down. I chose to power off the system because another parity check probably would've put me back into a redundant non-responsive cycle. After a reboot, the server detected an unclean shutdown therefore will automatically start a Parity-Check if I bring the server online. I've included the system log below.

 

I'm in the process of trying to install unMenu to check the drive health status. I also have a spare drive that I can replace disk 5 with. I have complete backups for all the drives so I wonder if it would be advisable for me to replace disk 5 and do a rebuild. My question would be what status is my parity drive in after all the start and stops. I honestly don't quite fully understand how the rebuild process works with unRAID so some guidance would be very helpful.

 

Thanks again to all responders,

 

Tommy

syslogs_2015-03-21_.zip

Replaced disk 5 and did a rebuild successfully. Ran Parity check twice with zero errors.  Currently checking rebuild data to my back-up.  All seems well so far.

 

Thank for the suggestions Squid and bjp999.