So I appear to be in a pickle.  I was in the middle of upgrading from 5.x to 6.x.

I was following the instructions here:

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Upgrading_to_UnRAID_v6

I ran step 2.2 and my server booted into 6.1.3 and started a parity check.  I screwed up and moved on to run the new permissions while the parity check was running.

Part way through it got into a loop on one fold and I had to terminate the new permissions.

At this point one of my drives dropped out of the array and listed as unmountable.

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Since then I reran a complete preclear on the drive hoping I could add it back and rebuild the data.

The preclear ran without errors but now I can't do anything.

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If I try to format the drive the GUI does nothing for a couple of seconds and then reloads but nothing happens.

If I try to rebuild the data nothing happens.

 

I've attached a screen shot.

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I'm guessing that my next step is to do a "new config" and loss the ability to rebuild the data.

 

Anyone have any other suggestions?

 

Not completely clear how you got here. New Permissions during a parity check should not cause any problems other than slowing down the parity check and the newperms since they would both be trying to use the drives at the same time, but it should still work. Shouldn't have been any reason to run newperms anyway since you were coming from v5.

 

One thing you should know and always remember. Formatting a drive is NEVER part of the rebuild process.

 

Also, rebuilding a drive isn't likely to fix filesystems.

 

Go to Tools - Diagnostics and post the complete diagnostics zip

 

Then read this wiki: Check Disk Filesystems

I agree.  It's unclear to me how I got here.  Nothing I did should have caused this issue but...

 

At this stage the drive has been completely wiped by the preclear.  I just want to get it back into the array and hopefully rebuild the data from the parity which should still be OK from the 5.x build.

 

I've attached the results from running Tools/Diagnostics.

 

rs-diagnostics-20151031-0758.zip

I hope you did not succeed in formatting the drive as that would have updated the parity to the freshly formatted (i.e. empty) state.

I hope you did not succeed in formatting the drive as that would have updated the parity to the freshly formatted (i.e. empty) state.

nope.  I've had no success at all.

I'm trying to run the reiserfsck utility right now.

 

I hope you did not succeed in formatting the drive as that would have updated the parity to the freshly formatted (i.e. empty) state.

 

Really?  If that's the case how do you ever replace a drive?  Don't you always have to format a new drive when you put it into the array?

 

I hope you did not succeed in formatting the drive as that would have updated the parity to the freshly formatted (i.e. empty) state.

 

Really?  If that's the case how do you ever replace a drive?  Don't you always have to format a new drive when you put it into the array?

Here is the key to understanding your confusion, and the reason I said that formatting a disk is NEVER part of the rebuild process.

 

A formatted disk is not an empty disk. A formatted disk actually has data written to it. It just doesn't have any folders or files on it. The data on a formatted disk represents a filesystem of whatever type that has no folders or files.

 

If you format a disk in a parity array, it gets written to when the empty filesystem is created. Those writes also update the parity disk, just like all other writes. So when you format a drive in the parity array, and then try to rebuild that disk, unRAID will build a newly formatted disk.

 

This also explains the point of clearing or preclearing disks when adding them to a new slot. A clear disk is not a formatted disk, it is a disk that is literally all zeros. Since zeros have no effect on parity, adding a clear disk to a parity array keeps parity valid.