I haven't had to deal with a bad drive in some time but it happened a few days ago.  Disk 7 started showing all kinds of errors so I bought a new disk, shut down the server and replaced the drive.  I don;t remember everything exactly, but I'm pretty sure I booted up and unRAID showed disk 7 missing so I stopped the array assigned the new drive and started the array.  I'm pretty sure all I did next was select rebuild data and let it do it's thing.  Frankly I was so sure of what I did that I let it go and didnt look at it again until today.

 

Now unRAID is showing all green dots but says that disk7 is unmountable and there is a prompt to format unmountable drives.  So if everything is green and it wants to format the drive, what happened to the original disk7 data in parity?  Is it now gone?  Did I do something wrong?

 

My log is attached.

wopr-syslog-20160105-1813.zip

You should always go to Tools - Diagnostics and post the complete diagnostics zip instead of posting just the syslog.

 

Probably the filesystem is corrupt. Maybe the disk you rebuilt already had a corrupt filesystem and it just got rebuilt onto the new disk.

 

What filesystem was on the original drive?

 

Post your diagnostics and read this.

 

Check Disk Filesystems

 

Here is the diagnostics.  I'm pretty sure the original file system was rfs.

wopr-diagnostics-20160105-1838.zip

I think I know what's wrong and I did screw up.  I'm pretty sure the original file system was rfs and when I installed the new drive i selected xfs for it.  You can;t do that, can you?  It's dawning on me now that it can only rebuild the same file system as the original, huh?  Crap!  Is that recoverable?

 

EDIT:  under disk7 settings it is showing as xfs.  On the main page it does not show a file system for  disk7.  It just shows unmountable.

I think I know what's wrong and I did screw up.  I'm pretty sure the original file system was rfs and when I installed the new drive i selected xfs for it.  You can;t do that, can you?  It's dawning on me now that it can only rebuild the same file system as the original, huh?  Crap!  Is that recoverable?

When you change the filesystem it gets formatted to the new filesystem. Maybe something can be salvaged but it won't be pretty. Did you read the wiki I linked?

Did you actually hit "format"?  If not try stopping the array and switching the file system back to rfs

I'm reading it now.  The drive was new and empty when I installed it.  It was supposed to do a data rebuild which it acted like it was doing. It's asking to format now and I haven't. Could it have rebuilt rfs data on a drive set for xfs?

Pretty unclear at this point the exact details of what you did and what the system did. Do you know how long it took to do this "rebuild"?

Did you actually hit "format"?  If not try stopping the array and switching the file system back to rfs

 

I never hit format.  Is there any risk to doing this?

Pretty unclear at this point the exact details of what you did and what the system did. Do you know how long it took to do this "rebuild"?

 

Here's what happened:

 

1. disk7 started erroring like crazy.

2. shut down unRAID replaced that drive with brand new drive.

3. restarted unRAID and assigned new drive as disk7

4. went in to disk7 settings and selected XFS for FS

5. told unRAID to rebuild data.

 

According to the log, it took 11.5 hours to do the rebuild.  Nothing has been formatted since the rebuild and array has been running ever since.

Unless something has changed (since when I messed up and lost data) you cannot switch the file system for a drive that is replacing a faulty drive with another file system!

Of course if you DIDN'T hit format yet (like I did), then I would think that your current config is just waiting for a disk 7 drive to be put in place to replace the one that is now missing.

Then a data rebuild could be initiated.

 

UnRAID will not let you change the file system of a drive for a rebuild, regardless of the preferred one that is set in your settings, disk settings, default file system.

So an XFS will be replaced with an XFS, RFS with and RFS, ....

 

Others should probably chime in before you listen to me on this topic, they are MUCH more seasoned at this!

So since you didn't hit format, and you only show an unmountable drive I think you're still hanging in there.

If you stop the array, remove the new disk 7, does it emulate the previous disk 7 with it's contents exported/available?

 

 

 

Did you actually hit "format"?  If not try stopping the array and switching the file system back to rfs

 

Did you do this? Set it to RFS or Auto and it will bring your data back if you didn’t actually hit format.

Not yet. I was waiting for confirmation that there wasn't any risk to doing that.

If you stop the array, remove the new disk 7, does it emulate the previous disk 7 with it's contents exported/available?

I think that may be the key question.  If yes, than your data is still there.

 

Best luck,

craigr

If you stop the array, remove the new disk 7, does it emulate the previous disk 7 with it's contents exported/available?

I think that may be the key question.  If yes, than your data is still there.

 

Best luck,

craigr

Won't make a difference, because disk 7 is still set to mount as XFS, and that has nothing to do with whether the disk is emulated or not (the emulated drive should be an exact copy of the physical drive and vice versa)

 

This is the key:

 

Did you actually hit "format"?  If not try stopping the array and switching the file system back to rfs

 

Did you do this? Set it to RFS or Auto and it will bring your data back if you didn’t actually hit format.

Not yet. I was waiting for confirmation that there wasn't any risk to doing that.

 

You can safely do it, and it will work if it happen like you described.

Ok.  I'll try it as soon as I finished with dinner. Thanks.

That looks to have worked.  It took a while to mount the disks but it finally did and the drive is now showing rfs and I am able to see it's contents.  Thanks so much guys!  I truly appreciate the help.

 

This does make me wonder about something though.  If I had lost the data I had no idea which files were actually on that disk.  Anyone have any suggestions for inventorying the contents of the disk shares/drives just in case drive data is lost?

Was going to recommend Dynamix File Integrity Plugin, since in addition to creating a text file with the contents from each disk it can also check all files integrity, but I see Bonienl just added a warning that it may cause issues with RFS.

 

For cataloging only this was recently mentioned as a good option:

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=44911.msg428776#msg428776

Thanks for the tip johnnie.  That little program does exactly what I want!