Hi,

 

recently a 500GB SATA disk turned up as disabled in one of my unraid servers. I immediately purchased a replacement disk (750 GB) and inserted it in place of the failed disk. I started the  array and the system began to reconstruct the contents of the failed disk onto the new disk. All seemed to be working well, and at intervals I checked on the progress. After passing perhaps 35% I let the procedure alone and didn't monitor progress any more.

 

Returning to the server the next day I found that the new disk is also disabled! So maybe the initial problem was not the disk but a faulty cable or other hardware issue. Now, this problem raises some questions.

 

1. Suppose the issue actually was a faulty sata cable, and I had replaced it as a first procedure. Would there have been some command or procedure to re-enable the disabled disk? I suppose there would have been the alternative to use the dreaded "Restore" button and rely on the disabled disk to be healthy. But that would really defeat the idea of the fault protection.

 

2. Also, supposing the issue is a faulty cable and there is no problem with the 500GB disk. Having now made the step-up to a 750GB disk is there any way to reinsert the 500GB in the array instead of the 750 GB disk and be back at the initial configuration. The "Restore" button again?

 

Any answers to the above questions or other suggestions on how best to proceed with this issue would be much appreciated.

 

Best regards

Jan

Once you get the issue figured out and you have all the drives working again you cn use the trust my parity procedure.

 

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Make_unRAID_Trust_the_Parity_Drive,_Avoid_Rebuilding_Parity_Unnecessarily

 

Peter

Lately, it has seemed more likely than not that a disabled drive was fine, and it was only a problem with the cable, a backplane, or bad power.  We always recommend first grabbing the syslog (before any reboots), to see what are the actual errors reported, and to get a SMART report, to see what the actual status of the drive is.  The Troubleshooting link in my sig can help you with this, and the FAQ has some relevant entries.