I am setting up a new unRaid system for a friend of mine. The parity drive (Seagate) is showing as red, but I can not find anything wrong with the drive using Seatools. I've attached the syslog and smart report from unraid for the drive.

The system is now seeing 3 drives, connected to the first 3 onboard SATA ports, but it remembers from the last session that there was a drive connected to the 4th SATA port, and it probably was the Parity drive, since it is missing.  Since you then assigned the second drive (sdb, 500GB) to the parity disk, and then started the array and began a parity build onto it, I have to assume you either reconnected the parity drive from the 4th port to the second port, or you have replaced the parity drive and connected the new drive to the second port.  You then very quickly canceled the parity build, which is a scary move!  I hope that was not a data drive after all!

 

If you started building parity onto a good data disk, then you are going to have to try to recover this disk, and somewhere Brian (bgp999) has a very good story of how he was able to recover all or most of his data.  You should be able to find it in either the FAQ or the Best of the Forums wiki page.

 

Before we can advise further, we need to know what is what now with your drives, which ones have data, and which one is the true parity disk.  There is another possibility, and that is that the parity drive is no longer being seen by the system, and you will need to determine if it is still connected correctly, and if it is spinning up.

 

One disclaimer: I'm rather sure it started a sync and not a check, but the mdcmd messages have changed a little recently, so it is possible that I am wrong and it was a parity check started and canceled, not a sync.

Here is the full story behind it all. It is a brand new build. There is nothing of need on the raid as of yet. The 500gb seagate was originally at port 2. It was red-balled from the start. I stopped the raid, unassigned it and then rebooted and re-assigned it. It would not come off red-ball. I then shutdown, ran Seatools, did long and short tests, which it passed. Then I used Seatools to do a reformat. When that was done I tried to re-assign it in unraid. It once again was red-balled. I then proceeded to unassign it and try new cables/ports to see if those were the issue. No matter what port or cable I used it stayed red. I just finished the "trust my parity" process and now the drive is green and all is working as I would expect it. All the drives in the system will be replaced with larger drives soon. This is mostly an exercise in getting the host system up running and Unraid mostly configured and hopefully S3 working.

Here is the full story behind it all. It is a brand new build. There is nothing of need on the raid as of yet. The 500gb seagate was originally at port 2. It was red-balled from the start. I stopped the raid, unassigned it and then rebooted and re-assigned it. It would not come off red-ball. I then shutdown, ran Seatools, did long and short tests, which it passed. Then I used Seatools to do a reformat. When that was done I tried to re-assign it in unraid. It once again was red-balled. I then proceeded to unassign it and try new cables/ports to see if those were the issue. No matter what port or cable I used it stayed red. I just finished the "trust my parity" process and now the drive is green and all is working as I would expect it. All the drives in the system will be replaced with larger drives soon. This is mostly an exercise in getting the host system up running and Unraid mostly configured and hopefully S3 working.

Once you "assign" a drive, it is part of your array.  Un-assigning it is exactly the same as disconnecting its cable, or it failing... it is still part of the array and will show a "red" indicator if missing.

 

The only way to remove a drive from the array is to replace it with another, in which case the old drive contents will be rebuilt onto the new, or

to press the button labeled "restore" which does not restore data, but instead is really a "Set Initial Disk Configuration" button.  (It is VERY poorly named)

 

Normally pressing the "restore" button will immediately invalidate parity and create a new config/super.dat file with the currently assigned and working disks.  Parity is then calculated on those disks.  The "Trust" procedure allows you to force unRAID think parity is valid...  You should let its "check" finish to be absolutely sure.

 

Joe L.

Thanks for the replies, especially so quickly. I guess something went wrong when it was first attached and it was screwed from then on. I did try the restore a couple times. Each time it went from blue to red. Then I did all the cable/port juggling. Only using the "trust" did it go green. I'll fire off the parity check soon.