I just had to replace my parity drive after it failed last week.  I used the 4 cycles of the preclear script on it to burn it in and there were no problems at all (no errors in the syslog, no reallocated sectors, etc.).  Once that was complete, I assigned the new drive to the parity slot and started a parity sync.  As soon as I hit the start button, the system locked up (or appears to have locked up).  Web-based requests and even the directly connected keyboard/monitor do not respond.  If it matters the keyboard is connected via USB.  I'm assuming (or maybe hoping) that the PCI bus is maxed out and that the system is fine, just busy, but I have no way to confirm that.  I'd post a syslog, but I can't get to the system.  I did check the syslog immediately before syncing parity, and there were no errors or warnings. 

 

Any suggestions on the best course of action here?  Wait a day or so for the parity sync to finish (parity drive is a 2TB drive) and then try to move drives off the PCI bus?  Or should I restart the system and debug it now?

 

On a side note, what is the max number of drives that can safely be put on the PCI bus? 

 

Thanks in advance.

I just had to replace my parity drive after it failed last week.  I used the 4 cycles of the preclear script on it to burn it in and there were no problems at all (no errors in the syslog, no reallocated sectors, etc.).  Once that was complete, I assigned the new drive to the parity slot and started a parity sync.  As soon as I hit the start button, the system locked up (or appears to have locked up).  Web-based requests and even the directly connected keyboard/monitor do not respond.  If it matters the keyboard is connected via USB.  I'm assuming (or maybe hoping) that the PCI bus is maxed out and that the system is fine, just busy, but I have no way to confirm that.  I'd post a syslog, but I can't get to the system.  I did check the syslog immediately before syncing parity, and there were no errors or warnings. 

 

Any suggestions on the best course of action here?  Wait a day or so for the parity sync to finish (parity drive is a 2TB drive) and then try to move drives off the PCI bus?  Or should I restart the system and debug it now?

 

On a side note, what is the max number of drives that can safely be put on the PCI bus? 

 

Thanks in advance.

Nothing I can think of would lock up the system as you described.  You've crashed somehow.  I think a reboot is your only alternative now.

 

As far as how many drives on a PCI bus... as many as you like.  It has 133MB/s bandwidth at max, so parity check speeds will be limited and slower than on a faster bus.  Many of us have unRAID systems where the only bus is a PCI bus as that was state-of-the-art when our systems were built.  PCIe and PCI-X did not yet exist.  I have 16 drives on my PCI bus, 12 of them assigned in my protected array.

 

You power supply might not be up to the task of spinning up all your drives at once when you started your parity calc.. Perhaps that is the cause of your crash... (just guessing)

 

Joe L.

It was definitely locked up.  I tried rebooting, and the system immediately locked up again - same symptoms as before but it happened before I could even login on the console.  I then moved 3 disks off of a PCI controller and onto the motherboard (I had them like that to make room for future larger/faster drives) and the system booted normally and is now running a parity sync without any problem.  The power supply I have is a 450 watt Corsair (single rail 12v).  From what I've read here that should be plenty (I only have 7 drives in the system), but wouldn't hesitate to upgrade if it would help prevent this kind of problem.