Before I do anything stupid please take a look at my diagnostic.  I have a hot spare that I can use to replace this drive if it's going bad but it's not exactly missing, I was able to check disk and it had no errors.

seancy-diagnostics-20161109-1429.zip

Don't see any SMART for that drive or others on that controller. Can you access it by clicking on the drive and looking at the Attributes? If so post a screenshot.

 

The only way to re-enable a disk is to rebuild it. The only question is whether to rebuild to the same disk or to another one.

I was able to run a smart test and this is what I got. 

 

Title

Information

Vendor:

WDC

Product:

WD30EZRS-00J

Revision:

80.0

User capacity:

2,995,729,203,200 bytes [2.99 TB]

Logical block size:

512 bytes

Serial number:

WD-WCAWZ1794620

Device type:

disk

Transport protocol:

SAS (SPL-3)

Local time:

Wed Nov 9 15:51:58 2016 EST

SMART support:

Available - device has SMART capability.

SMART support:

Enabled

Temperature warning:

Disabled or Not Supported

SMART health status:

Passed

 

weird that I'm getting results when the drive has a red X, No?

also when i stop the array the disk doesn't show up as no device, it sees the drive 9 and it sees my hot spare.  just the red X and the emulation warning has me worried.

The red X just means unRAID has disabled the drive due to a write error. This is the way unRAID works and may not necessarily indicate there is anything wrong with the drive. Often a bad connection will cause this.

 

When a write fails, unRAID updates parity anyway, so the data is in the array but not on the disk. Once unRAID disables a drive (red X) it will not use it again until it is rebuilt. After it becomes disabled, unRAID "emulates" the drive by calculating its data from parity and the other disks, rather than actually using the disk. It does this emulation whether reading or writing the drive. The drive must be rebuilt because it is out-of-sync with parity. The actual physical disk's data is invalid, but the valid data is emulated in the array and can be rebuilt to the same or another disk. This is how unRAID parity allows you to recover from a drive failure.

 

What you posted is not what I was asking for. If you click on the drive it should take you to the page for the drive, and hopefully it will show the drive SMART attributes in the Attributes section (or tab if you have tabs enabled). The SMART attributes will allow us to decide whether the drive can be used again.

unfortunately the controller this drive is plugged through doesn't seem to support smart.

 

what can i do to rebuild and would I be screwed if the rebuild fails?

I almost hate to suggest this but could you swap the SATA connection for this drive to the MB and put another drive up there on that controller.  (unRAID tracks drives by serial numbers and not by their physical connections.)  That way you could get the attributes.

I almost hate to suggest this but could you swap the SATA connection for this drive to the MB and put another drive up there on that controller.  (unRAID tracks drives by serial numbers and not by their physical connections.)  That way you could get the attributes.

If you look in the diagnostics, I think the controller is altering the serial number, so I think if he does this he will wind up with it thinking he is missing 2 drives.

 

Does anyone know if it is possible to get the controller to give SMART attributes?

this machine is not on premises.  The people "babysitting" it are non technical.  I feel the drive is probably fine.  What would be the best way to get it back into sync?

this machine is not on premises.  The people "babysitting" it are non technical.  I feel the drive is probably fine.  What would be the best way to get it back into sync?

Before trying to get it back in sync you should make sure that whatever caused the problem is fixed. Check connections and card seating.

The simplest would be to rebuild to your spare. Slightly more complicated would be to rebuild to the same drive.

 

unraid wiki red X

if I try to rebuild to same drive will it wipe the drive and rebuild from scratch or will it just fill in what has changed?

if I try to rebuild to same drive will it wipe the drive and rebuild from scratch or will it just fill in what has changed?

it will rewrite the whole drive.  This is one of the reasons it is not necessary to have precleared a disk before a rebuild if you decide to rebuild to a different drive.

 

Note that the rebuild system has no concept of file systems, so it merely writes every sector on the disk to the value it thinks it should have.    In practice if using the same disk most sectors will simply be rewritten with the same contents they already have, but the rebuild process does not care it simply blindly writes the sectors.

so if it starts rebuilding and I see it start racking up errors, what steps should I take to stop the process and initiate the rebuild onto my hot spare?

so if it starts rebuilding and I see it start racking up errors, what steps should I take to stop the process and initiate the rebuild onto my hot spare?

Stop, assign your spare to disk9, Start

so if it starts rebuilding and I see it start racking up errors, what steps should I take to stop the process and initiate the rebuild onto my hot spare?

 

What is the purpose of your hot spare unless it is to quickly replace a defective disk?  That is what I would do and then after the server is working again, I would have a good look at that drive and see what it's status really is.  There are a lot of tools that can be used on a disk to test it but the first thing you want to do is to get all of your data protected again which is not the case when you are emulating a disk!

this machine is far from home so I can't physically trouble shoot it.  I don't want to use my hot spare unless I absolutely have to and I think the old drive is good I was doing stupid stuff to try to fix a plex issue which ultimately was solved by re-analyzing all my video files.  If the rebuild goes smooth I have a hot spare in case another drive has an issue, if it doesn't I'll use the hot spare and a few months from now when I can physically get at the machine I can pull the drive and test.

 

thanks for al your help, I'm glad I checked with you guys before I did anything.