I purchased a new parity drive that is larger than the one that is there.  The old parity drive is still sitting on my desk - there were no errors on it - I was going to use it to expand the array.

 

The array was all green - looked OK. I stopped the array, took out the old parity drive, put in the new one and am 20% through the rebuild.

 

I then noticed that I was getting IO errors and drive errors (seen from the main unraid page) from another drive. I am pretty sure the drive is OK, and is just a cable issue.

 

What is the best way out of this? I was thinking that I can cancel the parity rebuild on my new parity drive and put the old parity drive back in. I would then restart the server and check on the bad cable/drive. I was thinking I could put the old parity drive back in and get back to square one.

 

If the bad disk issue is just a cable, then I can restart the parity rebuild on the new larger drive as I intended. If the failed drive is pooched, I need to get a new one and rebuild it with the old parity drive in place.

 

So, the real question is this: Can I stop the rebuild process, put the old parity drive back in and restart the array? Would I be able to rebuild the failed drive, if needed?

 

As a first pass - is there any safe way to stop the parity rebuild and restart the server so I can check on the failed drive's cable?

 

Cheers,

Brian

 

 

 

As a first pass - is there any safe way to stop the parity rebuild and restart the server so I can check on the failed drive's cable?

 

Just cancel the rebuild, stop the array and power down. If you think you might need to use the old parity disk you won't want anything writing to the array while it is removed, but if you're lucky the suspect disk will turn out to be ok and you can start over with the rebuild.

John:

 

Thanks a bunch for the advice. I was able to stop the array and fix the cable issue. All my shares came back the files that were on the bad drive have returned.

 

Parity rebuild back in progress.

 

Cheers,

Brian