I recently purchased a new drive to install in my server as a second parity drive as I had not done so yet.  Before doing so I ran a parity check to make sure everything was in good shape, and ended up with over 4000 parity sync errors.  I always run my checks with the tick box unchecked so that nothing is corrected.  I figured if I ever had a problem it was best to request advice here before proceeding.

 

So here I am.  I haven't had this issue in years.  Last time it was fairly obvious as I had a failing drive, and I simply replaced it.  This time I'm not sure where the problem is.  The SMART reports look OK to me, but I'm certainly a novice user at best.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.  If one of the drives is failing I can simply replace it with the new drive I already purchased.  If not can I just allow the parity to be corrected?

 

All drives are the same size.  My parity drive is a 2TB WD green.  I have 3 data drives of which one is a WD 2TB green, and the other 2 are WD 2TB red.  The new unused drive is a WD 2TB red.

 

Diagnostic file is attached.  Any help anyone can give is certainly appreciated.

 

I'm currently on version 6.2.4.  I upgraded from an early version of 6 yesterday.

dionysus-diagnostics-20161210-1135.zip

Those look like genuine sync errors, any unclean shutdown before this check?

 

PS: There's a single ATA error on the parity disk, unrelated to current errors, but there could have been more before this last reboot that caused the sync errors if there were no unclean shutdowns.

 

Thanks for the reply johnnie.black.  Every now and then when I start the server it doesn't boot up properly.  In those instances I have to do a hard reset.  When shutting down though whether I do it from the GUI, or simply press the power button on the server box it always goes through the proper shutdown.

Since the single ATA error you mentioned was on the parity disk, and not on one of the other disks I've decided to go ahead, and correct the parity errors.  I will then pre-clear the new disk, and add it as a second parity disk.  I'll keep a close eye over the next month or two running regular parity checks, and see how it goes.  If I continue to get errors on the first parity disk I'll come back, and seek additional advice.  At this point whether the errors were from a bad shut down, or something else I am assuming it is the parity drive that is incorrect, and not any of the data drives since the ATA error you pointed out was with the parity drive.  So hopefully I'm taking the correct course of action.

Sounds like a good plan, just keep an eye on it, and save the syslogs before rebooting in case of errors.

I will do that.  Thanks again for you help.  I do appreciate it!  Interestingly I'm currently through only 8.4% on my parity correction pass, and have already corrected 4776 of the 4779 errors.

Forgot to add that SMART looks good for the parity disk so the error may be a bad SATA cable/power connection,  you can replace them just to rule them out, although a healthy SMART does not always equals a healthy disk.

I can certainly replace the SATA cable just to be safe.  That is easy enough.  I'll have to see what I have available inside the case in the power cable department.  The power supply is not modular.