So I recently bought a couple of 8TB Seagate archive drives and put one in as the parity drive and then the other as slot 1 of my 10 disk array.

 

About a month later the parity drive died, RMA'd it and replaced it with a backup. Then the disk in slot 1 died. RMA'd it and replaced it. The new one died about a week later. RMA'd it and replaced it. Now the replaced drive died yet again.

 

Could this be a false positive or something? These RMAs cost like $10 each for shipping and this is getting ridiculous. I have attached the diagnostic ZIP file to this thread in case it's helpful. I am about to replace this dead slot 1 drive with a WD Red that I shucked from an Easystore external unit. I will also be using a new SATA cable when I replace this one.

 

If there's anything that can be figured out about this issue, I would love to find out. I have never had an issue with slot 1 in the past, or this cable (it plugs into the motherboard). Thanks in advance!

tower-diagnostics-20170903-0812.zip

When you say these drives ‘died’ what exactly do you mean?    With unRAID a drive being marked with a red ‘x’ merely means that a write failed - not that the drive itself is necessarily bad.   In fact the vast majority of such occurrences seem to be due to either cabling or power issues rather than the actual drive.

14 minutes ago, itimpi said:

When you say these drives ‘died’ what exactly do you mean?    With unRAID a drive being marked with a red ‘x’ merely means that a write failed - not that the drive itself is necessarily bad.   In fact the vast majority of such occurrences seem to be due to either cabling or power issues rather than the actual drive.

 

This is the error I get on unRAID

 

 

Rebooting the machine has resulted in that drive no longer showing up (slot 1 will no longer be assigned, and the drive cannot be assigned to slot 1 again since it doesn't show up).

I've tried multiple reboots and it simply stops showing up after I get that error.

 

So I have assumed that meant the drive had died.

Disk dropped offline, reboot and post new diags.

15 minutes ago, johnnie.black said:

Disk dropped offline, reboot and post new diags.

 

 here are the logs after a reboot with the drive no longer being in slot 1 (it was removed by the system once rebooted), and the drive isn't anywhere to be seen (not even listed as unassigned).

tower-diagnostics-20170903-1006-REBOOT.zip

Try powering down, checking cables, an powering back up, if the disk is still not detected it's dead.

4 minutes ago, johnnie.black said:

Try powering down, checking cables, an powering back up, if the disk is still not detected it's dead.

 

powered down, swapped sata cable (swapped ports with another drive too), unplugged and plugged the power cable, powered back up. the disk shows up as assigned now.

 

I stopped the array, assigned it back to slot 1, started the array again and we'll see if it behaves better this time around. 

 

 

I imagine you don't need logs now since it has been assigned again. But let me know just in case. I'm surprised it's having to do the parity sync/data rebuild, since it still says 6TB used on the drive. So all of the data should be there

 

I'll keep an eye on this and update the thread if it reports another failure. Thanks for the help

Post the diags anyway.

23 minutes ago, johnnie.black said:

Post the diags anyway.

 

 

right here

tower-diagnostics-20170903-1107NEW.zip

Disk looks fine, both 8TB disks are on the same Asmedia controller, they usually work well with unRAID, but there could be a problem, you can try swapping position with 2 disks currently using the onboard controller to confirm if there are issues with it.

3 minutes ago, johnnie.black said:

Disk looks fine, both 8TB disks are on the same Asmedia controller, they usually work well with unRAID, but there could be a problem, you can try swapping position with 2 disks currently using the onboard controller to confirm if there are issues with it.

 

When I shut down and replaced the SATA cable, I switched the port the 'faulty' 8TB drive was connected to with a different one. Both were connected to the on-board SATA ports. I was thinking about connecting it to a 3rd-party controller card I have in there, but figured I would just try swapping two drives that were connected to the motherboard.

 

I will definitely keep that port in mind if the other drive that's connected to it ends up being reported as faulty.

On 9/3/2017 at 11:20 AM, johnnie.black said:

Disk looks fine, both 8TB disks are on the same Asmedia controller, they usually work well with unRAID, but there could be a problem, you can try swapping position with 2 disks currently using the onboard controller to confirm if there are issues with it.

 

Man, it happened again just now.

 

So this was with the new SATA cable, and the drive (same drive came up as faulty) in a different SATA port on the motherboard.

 

So I've eliminated that. Could be the power cable I guess, but it's one of those power cables that has three SATA connectors on it, so it would be strange to have just this drive have a power issue, right?

 

Maybe it's the power supply? It's a 450 watt PSU from 2 years ago, but there is 12 drives in the machine now. Looking at the load from my UPS though shows it idling at around 110 watts, but maybe when they all ramp up it exceeds it? I thought that happens on boot and I as we can see, it can take 3-4 days for this thing to pop up.

 

I have included the diagnostic logs here, but I imagine they'll just say the same thing as before (that the drive dropped out or whatever).

tower-diagnostics-20170906-1749.zip

6 minutes ago, Endda said:

Maybe it's the power supply? It's a 450 watt PSU from 2 years ago, but there is 12 drives in the machine now

 

Possible, 12 disks is on the high side for 450W, but it can also be the disk.

9 minutes ago, johnnie.black said:

 

Possible, 12 disks is on the high side for 450W, but it can also be the disk.

 

I'm about to swap it out for a WD red that I shucked from an easystore external drive and see how that works

Edited September 6, 20178 yr by Endda

34 minutes ago, Endda said:

 

Maybe it's the power supply? It's a 450 watt PSU from 2 years ago, but there is 12 drives in the machine now.

 

Is the 12V supply split across two rails?   Single rail supplies are recommended for unRAID servers since they typically do not have a high power GPU cards  in them. 

On 9/6/2017 at 6:33 PM, Frank1940 said:

 

Is the 12V supply split across two rails?   Single rail supplies are recommended for unRAID servers since they typically do not have a high power GPU cards  in them. 

 

I'm not sure. I use this one

 

 - https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139052

 

Can you tell if it's split or not?

9 minutes ago, Endda said:

 

I'm not sure. I use this one

 

 - https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139052

 

Can you tell if it's split or not?

Yes, it is single rail supply as the spec's are:

+3.3V@25A, +5V@25A, +12V@54A, [email protected], [email protected] 

Dual rails would have two ratings for +12V.   Observe though the 12V rail is rated for 648W, the Maximum  rating on that PS for all voltages is 650Watts!!!  (Most PS are that way though...)