After finally transferring the information from one of both data-mirrored disks from my old server to the newly build unRAID one, I have moved the same in size and type WD Red 4TB. The setup was running with only one 4TB disk, while the data was transferred over by the second 4TB disk, so the array was without a parity disk and no redundancy. After selecting the newly installed party drive from the GUI, I have started the array which has initiated the Parity-Sync / Data-Rebuild process. About 20% in the process I was looking through the GUI and noticed that the parity disk has a non-clickable exclamation mark with a popup text saying "Party is invalid". Assumed this is because the process has not completed, I have moved the cursor to the "Click to spin down device" icon without seeing the alt text and have clicked it with the expectation that it would provide more information about "Parity is invalid". Understanding what I have done about 5 seconds later after hearing the drive spinning down, I have spun it up again, without noticing any drop in the statistics for read and write speeds of both drives.

 

A few hours later in the party-sync process I have noticed that Disk-1 (not the party disk) has come up with a new "197 Current pending sector" value of 1. Assuming this is caused by my interference of the syncing process, I wonder if this would have affected the integrity of the information. Can someone with more experience in the matter provide more information what might have been the effect of this, can the pending sector be remapped and cleared, and will this affect the integrity of the data. The process is still ongoing and will finish in the next couple of hours, when I will update this post with the outcome.

 

Question to the developers: Should it be possible to spin down a disk when a parity sync process is active?

Question to the community: Should there be a dialog asking for a confirmation of the disk spin down process?

Edited September 8, 20178 yr by realies

Yes, it is possible to spin down a disk while a parity operation is in progress. Is it wise to do, likely not.

 

Compare it to a handbrake in a car, you can activate it while driving, but probably not a wise thing to do.

10 hours ago, realies said:

"197 Current pending sector" value of 1. Assuming this is caused by my interference of the syncing process,

Spin up/down wouldn't have affected this.  This is purely a function of the drive itself.  

13 hours ago, Squid said:

Spin up/down wouldn't have affected this.  This is purely a function of the drive itself.  

Most probably it has interfered, there was 64 sync errors on disk1 when parity-sync was interrupted and after a check all of them got fixed.

 

Should there be an idiot proof confirmation box before somehow critical tasks?