(SOLVED) Drive Red Ball - Need Advice

[Kewjoe]

My Disk 2 redballed today. I've tried switching SATA and Power cables, different motherboard ports, etc. to no avail. Looks like drive is dead. My Disk 5 is currently completely empty. I can use it to replace the Disk 2. What is the best way forward? Start the array in emulated mode and copy over the files to Disk 5? I assume I can't both remove Disk 5 from the array and also use it to replace Disk 2 without losing data. Not sure what the best option is.  Diagnostics attached just in case I missed something.

ganymede-diagnostics-20170921-1321.zip

Edited September 25, 2017 by Kewjoe

[itimpi]

Are you sure the drive is dead?    If is being seen by the motherboard it is probably OK as none of the SMART reports in the diagnostic indicated a disk having problems.   None of the actions you mentioned would have cleared a red-balled state - the only way to do that is to rebuild the disk (either to itself or to another drive).

[JorgeB]

There's no SMART for disk2, so it's dead or not currently connected, but unRAID won't re-enable it automatically if you connect it to a different port, so make sure the current diags were taken with the disk connected.

[Kewjoe]

The diags were taken with the drive connected. I haven't done anything besides try different cables/ports. When the server boots it gets stuck here:

 

Sep 21 13:19:41 Ganymede kernel: ata10: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
Sep 21 13:19:41 Ganymede kernel: ata10: COMRESET failed (errno=-16)

 

over and over until it gives up. Each new cable or port I tried would produce the same errors but for a different ata number. That's what was showing me that the drive is likely dead. But I'm open for suggestions.

[JorgeB]

Then the disk is dead, best way forward would be to use a spare to rebuild, but you can also copy everything from the emulated disk to another disk, then you'll still need to rebuild that disk or do a new config to remove it.

[Kewjoe]

Just now, johnnie.black said:

Then the disk is dead, best way forward would be to use a spare to rebuild, but you can also copy everything from the emulated disk to another disk, then you'll still need to rebuild that disk or do a new config to remove it.

 

Ok, my only current spare is already part of the array (not ideal i know). So best course of action is, start the array in emulated mode, copy all files to the empty disk 5. Once validated that the files are there, i do a new config with disk 2 gone and my array shrunk down to the 4 drives. That sound right?

[JorgeB]

Just now, Kewjoe said:

That sound right?

 

Yes (a parity sync will start after the new config).

[Kewjoe]

Great, thanks for the help!