According to unraid gui no writes were done to that data hdd.

 

After a while of still no parity spinup, I then created a folder in a share, parity spun up and wrote to another hdd but still no writes on the previous hdd with the 18gb file.

 

The 18gb file has gone according to the unraid gui.

 

Is this normal?

Pls ensure it locate at array instead cache pool.

Your description is lacking enough detail for us to know exactly what you did and exactly what the results were.

er.....

 

I deleted a big file and parity drive did not spin up to make changes.

Deleting of files is typically just a few bit toggles on an inode allocation list (small number of sector writes) and does not actually erase the data on all those sectors.

Even a single bit changed needs a whole block to be rewritten though. Maybe it's cached in RAM and will be committed eventually.

3 hours ago, pras1011 said:

According to unraid gui no writes were done to that data hdd

Read & Write counters on the "Main" tab are not entirely accurate, and are dependent upon hardware, drivers, etc.  They have to be taken with a large grain of salt

If the parity didn't spin up, then the file most likely was stored in the cache pool.

2 hours ago, pras1011 said:

er.....

 

I deleted a big file and parity drive did not spin up to make changes.

 

Ok, I will ask for some of those details specifically then. Are you sure the delete was from a disk in the array? Or did you delete a file from a user share? Are you looking for the file on a specific disk in the array, or are you looking for it in a user share?

I deleted from a user share. I looked for the file on the specific disk and the user share and it can't be found.

 

Can I get into the cache pool?

1 hour ago, pras1011 said:

I deleted from a user share. I looked for the file on the specific disk and the user share and it can't be found.

 

Can I get into the cache pool?

 

You say you looked on the specific disk, but it isn't clear what would be the correct specific disk to look on. Since the file is gone from the user share it won't be on cache either, but it is likely that the delete actually happened on cache. So the "writes" to the filesystem which happened when the file was deleted would have been made to cache and parity was not part of that.

 

Cache is always part of user shares. User shares are simply the top level folders on cache and array with the same folder name. Even if you have set a share to not use cache, or not use specific disks, any setting you make only applies to new writes. In fact, all user share settings only apply to new writes except for the use cache settings, and even that is controlling where new writes go. It just has the additional effect of possibly moving files cache to array or array to cache.

 

It is possible for a file to wind up on a disk you didn't expect if you move it from one user share to another. For example, if a file was in a user share on the cache disk, and it gets moved to another user share, it might get moved on the cache drive instead of actually getting copied from cache to array and then deleted from cache.

 

So, as others have suggested, the file was probably on cache when you deleted it.