unmountable: no file system

[Spydawg]

Hello all.

 

I installed 2 new drives a few weeks back.

Did a full check on the 2 new drives, formated them and added them to the array.  All was well.

I got home from work today and 1 of the new drives had x'ed out..  unmountable: no file system was the error..

I powered down pulled drive checked for damage check cables..  Put back in booted up, same error.

I removed the drive from the array, formatted it and re-added it back to the array.

It's now doing a Parity-Sync / Data-Rebuild, no errors so far.

 

This a sign of a bad drive?

 

Never had this happen before.

[trurl]

Tools - Diagnostics, attach complete zip to your next post.

[Spydawg]

Attached..

 

Its still rebuilding though.

tower-diagnostics-20181109-1709.zip

[trurl]

SMART for disk9 looks clean.

 

22 minutes ago, Spydawg said:

I removed the drive from the array, formatted it and re-added it back to the array.

The way you described your actions is inaccurate or else an incomplete description of a needlessly complicated and possibly dangerous procedure.

 

Some people seem to think format means "Prepare this disk for use" (whatever that vague phrase might mean). Format actually means "write an empty filesystem to this disk". That is what it has always meant in every OS you have ever used. When you format a disk in the array, Unraid treats this write operation just as it does every other write operation, by updating parity. So parity would agree the disk had an empty filesystem, and then rebuilding would rebuild an empty filesystem.

 

Many people have made this mistake and lost data as a result.

 

Formatting is never part of the rebuild process. Did you format the disk in another computer? Or did you format the disk in the array and are now rebuilding an empty filesystem?

[Spydawg]

After removing the drive from the array, it was added to the unassigned drive section.

I had option to "Format unassigned drive" so I did it.  

Then I added it back to the array.

I was not worried about losing data as the parity drive was fine, and I had very low amount of data on it.

[Spydawg]

I also checked the smart result for drive 9 didn't see anything..

hopefully this was just a one time glitch..

[trurl]

16 minutes ago, Spydawg said:

After removing the drive from the array, it was added to the unassigned drive section.

I had option to "Format unassigned drive" so I did it.  

Then I added it back to the array.

I was not worried about losing data as the parity drive was fine, and I had very low amount of data on it.

Formatting the disk in this way before rebuilding it was completely pointless. Regardless of the disk contents, rebuild will replace every bit of the disk with the bits from the parity calculation. So there is no need to "write an empty filesystem" to the disk.

 

At least you didn't let it format the disk in the array. If you are unsure what to do it is best to ask before making a mistake that could make things worse.

 

 

[Spydawg]

well I couldn't do anything with the drive as it was unmountable: no file system when added to the array..

I could not rebuild anything to it.

[itimpi]

2 minutes ago, Spydawg said:

well I couldn't do anything with the drive as it was unmountable: no file system when added to the array..

I could not rebuild anything to it.

Some people decide to format the drive at that point not realising that what they are doing is updating parity to say the disk has an empty file system.    At least you did not do that which would have resulted in data loss.    

 

As was mentioned if you had simply added the drive back once it was Unassigned from the array UnRAID would have started a rebuild anyway without you having to first format the drive before adding it back.

[trurl]

2 minutes ago, Spydawg said:

well I couldn't do anything with the drive as it was unmountable: no file system when added to the array..

I could not rebuild anything to it.

Likely you will end up with an unmountable filesystem after the rebuild then. If the disk was disabled then it had to be rebuilt, but rebuilding will not fix a filesystem error.

 

If you had asked we might have suggested alternate courses of action. We will just have to wait and see what you get after the rebuild.

[Spydawg]

21 minutes ago, itimpi said:

Some people decide to format the drive at that point not realising that what they are doing is updating parity to say the disk has an empty file system.    At least you did not do that which would have resulted in data loss.    

 

As was mentioned if you had simply added the drive back once it was Unassigned from the array UnRAID would have started a rebuild anyway without you having to first format the drive before adding it back.

I did try to add it back to the array, came up as unmountable: no file system again..

 

 

[Spydawg]

OK so I may have done this the wrong way, its rebuilding as we speak, no errors so far.

 

But back to my main question, why would this happen?  what would make the drive that was working fine for a few weeks all of the sudden get unmountable: no file system? drive, cables, power?

 

 

[itimpi]

6 hours ago, Spydawg said:

OK so I may have done this the wrong way, its rebuilding as we speak, no errors so far.

 

But back to my main question, why would this happen?  what would make the drive that was working fine for a few weeks all of the sudden get unmountable: no file system? drive, cables, power?

 

 

Any sort of glitch that causes a write to fail can cause this.    It can be caused by any of the things you mention with cabling being the most frequent culprit. 

 

This is normally fixed by running the appropriate file system repair tool.   The GUI supports this if you start the array in Maintenance mode, and click on the drive in question in the Main tab.    The repair normally only takes a few minutes.