Parity drive upgrade

[French-Guy]

First, I really appreciate your support......really

To summarize what I did:

1-installed new parity drive (8TB)

2- installed old parity drive (2TB) as Disk 5 and formatted (under xfs)

3- since all other drives were under reiserfs, I started to copy data to empty them one by one and format them as xfs

4-so I moved data from Disk4 to Disk5 and formatted Disk4 as xfs

5-then Disk2 to Disk4 and formatted Disk2 as xfs

I thought I would do Disk3 to Disk2, but i won't since 2 (and 3) are "dying" apparently

And when I unassigned Disk2 to try a preclear, this is when I realized there was an issue somewhere with the plugin recognizing the disk as 2TB when it's 1.5TB....

[trurl]

2 minutes ago, French-Guy said:

And when I unassigned Disk2

This is really the part I was hoping to get some more details about

 

Have you started the array since unassigning disk 2?

[French-Guy]

Not sure........ I think I did

But server is shutdown for now 

Will turn it on when I'm back home

[trurl]

If you did start the server without the disk then you will have to rebuild disk2 first.

[French-Guy]

What do you mean "rebuild disk2 first"?

Disk2 was never taken out of the server physically though

[trurl]

15 minutes ago, French-Guy said:

What do you mean "rebuild disk2 first"?

Disk2 was never taken out of the server physically though

If you started the server without a disk assigned to slot 2 then when you assign a disk to slot 2 it is going to try to rebuild disk2 to whatever disk you assign there.

[trurl]

There is a more complicated scenario where you could rebuild disk3 first, and possibly even remove disk2 after that, but I'm not sure how safe it would be for the rebuild of disk3 since I'm not sure I know all the details of what might have happened or might have been done.

[trurl]

Another possibility would be to New Config and rebuild parity without those disks, then try to read them as Unassigned Devices, but that doesn't leave you with any chance to rebuild anything that might not be readable.

 

I'm just going to tag @johnnie.black here and see what his opinions are on this.

[French-Guy]

I'll let you know the status of my server as soon as I'm home........

[trurl]

If you haven't rebooted then posting latest diagnostics might help fill in some of the gaps for us.

[French-Guy]

8 minutes ago, trurl said:

If you haven't rebooted then posting latest diagnostics might help fill in some of the gaps for us.

Server was ON, and array stopped - Status is as shown on the picture, with Disk 2 being unassigned

 

Should I just re-assign it and start the array?

I'm also including the diagnostic file

tower-diagnostics-20181123-1843.zip

[JorgeB]

Looks like the array was never started with disk2 unassigned? I'm not sure what the OP was trying to do preclearing an assigned disk.

[French-Guy]

I was trying to preclear Disk2 after I copied it into Disk4 and formatted it as xfs .....Like I said, I wanted to see what the preclear would report in terms of error

So I stopped the array, unassigned Disk2 and selected the Preclear plugin, and realized the issue 2TB vs 1.5TB.......and this is when I started to bother all of you with my questions 🙄🙄🙄

And it's very possible I never tried to re-start the array with Disk 2 un-assigned

So should I just re-assign it and start the array? 

I want to make a copy of my pictures on an external USB drive asap, and after that  keep bothering you with other questions about replacing  Disk 2 and 3 when I will have my 4TB drive

And again, thank you very much for your help....

[JorgeB]

You can't preclear an array drive, even if temporarily unassigned or you will invalidate parity, just re-assign the disk and start the array.

[French-Guy]

ok, Disk2 was reassigned and array is started now......Will make a backup of all my pictures !

What will be the steps to install a new drive (4TB) and replace Disk2 and Disk 3? Knowing Disk 2 is empty now (was copied to Disk4) but not Disk 3

On top of it, I just received today my LSI SAS9211-8i card that I will need to test asap

Thanks

 

[French-Guy]

By the way, about the LSI card: can I just install the card, attach all the sata cables and turn the server ON?

Or should I do something specific first?

 

[John_M]

10 minutes ago, French-Guy said:

should I do something specific first?

Make sure it's flashed with IT mode firmware.

[French-Guy]

3 minutes ago, John_M said:

Make sure it's flashed with IT mode firmware.

Yes, it is flashed in IT mode

https://www.ebay.com/itm/153221201997

 

 

[trurl]

2 hours ago, French-Guy said:

Knowing Disk 2 is empty now

Irrelevant for rebuilding purposes. An empty filesystem is not a clear disk. The filesystem metadata is part of parity so there must be a disk 2 (either rebuilt or this same disk) at least until after disk 3 is rebuilt.

[French-Guy]

I "naively" thought once data from Disk2 were copied onto Disk4, it was ok to unassign and eventually remove Disk2........😮😮😮Looks like my brain is not 100% unRaid oriented yet ....

 

So as soon as I get my 4TB drive, what is my best option to replace Disk2 and Disk3?

I googled it and found this, but i'ts from 2016:

Is there any other (more recent?) way to do it?

For step 4, can I use unBALANCE plugin rather than rsync command?

 

Thanks

[trurl]

49 minutes ago, French-Guy said:

I "naively" thought once data from Disk2 were copied onto Disk4, it was ok to unassign and eventually remove Disk2........😮😮😮Looks like my brain is not 100% unRaid oriented yet ....

 

So as soon as I get my 4TB drive, what is my best option to replace Disk2 and Disk3?

I googled it and found this, but i'ts from 2016:

Is there any other (more recent?) way to do it?

For step 4, can I use unBALANCE plugin rather than rsync command?

 

Thanks

That method is OK and you can use unbalance.

[trurl]

11 hours ago, trurl said:

Irrelevant for rebuilding purposes. An empty filesystem is not a clear disk. The filesystem metadata is part of parity so there must be a disk 2 (either rebuilt or this same disk) at least until after disk 3 is rebuilt.

 

1 hour ago, French-Guy said:

Looks like my brain is not 100% unRaid oriented yet ....

 

Actually it is even more extensive than just the filesystem metadata. When you formatted the disk all it did was create an empty filesystem. It didn't actually clear out all the old data from before (and some of that old data is probably files that were actually deleted). So all of that is still part of parity too. Unraid parity doesn't know anything about files, it just sees all of the disks as a bunch of bits, and every bit on the disk has some value whether it is actually part of a file or not.

 

Wiki on parity:

 

https://wiki.unraid.net/UnRAID_6/Overview#Parity-Protected_Array

 

If you understand that everything about how Unraid uses the disks and how it makes you operate with the disks makes a lot more sense.

 

 

 

[French-Guy]

So I've installed my LSI card, and everything seems to run just fine....

I've attached again a diagnostic I've just downloaded 2 min ago

Can you look at it and confirm Disk 2 and Disk 3 are the top priority?

 

I will be leaving exactly in 1 week for a business trip in Europe (for a full week) and would like to avoid to leave my server in that state for 2 more weeks !!!

If needed, I will go today to MicroCenter to buy at least a 4TB drive.....(assuming DIsk4 and Disk5 can wait a little longer)

 

tower-diagnostics-20181124-1234.zip

[trurl]

3 hours ago, French-Guy said:

Can you look at it and confirm Disk 2 and Disk 3 are the top priority?

Yes. The only question I would have is whether it is safe to rebuild Disk3 using the current Disk2. Then you could just remove Disk2 from the array and rebuild parity.

 

3 hours ago, French-Guy said:

(assuming DIsk4 and Disk5 can wait a little longer)

The indication on Disk5 only means that it has had some connection problem in the past. Acknowledge the warning and it will not show again until it has additional problems. And if it is the same problem again you would just need to fix the connection not replace the disk.

[French-Guy]

I ordered another 8TB Easystore at Bestbuy for $137.......hoping it will be a Red

Then I can replace 2 and 3 at least

Edited November 24, 2018 by French-Guy