Changed Controller card, all disks unmountable!!


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Hi,

 

I am a little confused and stressed right now!

 

So, i had up until about half an hour ago, an Adaptec 6805Q RAID card installed in my system which  is a 16 bay Supermicro server. 

 

I decided about two weeks ago to switch over to a HBA (or at least a card that acts as if it is a HBA. I therefore bought a LSI card (i can find out the model if you need it) to replace it with. I have just done a swap however ALL my drives have shown up as unmountable. I had followed this thread.

 

Attached are screengrabs of the drives before, the drives after and the unmountable disk list.

 

Advice or support would be greatly appreciated. I would really like to get this back online ASAP.

 

The array is currently sat started and i will leave it well alone until i get some advice.

 

I have grabbed the diagnostics. Not sure what you would need of the .zip i have downloaded but let me know and i can add it here.

 

NOTE: I still have the original controller and assuming Unraid won't have a hissy fit, i could just swap back and all should be fine. I did not unplug the battery from the old controller so i hope it has all of the JBOD info saved still. Don't see why not!

 

Thanks in advance.

 

James_jimjam

 

disks 090219.JPG

disks after.JPG

unmountable disks.JPG

Edited by james_jimjam
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Attached are my diagnostics in full so someone can browse if required. 

I have since stopped my array and will leave it in this stopped state. I am starting to wonder if the new config tool thing did not work?

 

Any help to resolve this will be much appreciated.

 

(yes the server is called Deadpool. All my devices are named after comic book characters!)

 

james_jimjam

james-deadpool-diagnostics-20190209-0540.zip

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That's one of the many reasons RAID controllers are not recommended.

 

Since partitions are outside parity and recreated by Unraid on rebuild the only way to keep the current controller would be to rebuild each disk, one by one, others users have done the same recently, you can test with just one disk, stop the array, unassign one of the data disks, start the array, emulated disk should mount, check that contents appear correct and run a filesystem check, if all is well you can rebuild on top of the old disk, though rebuilding on a new one would be safer, then you'd need to repeat the process for the remaining disks.

 

Alternatively continue using the old controller.

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Thanks for the reply @johnnie.black

I am a little confused as to the process here. You say i basically have to rebuild the entire array? I assume that will take days with my size of array?

I do have some drive upgrades to do too but was planning to do that as a later stage so as to not complicate things.

 

So that i can confirm the process:

  1. Stop Array (already done)
  2. Unassign any of the data drives
  3. restart the array and it should show as being "missing" (but the data will be available??)
  4. ...........How do i then selectively rebuild on a per disk basis?...........

Is there a wiki guide for this process or is it simply not recommended. 

 

What would be the best way to go about replacing the RAID card with the HBA or is it best that i just don't and revert to the RAID card as it was?!

Most of the reasons for swapping out were "nice to haves" such as SMART tests and not having to make a new JBOD for every disk i swap out.

 

I am realising that even with my 6 months of unraid knowledge i still know very little about how things work!!

 

What would you recommend given my size of array and pros/cons (some of which i may not know about). Abort mission or continue?

 

Thanks in advance

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48 minutes ago, james_jimjam said:

You say i basically have to rebuild the entire array?

Yep, one disk at a time, you could do two at the same time if you add a second parity drive.

 

49 minutes ago, james_jimjam said:
  • Stop Array (already done)
  • Unassign any of the data drives
  • restart the array and it should show as being "missing" (but the data will be available??)

Correct

 

49 minutes ago, james_jimjam said:

...........How do i then selectively rebuild on a per disk basis?........... 

Just have to repeat the procedure and rebuild one disk at a time, any disk.

 

50 minutes ago, james_jimjam said:

Is there a wiki guide for this process or is it simply not recommended. 

No wiki guide for this reason, but it's basically just a normal rebuild.

 

51 minutes ago, james_jimjam said:

What would be the best way to go about replacing the RAID card with the HBA or is it best that i just don't and revert to the RAID card as it was?!

Most of the reasons for swapping out were "nice to haves" such as SMART tests and not having to make a new JBOD for every disk i swap out.

Best way would be having a backup server so you could blow-up that one and re-sync it, you can also keep the old RAID controller, though you'll lose SMART and can run into the same problem in the future in case the original controller fails.

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3 minutes ago, james_jimjam said:

As i am rebuilding these drives, would it make sense to replace drives i intend on replacing as i go?

Replace them now, this avoids a new rebuild in the near future and lets you keep the old disk untouched in case something goes wrong during the rebuild, so it's a win-win.

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I haven't had a chance to respond back to this thread with my progress until now.

 

All disks have now been rebuilt and the main issue is resolved. I found that all of my dockers and VM's have disappeared though in this process. I have managed to replace all the dockers just fine. They all rebuilt fine using the "templates" and just worked. The VM's however do not.

 

I followed some suggestions elsewhere on this forum that suggest simply building it again but assigning the disk to be the existing one on the array. This did not work and it does not boot the VM. Any ideas on why this could be and how i can fix it? I have taken a copy of the vdisk just in case i break something but ideally i do not want to have to build one of these VM's from scratch as it was my PBX running the phones in the house.

Suggestions appreciated!

 

Thanks for the help so far,

 

James

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