Unraid 6.6.7

Something happened to one of my disks that on bootup, the error said that the drive #5 failed to identify itself. So, I have an empty slot in drive #5.

 

I'm set up with two parity drives. 

 

I shutdown the machine and rebooted. The drive came back, except now it's not added back into the array -- there's still an empty slot in drive #5.

 

What are my options to not lose the data that's on drive #5? Even though disk #5 is "back" now, I'm not sure I should trust it.

 

Ideally, what I would like to do, since there is plenty of room on the rest of the drives, is move the data that was on drive #5 to the remaining disks in the array. I assume, since I have two good parity drives, that should be possible. What's the procedure for doing that?

 

Also, let's say that the disk is actually okay now. It's not in the array, and if I select it to be added back in to slot #5, I get the warning, "All existing data on this device will be OVERWRITTEN when array is Started." Is that telling me that it's going to be overwritten with the data that was already there? Or is it telling me that it's going to be blanked out, and I'm going to lose the files that are on that disk? 

 

Thanks

tower-diagnostics-20190407-1537.zip

What appears to be happening is that since disk 5 went 'MIA', Unraid is now proposing to rebuild whatever disk you assign to the disk5 position using its  reconstructed contents from Parity.  (Whatever happens at this point, do NOT authorize a format of this disk!!!   Formatting will also update parity and you will have an empty drive on both the 'real' drive and 'emulated' one that could be reconstructed by parity.) 

 

To maximize your chances of not losing an data, this is what I would do.  Remove the present disk5 from the server, tag it with a large post-it note (with an instruction not to use)  and set it aside until everything is resolved.  Get another disk (Of equal or larger size) and install it into the array. Now double check that all of the SATA connectors-- both power and data-- on every drive are firmly pushed in.  

 

Assign it to the disk5 position in the array.  Unraid should now offer to rebuild the disk.  (Whatever happens, never allow a format!)  After the rebuild is completed check out its contents.  

Edited April 7, 20197 yr by Frank1940

Assuming Disk5 is the unassigned 1TB Samsung, it looks past its best days, I would replace it.

Thanks. No updates yet. I ordered a 2TB HD to replace the 1TB Samsung. I'll update again here if anything interesting happens when I install it.

 

This server is my first steps into having a dedicated storage machine, and I didn't want to sink a lot into it to get off the ground. I used this also as an excuse to take all my older machines and either give them an RAM/SSD performance boost, or strip them down and throw them away. All the spare drives, sized 500GB and up got thrown into the Unraid server.

 

The initial pre-clears and SMART tests showed that two drives were junk right away. For the others, this was the first time I'd ever seen their SMART reports. I think one showed that its powered-up time was like 6+ years. So I didn't expect problem-free operation for very long, but I'm much more comfortable knowing that unlike the drive in my Windows machine, I'm getting some advanced warning when a drive is starting to fail, and I've got two parity drives to make recovering smoother.

While I had the array stopped, I took the 1TB Samsung drive out of the machine, and then I installed the new 2TB drive in its place. I pre-cleared the new drive, and then assigned it to disk 5. I then started up the array, and it said that it was rebuilding disk 5. Now it's done rebuilding, and as far as I can tell, the drive is empty.

1 hour ago, MeoMaxy said:

the drive is empty.

Did you format the disk at any point before or after the rebuild?

4 hours ago, johnnie.black said:

Did you format the disk at any point before or after the rebuild?

I did not format the disk. I mounted the old disk as an unassigned drive, and it too is empty. Not sure what's going on. Possibly the old drive got kicked off the array longer ago than I thought. I started off with it as one of the parity drives, and then moved it when I upgraded my parity drives to 2x2TB drives. Maybe actually nothing ever did get written to it.

Just now, MeoMaxy said:

Maybe actually nothing ever did get written to it.

Most likely, if the older one was also empty.