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DEVICE IS DISABLED, CONTENT EMULATED

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I have an issue with a couple of hard drives. Since a while ago I rebooted my server and 2 disks (one after the other) displayed the message DEVICE IS DISABLED, CONTENT EMULATED. I was sure they were damaged and I decided to remove and change them. Than I had the doubt that something was weird (two disks failing at the same time) so I just move one of them to a different slot and I run a parity check that gave 0  errors and then a SMART test on the disk and gave no errors too.

On top the dashboard reports that the disk is disabled but healthy....

What shall I do?

 

Thanks

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  • Community Expert

Go to Tools - Diagnostics and attach the complete diagnostics zip file to your next post.

  • Community Expert
12 minutes ago, gideva said:

I have an issue with a couple of hard drives. Since a while ago I rebooted my server and 2 disks (one after the other) displayed the message DEVICE IS DISABLED, CONTENT EMULATED. I was sure they were damaged and I decided to remove and change them. Than I had the doubt that something was weird (two disks failing at the same time) so I just move one of them to a different slot and I run a parity check that gave 0  errors and then a SMART test on the disk and gave no errors too.

On top the dashboard reports that the disk is disabled but healthy....

What shall I do?

 

Thanks

Once a disk is marked as disabled Unraid will stop reading or writing to it.   Your ‘parity’ check was probably just a read check of all the disks that were not disabled.    Having said that the vast majority of the time a disk is disabled (which results if a write to it fails) this is caused by factors external to the drive itself (e.g. cabling, Pierre, etc) and the dative is fine.

  • Author

Thanks itimpi,

 

so what shall I do?

 

  • Community Expert

Not entirely sure about your description. Since you only have one parity, it can only emulate 1 disk, and it can't really do a parity check in that situation so if you tell it to it just does a read check.

 

You have a lot of disks and I haven't taken the time to examine SMART for each. Are any of your disks showing SMART warnings on the Dashboard? If not then rebuild.

 

You only have one disabled disk currently. That disk looks OK so you can rebuild it to itself. Or if you have a spare you could rebuild to the spare and keep the original as backup in case there is a problem with the rebuild.

 

To rebuild to that same disk:

 

Stop array

Unassign that disk

Start array with that disk unassigned

Stop array

Reassign that disk

Start array with that disk assigned to begin rebuild

 

  • Community Expert

Since you rebooted after the problem occurred, we can't see it in the syslog. You should double check all disk connections, SATA and power, before attempting rebuild.

  • Author

That is what I did (it took about 24 hrs) and as soon as I restarted the array here we are again.

 

No warning on Dashboard at all (all disks are marked as healthy.)

  • Community Expert
3 minutes ago, gideva said:

That is what I did (it took about 24 hrs) and as soon as I restarted the array here we are again.

 

No warning on Dashboard at all (all disks are marked as healthy.)

You should provide your diagnostics zip file (obtained via Tools->Diagnostics) so we examine them to see if they give any clues (or are the last ones still valid).

Edited by itimpi

  • Author

BTW the disk is empty... so no data to rebuilt anyway. I just would like to understand if is ok to use it and how can I have it back to the array.

The diagnostic I have is here...

monstruo-diagnostics-20190409-1649.zip

  • Community Expert

That disk is failing and needs to be replaced.

  • Community Expert

Disks 7 and 10 also showing some warning signs, but no media errors for now, just keep an eye on them.

  • Community Expert
5 hours ago, gideva said:

the disk is empty... so no data to rebuilt anyway

4 hours ago, johnnie.black said:

That disk is failing and needs to be replaced

Even though the disk is empty, it can't be removed without invalidating parity. So you will have to replace it with another and rebuild the empty disk, or you can remove it with New Config and rebuild parity.

 

  • Author

Thanks for the advices guys!

  • Author

Ok... I followed the advices and I removed the faulty drive and after I rebuilt the parity... All fine for like 30 minutes then had a new problem with another disk (this time disk nr. 6 has write errors...). It is the 3rd disk in a row!!!! What is happening?

  • Community Expert
4 minutes ago, gideva said:

What is happening?

Post new diagnostics

  • Community Expert

Diags are after rebooting, so we can't see what happened, but disk looks fine, suggest replacing/swapping cables/backplane slot to rule them out and rebuild to the same disk (or to a new one if you to play it safer)

  • Author

Thanks for the answer... What you think is happening? I have the same issue over and over again. The cables are brand new and the case is not that old too but the problem more and more frequent.... Really do not know what to think

  • Community Expert
2 minutes ago, gideva said:

What you think is happening?

If it happens again grab the diags before rebooting, without them no way to tell, in the meantime you can try and rule out some things, does it always happen to disks on the same controller, on the same miniSAS cable, etc, sometimes these kind of problems can only be fixed by swapping some hardware, like cables, HBAs, PSU, etc.

  • Author

I will grab the diags before rebooting for sure (lesson learned!). The thing seems to be random (different cables, backplane, slot etc...) and I already tried to . disconnect all the cables and plug them back again. We will see. Thank you very much for your help. Really appreciate

  • Author

Sorry for the stupid question... How do I rebuilt on the same disk? I want to do it the right way...

  • Community Expert
2 hours ago, gideva said:

Sorry for the stupid question... How do I rebuilt on the same disk? I want to do it the right way...

Already explained on this same page

On 4/9/2019 at 1:03 PM, trurl said:

To rebuild to that same disk:

 

Stop array

Unassign that disk

Start array with that disk unassigned

Stop array

Reassign that disk

Start array with that disk assigned to begin rebuild

 

  • Community Expert
11 hours ago, gideva said:

The thing seems to be random (different cables, backplane, slot etc...) and I already tried to . disconnect all the cables and plug them back again. We will see. Thank you very much for your help. Really appreciate

If you can't pin down the problems to a controller, cable or backplane slot/section, failing PSU is a possibility.

  • 2 weeks later...
  • Author

It happened again... Just got back from a quick break and I found that another disk is in the same situation... I grabbed the diagnostic before reeboting this time.

Hope this help to find finally a solution to this problem once forever...

 

monstruo-diagnostics-20190421-1617.zip

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