Hello everyone,

I think my worst fear has probably come true.  I happened to check in on my server, and noticed that one of my drives (my newest one, only a couple months old) was blinking red.  I spun up the disks and now it is still red and indicates there are 21 errors.  From what I have gathered, I probably have a failed drive, is that correct?  Is there anything else that could cause this?  The strange thing is that I am still able to access the contents of the disk via Windows Explorer.  What should my next steps be (other than buying a new drive   )?

 

I am running version 4.5.3.

 

Thank You!

 

EDIT:  After reading a little more, I realize I already made 1 mistake, I rebooted without getting the log file.

I spun up the disks and now it is still red and indicates there are 21 errors.  From what I have gathered, I probably have a failed drive, is that correct?  

 

shutdown your system and check if there is any loose cables, after power on if this drive is still red (on 2nd thought, you probably will see this disk still in red because unRAID had marked this disk is bad because of I/O error), then yes.

 

The strange thing is that I am still able to access the contents of the disk via Windows Explorer.  

 

because the rest of disks (all survived data disks and parity disk) are working hard to re-construct data for you on the fly.

 

What should my next steps be (other than buying a new drive   )?

 

Get a same or bigger size disk to replace this failed disk as soon as possible, your unRAID is running at degrade mode with one disk failure. another disk failure, your unRAID will be disabled and you will lose those data on failed disks forever.

 

 

I spun up the disks and now it is still red and indicates there are 21 errors.  From what I have gathered, I probably have a failed drive, is that correct?  

 

shutdown your system and check if there is any loose cables, after power on if this drive is still red, then yes.

 

The strange thing is that I am still able to access the contents of the disk via Windows Explorer.  

 

because the rest of disks (all survived data disks and parity disk) are working hard to re-construct data for you on the fly.

 

What should my next steps be (other than buying a new drive   )?

 

Get a same or bigger size disk to replace this failed disk as soon as possible, your unRAID is running at degrade mode with one disk failure. another disk failure, your unRAID will be disabled and you will lose those data on failed disks forever.

 

 

Several things to be aware of.

 

4.5.3 has a MAJOR BUG where all the disks might show as unformatted.  It then shows a "Format" button.  Pressing it at that time will format ALL your disks.  DO NOT PRESS THE FORMAT BUTTON.   

 

Time to upgrade to 4.5.6 is NOW.

 

Second item, once a drive is marked as invalid (red indicator) it will NOT be returned to green just because you power cycled and found a loose connection.    It is red because a "write" to it failed.  To get it back online you must re-construct it.

 

You can re-construct it onto a new drive, or, if it was just a loose cable, onto itself.

 

To get it to re-construct onto itself you must get the array to forget the serial number of the failed disk.  To do that you must

Stop the array by pressing "Stop"

Use the "Devices" page to un-assign the failed drive.

Start the array with the drive un-assigned by pressing "Start"

Stop the array once more

Re-assign the disk back to its original slot in the array on the "Devices" page.

Start the array once more by pressing "Start"  This will begin the re-construction process.

 

Joe L.

First step should be to copy the contents of the failed disk to somewhere safe, while unRAID is still able to re-construct the data on the failed disk.

Thank you all for your help.

 

If i disconnect the drive and find that there is not a loose cable, is there harm in trying to re-construct the drive to itself just in the event that there was some weird error and that the drive still works?  (no I'm not in denial about loosing a drive LOL)

 

Also, after I rebooted last night, the drive is now showing as "not installed", is that normal since it thinks the drive is dead?

 

Thanks again!

Thank you all for your help.

 

If i disconnect the drive and find that there is not a loose cable, is there harm in trying to re-construct the drive to itself just in the event that there was some weird error and that the drive still works?  (no I'm not in denial about loosing a drive LOL)

 

Also, after I rebooted last night, the drive is now showing as "not installed", is that normal since it thinks the drive is dead?

 

Thanks again!

Yes, that would be normal if it cannot communicate with the drive.  (It could still be a dead drive, a loose power cable to the drive, a loose data cable to the drive, at either the disk end or the disk controller end.  It could be a bad data cable, or even a bad port on the disk controller.)

 

You'll need to check each in turn.

 

Whatever you do, DO NOT PRESS A BUTTON MARKED AS "Restore" (if it exists on your version of unRAID) and do not initialize a new disk configuration, otherwise you will lose the ability to re-construct contents of the failed drive onto a replacement drive.

 

If you find a loose cable, you can get the drive to be accepted as its own replacement by following the steps in my prior post.

 

If you replace the drive with a new drive unraid will detect the difference in serial numbers.  The array will then prompt you if you wish to re-construct the data onto the new drive.

 

Just check the "I'm sure" box under the "Start" button and press "Start" to begin the re-construction process.

 

Joe L.