My server had a couple of disk failures/failing, they were replaced and all was well, also i rebuilt the cabinet due to cables getting knocked when removing the side of case, this problem is now eradicated, or so i thought, i have removed the server from its home and has been sat on the floor unplugged for two months, i moved it to a new location and switched on and was faced with disk missing and now unmountable file system, the array isnt saying anything is emulated, its also saying disk one has read errors but doesnt say so on the dashboard, i think that disk 3 got gigled in the car on way to new home ?, in anycase, what should i do ?..let unraid format it then rebuild the drive ? i have attached a diagstower-diagnostics-20190806-1010.zip

 

16 minutes ago, loady said:

let unraid format it then rebuild the drive ?

 

Do NOT do this.  Formatting a drive creates an empty file system on the drive and updates parity accordingly so a rebuild will just end up creating an empty disk.   A format is NEVER part of recovering data.

array is stopped, saying disk missing and its not...what should i do

Disk3 appears to be suffering from a cable problem, and because of those errors disk6 can't also be emulated, power down, replace cables on disk3, take the opportunity to change the SATA controller to AHCI/SATA mode, then power back on and check if both disk3 and the emulated disk6 now mount ok.

1 minute ago, johnnie.black said:

Disk3 appears to be suffering from a cable problem, and because of those errors disk6 can't also be emulated, power down, replace cables on disk3, take the opportunity to change the SATA controller to AHCI/SATA mode, then power back on and check if both disk3 and the emulated disk6 now mount ok.

there is no disk 6, its just a spare bay for adding and removing unassigned devices

Just now, loady said:

there is no disk 6, its just a spare bay for adding and removing unassigned devices

The you need to remove it from the array, as it is currently if one disk fails you won't be able to fix it because as far as Unraid is concerned you already have one failed disk.

5 minutes ago, johnnie.black said:

The you need to remove it from the array, as it is currently if one disk fails you won't be able to fix it because as far as Unraid is concerned you already have one failed disk.

its a front loading hotswap bay, i just turned it off... oddly, disk 3 is fine now, and disk 5 is missing😣

ok...weird stuff, all is working now..phew! hanks

Just now, loady said:

its a front loading hotswap bay, i just turned it off.

That's not the issue, the issue is that disk6 is assigned to the array, and missing so it's disabled.

Just now, loady said:

ok...weird stuff, all is working now..phew! hanks

You still need to remove disk6 from the array, there are two ways:

https://wiki.unraid.net/Shrink_array

that doesnt make sense, i installed that bay to use for unassigned devices, i never used it to hold any drives that are in the array, will i still be able to use it as such ?

 

The shrink array, there is no physical drive in there, its empty, i have only ever had a total of 7 drives, one being a cache and another the parity..which leaves five in the array

 

Edited August 6, 20196 yr by loady

At some point in the past you added disk6 to the array, at some point after that you disconnected that disk leaving Unraid to emulated it, you need to remove that disk from the array.

Edited August 6, 20196 yr by johnnie.black

3 minutes ago, johnnie.black said:

At some point in the past you added disk6 to the array, at some point after that you disconnected that disk leaving Unraid to emulated it, you need to remove that disk from the array.

so its basically emulating nothing ?. remove the drive and im looking at a parity rebuild ?, possibly something i did during last drive replacements, im more concerned about losing something, can i assume parity is good ?

Just now, loady said:

can i assume parity is good ?

No way I can know that based on the info provided, but if you're not sure and also the easiest way for removing it, would be to do a new config and then re-sync parity.

ok, so not the shrink array method ? im pretty sure i only had 5 drives in the array so i dont know what its complaining about

4 minutes ago, loady said:

ok, so not the shrink array method ?

There are two shrink array methods, both explained on the link above, new config followed by a parity sync is method #1.

oh well...here goes..ill let you know how it looks in about 12 hours, thank you kindly.

 

im wondering how this phantom disk 6 got here, is it something to do with the empty bay connected to the motherboard and putting in drives as unassigned devices, something went wrong ?..dont really want to do another parity rebuild tomorrow after i add a unassigned device to it again

Edited August 6, 20196 yr by loady

17 minutes ago, loady said:

oh well...here goes..ill let you know how it looks in about 12 hours, thank you kindly.

 

im wondering how this phantom disk 6 got here, is it something to do with the empty bay connected to the motherboard and putting in drives as unassigned devices, something went wrong ?..dont really want to do another parity rebuild tomorrow after i add a unassigned device to it again

I have never heard of Unraid deciding to add a drive to the array by itself.  Although you may not remember it I think it is highly likely that at some point you did add it to the array (if only for a short while).   The big problems is that the moment Unraid adds it to the array it starts taking part in the parity calculations even if you do not store any files on it.

11 hours ago, loady said:

is it something to do with the empty bay connected to the motherboard and putting in drives as unassigned devices, something went wrong ?

Not possible, at some point a disk was assigned to disk6, then removed.