Unmountable: no file system

[itimpi]

3 minutes ago, sunbound said:

So, is there any way to recover the information from the 2 drives that where unable to find the "superblock". If not, I'm thinking the best course of action, for me is to migrate all the salvageable information to external drives, and start all over from scratch.

 

Am i right?

 

Thanks

Have you let the search for a superblock continue?    It is possible that a search might succeed even if it takes hours.   

[sunbound]

No, i didnt.

 

I'll let it keep going... nothing to lose at this point, right?

 

I'm assuming it will eventually give up, correct?

 

 

[itimpi]

Just now, sunbound said:

No, i didnt.

 

I'll let it keep going... nothing to lose at this point, right?

 

I'm assuming it will eventually give up, correct?

 

 

It can potentially read through the whole disk looking for backup superblocks.

 

there have been some recent cases where this approach has succeeded and the disk subsequently repaired.

[sunbound]

OK, thanks... so, because im dealing with a few different disks here... going back to disk 3... with all the "disconnected inode 6442453243, would move to lost+found" errors... i have yet to do the -Lv test. any harm in doing so?

 

and can i run these tests, on different disks, at the same time, or is this un-advisable?

 

Thanks

Edited August 11, 2019 by sunbound

[trurl]

Maybe I missed it but I didn't notice you saying you had actually tried this:

1 hour ago, trurl said:

Maybe they still aren't connected well enough to read well enough to mount. You might try double-checking all connections, power and SATA, and see if they mount.

[sunbound]

At one point I did go though it... and systematically troubleshot the connection issues. I had narrowed it down to a power adapter from the PS that converts from MOLEX to SATA. I'm using 2 separate power adapters because the server case I DO have doesn't have enough ventilation for the drives to keep them cool. After figuring that out, I was able to get the server to see all the drives, but by then, I had already started messing with stuff, and now i'm just in damage control mode. This was before I decided to ask you guys for help... in hind-sight, I should have come here first. 

 

I am 3D printing different stack-able drive caddies for the drives, so that I can both cool them effectively, and hot-swap as needed without having to pull the server out of the closet I have it in, remove the cover, and pull the whole array just to swap out 1 drive as needed, for expansion/replacement purposes. 

 

 

 

Edited August 11, 2019 by sunbound

[AgentXXL]

I just went through something similar - failure of unRAID array due to old/defective SATA backplanes on my Norco RPC-4220 storage enclosure. I ended up with one drive that was repaired by the Check Filesystems procedure but the other didn't recover properly. I had made a disc image using dd/ddrescue before trying the Check Filesystems in maintenance mode.

 

Glad I did as I was able to use data recovery software (UFS Explorer Standard) on the unmountable drive (image) and it let me recover everything I needed/wanted. I looked at assorted recovery platforms but chose UFS Explorer Standard as it ran natively on my Ubuntu main system. There's a few more details in this thread: 

 

[sunbound]

I'm starting to think that ive hosed my system. in trying to preserve as much info as i could, i moved as much data as i could off of the drives while i mounted them as unassigned devices. Now im trying to go back and "repair" the drives, but it wont let me start the array in maintenance mode, to even run the tests on those drives. 

 

 

Edited August 15, 2019 by sunbound

[trurl]

Been a while since there was anything new in this thread.

29 minutes ago, sunbound said:

i moved as much data as i could off of the drives while i mounted them as unassigned devices

29 minutes ago, sunbound said:

it wont let me start the array in maintenance mode

Is this because you have too many missing drives?

 

[sunbound]

i actually have all the drives in the same positions they where in last time i was able to run the tests. after the last reboot, it says "stopped, invalid expression" and "You may not add new disk(s) and also remove existing disk(s)." I did throw an old disk in to see if i could recover data from it, and its showing as disk 6, missing. wondering if that has something to do with it. Also, I just noticed that the array thinks all these disks are new disks; showing blue squares next to them. 

 

when i replace a disk, i tend to just put the old disk aside, just in case i could get needed information off it. 

Edited August 15, 2019 by sunbound

[trurl]

1 hour ago, sunbound said:

i actually have all the drives in the same positions

What do you mean by this exactly?

 

Where they are in the case is irrelevant. What ports they are attached to is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is which disk serial numbers are assigned to which slots in Unraid.

 

Post new diagnostics and a screenshot.

[sunbound]

All the physical disks are assigned to the same slots, and are attached to the same ports (both logical, and physical) they where previously. Everything is in the same place (I believe) that it was in a few days ago, before I started pulling files. I will post the screenshot and diagnostics when I get a chance. (Not at home right now)

 

Thanks, as always

Edited August 15, 2019 by sunbound

[trurl]

I think the devil is probably in the details of this

7 hours ago, sunbound said:

i moved as much data as i could off of the drives while i mounted them as unassigned devices.

which you don't really give us.

 

If you tried to take multiple array drives out of the array so you could mount them as Unassigned Devices, I don't think you would get that far since you can't start the array with too many missing disks.

 

Can you explain exactly what you did there in more detail?

[sunbound]

I took each of the disks that where in the array, and mounted them as unassigned devices. I then moved as many files off of those drives as i could, I figured i could assess what i was missing after moving everything off. Now that i have done that, I am unable to run those previous tests/fixes against the drives that where giving me issues. I wanted to try and "hedge my bets" against further losses. At this point, i would like to try and run those fixes on the problematic disks, and see what I can recover, if anything. It appears by doing this, the server things all the disks are new. 

 

Once I'm done trying to recover, I'm going to try and start everything from scratch. 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 15, 2019 by sunbound

[trurl]

I'm afraid you didn't really tell me anything new that would clear things up. Let me see if I can ask some specific questions that might get the kind of details I am asking for.

1. Are you saying you unassigned disks from the array, and then mounted those disks using the Unassigned Devices plugin?
2. How many disks at one time did you have removed from the array? With only a single parity disk, then if you had more than one missing disk I don't think it would let you start the array.
3. How many disks total did you mount as Unassigned?
4. Where did you move the data to?

Probably New Config is going to be the way forward.

 

Post screenshots of Main - Array Devices, Main - Unassigned Devices, and Main - Array Operations.

 

And post a new diagnostic.

[sunbound]

ok... I took all the disks that where part of the array, and mounted and shared them using "unassigned devices"

 

1) yes

2) at one point, all the drives (with the exception on the drive i was pulling data from) where not physically attached to the server

3) i mounted the 5 data disks (and some disks that still had data on them that where replaced with bigger dives at one point)

4) I moved the files, over the network, to USB drives on my desktop. 

 

When you say "New Config" is the way forward, I'm guessing that means assuming the worst, wiping the drives, and starting over. Is there any way to get these drives to the point that I can test and try to repair them to recover data from the individual drives?

 

 

 

that disk 6, i placed in the disk 6 position by mistake, and haven't remembered how to remove it. 

tower-diagnostics-20190816-0341.zip

Edited August 16, 2019 by sunbound

[AgentXXL]

I'm by no means an expert like some of the others helping you, but if the drives that you want to recover data from were all part of the unRAID parity protected array, you could do as I mentioned a few posts back: get yourself some decent data recovery software that supports XFS formatted drives. As mentioned above, I went with UFS Explorer Standard edition and it allowed me to recover data from a drive that was also unmountable but otherwise functioning. I.E. no electronic/mechanical issues, just lost partition and directory tables.

 

As for removing drive 6, you could use the 'Shrink Array' procedure, i.e. https://wiki.unraid.net/Shrink_array .

[sunbound]

11 minutes ago, AgentXXL said:

 get yourself some decent data recovery software that supports XFS formatted drives. As mentioned above, I went with UFS Explorer Standard edition and it allowed me to recover data from a drive that was also unmountable but otherwise functioning. I.E. no electronic/mechanical issues, just lost partition and directory tables.

I might look into this, and try the demo... if it sees the drive when i hook it up to my USB adapter, I might give it a go. I tried a few things the other day, and nothing would see the drive. 

 

 

and thanks for the "shrink array" link. I'll probably try that in the morning... after some sleep. 

Edited August 16, 2019 by sunbound

[trurl]

11 hours ago, sunbound said:

When you say "New Config" is the way forward, I'm guessing that means assuming the worst, wiping the drives, and starting over.

No, that is not at all what New Config means. New Config is on the Tools page. It is simply a way of making Unraid let you reassign your disks and optionally (by default) rebuild parity.

 

New Config won't change the contents of any disk, except for the disk assigned as parity. It won't try to fix anything, but it will let you remove a disk (or add) a disk. It is probably the simplest way to remove a disk and it is used in the first method explained in that shrink array link.