Urlryn Posted June 3, 2020 Share Posted June 3, 2020 (edited) Everything has been running great for a long while. Reboots/parity checks and all that stuff all been green. This past weekend I shutdown the server to move all the hardware to a new case. Started up the server...it went into a power on/off loop for some reason. After troubleshooting it ended up being my last 2 drives, that were added to the array at some point, are completely dead now. No power...nothing. Luckily one drive didn't have any data yet on it but the other....had some data. So I hope we can recover that one since I have only 1 parity drive installed. Do I just put both replacement disk in and assign them both to the "old" drives? How do I make sure the system tries to rebuild the one drive with data vs the other? Thanks Urlryn Edited June 3, 2020 by Urlryn Quote Link to comment
itimpi Posted June 3, 2020 Share Posted June 3, 2020 I am afraid that your suggested solution will not work A rebuild with only 1 parity drive requires all the other data drives to read error free for the rebuild to succeed. If the drives really are dead then you will not get anything off them without getting data recovery specialists (which tends to be expensive) involved. It the drive is not dead then you may be able to recover something by using tools external to Unraid. Do you have any idea what caused the drives to die simultaneously. Quote Link to comment
Urlryn Posted June 3, 2020 Author Share Posted June 3, 2020 (edited) Bummer...so just replace / reassign is about all i can do then. Wish I knew.....they were all working prior to the move. All the drives are HGST NAS 4TB disks. 8 total. 4 + parity were from the first batch purchased when I built the system. The last 3 are from a second batch that was purchased a couple years later (since were on sale). Other than the initial power on/off loop problem...there was no indications of drive problems or failures. No errors in smart or anything. Yeah I've tried 2 different power supplies/computers even have a external usb drive caddys and not a peep. Probably the PCB board. I do have a two new parity disks to add at least...5TB ones (were cheaper than the 4TB at the time). So guess that will be my project this weekend after get these dead disks replaced. Also is there a way to see what shared the drives were assigned outside the GUI since you can't view that without the array being online? Thanks Urlryn Edited June 3, 2020 by Urlryn Quote Link to comment
Urlryn Posted June 3, 2020 Author Share Posted June 3, 2020 Looks like the PSU. Pulled out 2 new drives. Connected them via my USB HHD dock and both powered on and identified in windows. Put them in the case...plugged them up and the power on/off loop happened again. Took the drives out...one is dead. So all my other drives boot up no problem...so might be one or 2 of the connectors on the back of the PSU thats bad. So pulled it and getting a new one.....HGST gonna love me... 3 RMAs! Urlryn Quote Link to comment
Urlryn Posted June 5, 2020 Author Share Posted June 5, 2020 (edited) Ok one more question here... Replaced the PSU and have the 2 replacement drives in. But best news was I didn't lose anything. I had put the 2 drives in because a couple of my shares were getting close to max but looks like no data was saved to those 2 drives. Booted up system finally! Did the preclear on both drives Went to Tools > New Config > Retain current configuration: All > Apply Verified all drives are where they should be At this point I should be able to start the array.....just curious about the "Parity is Already Valid". Since these are new drives i'm assuming it has to rebuild parity even though the old drives were empty and replaced with empty? Thanks Urlryn Edited June 5, 2020 by Urlryn Quote Link to comment
trurl Posted June 5, 2020 Share Posted June 5, 2020 31 minutes ago, Urlryn said: i'm assuming it has to rebuild parity The above is correct, because the below is not correct. 31 minutes ago, Urlryn said: the old drives were empty and replaced with empty The old drives were empty and the new drives are clear, very different things. An empty drive has a filesystem and its metadata that represents an empty top level folder ready to receive new files and folders. A clear drive has every bit set to zero. A clear drive can be ADDED to an array with valid parity because those zeros have no effect on the parity calculation. A clear drive cannot REPLACE an empty drive (or indeed anything except another clear drive) without either rebuilding parity or rebuilding the clear drive so it becomes an empty drive. 1 Quote Link to comment
Urlryn Posted June 5, 2020 Author Share Posted June 5, 2020 (edited) So I started the array and Parity-Sync/Rebuild is in progress.... All drives showing green.... but the 2 new drives the file format is set to Auto instead of XFS and unmountable. Will this be corrected during the sync? (don't think it will but asking to be sure) Do i need to stop the rebuild and start the array in maintenance mode and then format them there? Or can I just click the available button for "Format will create a file system in all Unmountable disks"? and do I need to stop the parity sync first before starting a format? Urlryn Edited June 5, 2020 by Urlryn Quote Link to comment
trurl Posted June 5, 2020 Share Posted June 5, 2020 You can format while building parity or after. If you format while building parity you can even begin using the disks while parity is building, but of course it will slow things down if you try to do too much. Quote Link to comment
Urlryn Posted June 5, 2020 Author Share Posted June 5, 2020 Great....letting it finish the format/rebuild and heading to bed! Appreciate the assistance trurl! Urlryn Quote Link to comment
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