[SOLVED} Parity and disk 1 disabled, how to re-enable? Other problems too

[steberr]

I recently built a server for storage and bought an UnRaid license. Hardware is as follows:

 

Asrock B450M PRO4 AMD motherboard, Ryzen 3 3200G, 16GB DDR4 2666

2 x 14TB WDGold

2 x 12TB WDGold

256GB SSD

PCIe SATA expansion card

 

I've had a hell of a time getting everything set up.  After finally getting UEFI boot to get UnRaid to boot to the UI menu, I was able to set up the two 14TB drives as parity drives and both 12TB drives as Disk 1 & 2 in the array, with the SSD in the cache pool.  I've started to transfer my data from Windows 10 to the server, and I had to turn off the Cache completely, because "Yes" was giving me issues with out of space when the Cache was full--despite the setting set to write new to the array if the Cache is full.  So, I set the Cache option to "No". 

Suddenly, I started getting errors in UnRaid during some of the data transfer, and then the first Parity drive and Disk 1 got the red "x" disabled.  I could not figure out how to rectify that, searching Google and these forums, so at this point, I'd just like to get the array going again--even if it's from scratch.  My questions are this:

 

1. How do I properly restart the array and enable the two drives?

2. What should I do in the future if something like this happens?

 

 

EDIT:  It turns out that all problems led back to my hardware--specifically, the motherboard.  The Marvell controller for the SATA ports were causing the connection issues.  I'm 3.5 days into pre-clearing my 4 drives, and I haven't had any issues yet.  This is more than twice the longest uptime I had before purchasing an expansion card for more ports.  I'm considering this issue resolved.

Edited June 21, 2020 by steberr
Changed to SOLVED

[trurl]

Go to Tools - Diagnostics and attach the complete Diagnostics ZIP file to your NEXT post.

[steberr]

blackburrow-diagnostics-20200613-1357.zip

[steberr]

I should mention that this was retrieved after going through an unclean shutdown at some point.  When I got a transfer error, due to the 2 drives disabling, I tried to go to tools in the GUI, but the webGUI hung.  Then, I tried connecting a monitor and keyboard to the server, but all I got was a black screen, so I had to hit the case reset button.

[JorgeB]

Since the diags are after rebooting we can't see what happened but almost certainly not a disk problem, if the emulated disk1 is mounting correctly rebuild on top and if it happens again try to grab diags before rebooting, number one suspect would be the AMD Ryzen SATA controller which as known issues with older kernels, upgrading to v6.9-beta1 should help if that is the problem.

[steberr]

This all seems very outside my wheelhouse, at present.  I'm not sure how to tell if the emulated disk is mounting correctly before wiping the drives and starting over again from scratch.  If it occurs again, I will try to analyze the situation better, as well as rebuilding on top (not sure what that means, but I haven't finished reading through all of the Unraid documentation yet). 

I'm currently in the process of pre-clearing all drives before setting up a new config.  I also made my way through some of the newbie goodies and installed the recommended plugins for initial setups.  Thanks for taking the time to help--I appreciate it.

Any ideas what the issue was with the cache drive "not working as intended" (as far as I understood, at least) for data transfers?  I was getting transfer error messages in Windows 10, and there were out of disk space notifications in Unraid, although I thought that with "Yes" that new files would be written directly to the array if the cache were full.  Not a huge deal--I can just use the cache for overhead--but it'd be nice to use for faster transfers, when possible.

[JorgeB]

14 hours ago, steberr said:

Any ideas what the issue was with the cache drive "not working as intended" (as far as I understood, at least) for data transfers? 

Like mentioned we need the diags before rebooting.

[trurl]

19 hours ago, steberr said:

not sure how to tell if the emulated disk is mounting correctly

An emulated disk (disabled) will have a red X next to it on the Main page, and if it is mounting, it will also have a filesystem listed for that disk on that same page. If it is not mounting it will also show that in the place where the filesystem is displayed.

 

19 hours ago, steberr said:

rebuilding on top

https://wiki.unraid.net/Troubleshooting#Re-enable_the_drive

[steberr]

Thanks for all the help; it's truly appreciated.

 

Anxious for the pre-clears to finish so I can try this again (somehow they got interrupted in the middle, so I had to restart them--not sure what happened). 

[steberr]

Purchased an expansion card for more SATA ports and stopped using the Marvell-controlled ports on the MB.  This seems to have resolved the issues.