Unraid not booting after power failure

[unstopable1955]

I have a headless unraid server running 6.8.3. After a recent power outage I couldn't connect to it via the web browser. Thinking something didn't boot properly I pushed the reset button on the computer case. Same thing couldn't connect. So I hooked up a monitor to see what was going on and all I could see was a blinking cursor in the upper left part of the screen. 

 

I used CTRL ALT DEL to reboot and went into the bios. The flash drive (8GB Sandisk Cruzer) was still set as the #1 boot device. I looked around to see if anything else could be causing an issue but I didn't see anything. So I saved and rebooted again. Same thing with the flashing cursor in the upper left. The flash drive is blinking showing activity but it's not booting the Unraid OS.

 

So I think something corrupted the flash drive. I do have a backup of the flash drive but it was before I replaced a failing 1TB drive with an 8TB drive. 

 

I plugged the flash drive into my Windows 10 PC but it just pops up with "You need to format the disk in drive I: before you can use it" then " The volume does not contain a recognized file system. Please make sure that all required file system drivers are loaded and that the volume is not corrupted.". 

 

The big question that I'm asking all of you smart and wise people is what do I do? How do I fix this without losing my data? Any and all help would be appreciated. 

 

Motherboard - ASRock AB350 Pro4

Ram - 32GB - G.Skill Ripjaws V series DDR4 2400

CPU - AMD Ryzen 7 1800X

GPU - Some sort of Radeon (nothing special)

Flash Drive - 8GB Sandisk Cruzer

Storage - 5 storage drives (2-8TB each) 1 Parity drive (8TB)

[trurl]

Do you know what your disk assignments were?

[unstopable1955]

1 hour ago, trurl said:

Do you know what your disk assignments were?

Unfortunately no

[trurl]

1 hour ago, unstopable1955 said:

I do have a backup of the flash drive but it was before I replaced a failing 1TB drive with an 8TB drive. 

As long as you haven't reused a parity disk as data, then you could probably use that backup. There have been cases where someone used an old backup that said one of their current data disks was (still) the parity disk and so it began overwriting the data with parity.

 

Prepare new flash as a new install.

Put config folder from your backup on the new flash.

Edit config/disk.cfg to set startArray to no. It may not let you start until you get a new license .key file anyway but I'm not sure.

Boot up and report back.

[unstopable1955]

14 minutes ago, trurl said:

As long as you haven't reused a parity disk as data, then you could probably use that backup. There have been cases where someone used an old backup that said one of their current data disks was (still) the parity disk and so it began overwriting the data with parity.

 

Prepare new flash as a new install.

Put config folder from your backup on the new flash.

Edit config/disk.cfg to set startArray to no. It may not let you start until you get a new license .key file anyway but I'm not sure.

Boot up and report back.

Thank you for the advice. I will give it a try and let you know the results. 

[unstopable1955]

OK so i've attempted the above suggestion finally. Now i've hit a new snag. I left my parity drive unmounted so I didn't erase any of my existing data. When I try to start the array it tells me that all drives are Unmountable: unsupported partition layout. I've added the Unassigned Devices add-on but the only device that I see with more than 1 partition is my Parity drive. Any ideas?

Edited September 7, 2020 by unstopable1955

[JorgeB]

Please post current diags: Tools -> Diagnostics

[unstopable1955]

The zip file is attached. Is that OK?

tower-diagnostics-20200907-1411.zip

[JorgeB]

What you say happened doesn't explain the invalid partition errors, did you leave anything out?

 

Also, do a new config to unassign all disks, to they have the option to mount on UD? Rr do they appear without a partition? Note, if they have the option to mount and you want to do it do it only in read only mode for now.

[unstopable1955]

When my flash drive failed the server was in the middle of a file transfer. I had a windows vm with splashtop installed. My buddy was using the file transfer feature of it to send me a video file. The unraid web interface became unresponsive. tried to tell it to reboot via the web but nothing happened. I think I had to push reset button on pc case. After that i tried to power on mutliple times because the web interface wasn't coming up. Finally hooked up a monitor and saw blinking cursor. 

 

So do a fresh install on the flash drive?

"option to mount on UD"? not sure what you mean. Can I attach to my desktop and see multiple partitions?

 

[JorgeB]

9 minutes ago, unstopable1955 said:

"option to mount on UD"? not sure what you mean.

If you do a new config without preserving assignments all disks will be unassigned, they will appear in the UD section, see if they all have an option to mount, i.e. there's still a valid partition (they need to show a plus sign next to them).

 

 

 

[unstopable1955]

This is how it is if I unassign all drives 

 

Edited September 7, 2020 by unstopable1955

[unstopable1955]

Same thing if I do a new config

[JorgeB]

Not sure what happened but the partitions are gone, nothing you described explains that, but you're not the first to have something like this happen, though not to all disks as far as I can remember.

 

You can try testdisk to see if it can find and recover the partition on each disk, if yes try again to mount the disks with UD, If that doesn't work and it's just the partition missing recreating just the partition as it should be might bring the data back, other than that a file recovery utility is probably you best bet, something like UFS explorer.

 

 

[unstopable1955]

OK got it. Thank you for all of the help and explaining what is wrong. I will run though those options and hopefully I can get something to fix the partition issue. I will let you know if something turns up.