My digital nightmare came true. Two encrypted drives died this morning.

[Fabiolander]

Hi,

 

One of my worst numeric nightmare become true this morning.

My UNRAID server was stopped but when I tried to restart it,  2 WD 3TO disks ( Dam! I just discovered they have been produced the same day) were dead on my 7 disks area. A terrific "Tac-Tac" comes from these 2 drives....

 

Because it is an encrypted area I do not know what is the best thing to do now.

Should I try to restart the area without the drives then send the two others to a recovery service ?

Should I move manually the data disk by disk to another place ( but how to read encrypted data without mounting the area) ?

 

Thanks for your support

Fab

[Frank1940]

First thing, get the Diagnostics    Tools   >>>   Diagnostics 

 

Second thing,I would try is to shut the server down cleanly.  (I would start this by stopping the array if it is started.  Then turn off the auto setup of the array.)  Let it set with the power off for five minutes or so.  Then restart the server and see if the same problem still exists.  If the problem still exists, get the Diagnostics again and upload both files.

[Energen]

So you seem to be missing the point of Unraid's parity drives and rebuilding an array from failed disks. 

 

If in fact the drives are dead and you can't get them working then you'll have to replace the drives with new ones and rebuild your array.  You're not trying to copy any data off them or have anyone else try to recover any data from them.

 

https://wiki.unraid.net/UnRAID_6/Storage_Management#Replacing_disks

 

But it's also pretty rare/odd/strange/whatever that two drives "fail" at the same time, so I'd be looking for some other reason of them not mounting before replacing them.  Chances are you would have been experiencing problems with them beforehand if they were actually bad.  Not always, but usually.

Edited July 12, 2020 by Energen

[Fabiolander]

4 hours ago, Energen said:

So you seem to be missing the point of Unraid's parity drives and rebuilding an array from failed disks. 

 

If in fact the drives are dead and you can't get them working then you'll have to replace the drives with new ones and rebuild your array.  You're not trying to copy any data off them or have anyone else try to recover any data from them.

 

https://wiki.unraid.net/UnRAID_6/Storage_Management#Replacing_disks

 

But it's also pretty rare/odd/strange/whatever that two drives "fail" at the same time, so I'd be looking for some other reason of them not mounting before replacing them.  Chances are you would have been experiencing problems with them beforehand if they were actually bad.  Not always, but usually.

Thank you.

 

I ordered 2 new 4TO WD NAS hardrives. 

The reason of this fail is maybe yesterday evening storm but why only these 2 drives when I have 3 same models in the server and nothing else in house has been damaged. I can't explain. Since this morning I changed hardware ( new MB, Proc and Power Supply)

 

I know if I have only one parity, I can't restore 2 disks but I thought there is a way to recover data if I give my drive to company that can read data on damaged disk and decrypt them using aray key... but maybe I dream....

6 hours ago, Frank1940 said:

First thing, get the Diagnostics    Tools   >>>   Diagnostics 

 

Second thing,I would try is to shut the server down cleanly.  (I would start this by stopping the array if it is started.  Then turn off the auto setup of the array.)  Let it set with the power off for five minutes or so.  Then restart the server and see if the same problem still exists.  If the problem still exists, get the Diagnostics again and upload both files.

Thank you

 

Here is the diag before and after reboot

 

 

unraid.local-diagnostics-20200712-2221.zip unraid.local-diagnostics-20200712-2229.zip

[Frank1940]

Both disks are MIA.  You could open up the case and see if you can switch data and power cables with disks that are working.  (That would verify that they are true disk failures and not some other hardware problem.)  Normally one would not do this but two disk failures (virtually) simultaneously is quite uncommon so I would suggest checking other possible hardware candidates!

 

You should probably pose your question about recovery of data in the support thread for the encryption tool   Apparently, it is builtin so You might have to edit the subject of this thread (Edit the first post) or start a new thread to attract some attention to the new situation.

 

Do you have a backup of any of this data as that might be your best option?  (Hate to say it but an offsite backup plan would probably be cheaper than an attempted data recovery service.  Disk failures are only one of several events that can cause catastrophic unrecoverable loss of data...)

[Fabiolander]

3 minutes ago, Frank1940 said:

Both disks are MIA.  You could open up the case and see if you can switch data and power cables with disks that are working.  (That would verify that they are true disk failures and not some other hardware problem.)  Normally one would not do this but two disk failures (virtually) simultaneously is quite uncommon so I would suggest checking other possible hardware candidates!

 

You should probably pose your question about recovery of data in the support thread for the encryption tool   Apparently, it is builtin so You might have to edit the subject of this thread (Edit the first post) or start a new thread to attract some attention to the new situation.

 

Do you have a backup of any of this data as that might be your best option?  (Hate to say it but an offsite backup plan would probably be cheaper than an attempted data recovery service.  Disk failures are only one of several events that can cause catastrophic unrecoverable loss of data...)

Thank you for the advise. I open another post.

 

No offsite backup... and at this stage I have no clue what data has been lost...  6TO / 21TO

I guess there is no way to know without rebuilding the aray.

 

I want to take my chance and to send these disks to recovery services... If one of these 2 disks can be repaired then I can rebuild the whole Aray.  (Yes I'm a dreamer).