I have 5 2tb drives (including 1 parity) running on Unraid 6.5.3
I have a drive that is giving errors and looks to be failing. I bought 2 4tb drives to replace the failing drive and the parity. I started by replacing the parity because I cant replace the failing drive with a bigger drive before replacing the parity.
I am in the middle of a parity rebuild and it is taking forever because of the "bad" drive. It ran overnight and got to 35% and the ETA jumps between 9 hours and 350 days. Do I just leave it go or should I (can I) put the old parity back in and figure out how to replace the failing drive first?

 

Thanks,

Scott 

14 minutes ago, scottw said:

I cant replace the failing drive with a bigger drive before replacing the parity.

You need to use the parity swap procedure.

Is it safe to stop the Parity Sync/Data Rebuild on the new drive to do this?

You shouldn't have done that, it's not possible to successfully sync parity with a failing disk, and now old parity won't be 100% in sync, but it's still your best bet, do a new config with it, check parity is already valid, then do the parity swap.

Thanks! Just trying to learn but how is putting the old drive back in better than syncing with this new drive? If I put the old drive back in, will it not try to rebuild that drive from scratch or will it use the data thats already on the old parity drive?

 

I plan to do what you said, just trying to learn

 

Thanks for the help,

Scott

9 minutes ago, scottw said:

how is putting the old drive back in better than syncing with this new drive?

 

53 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

it's not possible to successfully sync parity with a failing disk

 

17 minutes ago, scottw said:

If I put the old drive back in, will it not try to rebuild that drive from scratch or will it use the data thats already on the old parity drive?

By using the new config with the "trust parity" option, this assuming nothing changed on the array since you added the new parity, still:

1 hour ago, JorgeB said:

now old parity won't be 100% in sync

because of mounting the array without it, even if no data was changed.

 

 

 

Excellent, thanks for the explaination.

Having a hard time starting the array. 

I shut down the machine, removed the "new" parity drive and put the old one back in. Started the machine and it has been stuck for 30 minutes trying to start the array. I think the failing drive may be causing issues with it. Can I remove the failing drive, boot up, re-assign the old parity disk and do the new config without losing data?

I am also trying to turn off the auto-start of the disks but it is not letting me change anything while the array is stuck starting.

 

Sorry for all of the questions,

Scott

23 minutes ago, scottw said:

Can I remove the failing drive, boot up, re-assign the old parity disk and do the new config without losing data?

You can use the invalid slot command if you have a spare disk of the same size or larger, I can post the instructions for that.

 

26 minutes ago, scottw said:

I am also trying to turn off the auto-start of the disks but it is not letting me change anything while the array is stuck starting

If you can't do it in the GUI disable array auto-start by editing disk.cfg on your flash drive (config/disk.cfg) and changing startArray="yes" to "no".

 

Again, thanks for your help. I put the original parity drive back in, did the New config and started the array with the "trust parity" option.

It took a while but I was able to get the array to start with the "old" (original parity drive) but the "bad" disk is now showing disabled.

 

I have 2 new 4tb drives but dont think I can replace that bad drive with one of those yet because my parity is only 2tb, right?

 

Just verifiing, before I cause anymore damage :), what I should do next.

 

Thanks again!!!

 

Scott

11 minutes ago, scottw said:

I have 2 new 4tb drives but dont think I can replace that bad drive with one of those yet because my parity is only 2tb, right?

 

3 hours ago, JorgeB said:

You need to use the parity swap procedure.

 

OK thanks. I just wanted to make sure I can still do that with the disabled disk. That is different from what I orginally told you so I wanted to ask.

 

Thanks!

Scott

2 minutes ago, scottw said:

I just wanted to make sure I can still do that with the disabled disk

You can only do it with a disabled disk, if it wasn't already you'd need to disable it first, all of that info is in the linked procedure.

Yup, I read through it an think I understand it. I made so many mistakes up to this point I just wanted reassurance first

 

Will get into it in a bit.

Thanks!

 

Scott

Running step 14 now but have question when it is done.

I have a new 4tb drive in for the new parity and the old parity drive that I am copying from will be removed from the system. I have another 4tb drive that I am replacing the bad drive with. 

After step 14, can I power down, replace the old parity drive with the new 4tb and then resume to step 15. 

Or should I just follow the process and rebuld onto the old parity drive and then replace it after the entire process is done.

 

I hope that makes sense

 

Scott

11 hours ago, scottw said:

Or should I just follow the process and rebuld onto the old parity drive and then replace it after the entire process is done.

You have to do this, or will need to rebuild the larger disk twice anyway.

Thanks, I did just that. I am running into an Unmountable Boot Disk now on that disk but I created another topic on that as I think it may be seperate issue? Or should I delete that post and put the details here?

 

Thanks again for all of your help!

Scott

You could have used this thread but already replied on the other one.