My parity disk went offline and I could not bring it online.  I did a reboot to see if that would fix it and it did not.  I then removed the failed parity drive, put in a new drive.  Powered on, and now a data drive is offline.  This leaves me with no parity and a failed data drive.  ouch!

So I thought let's try to put the original parity drive back in and use a new SATA connector, fantastic, the drive comes up.  I choose the OLD parity drive in the GUI, but the system thinks this drive is "NEW" and as such because there is also a failed data drive I cannot start the array.

 

So the question I think is this...  How do I get Unraid to use the old/original parity drive to bring the array up.  then use the parity bits to re-build the failed data drive.

 

I have made ZERO changes other than what's described.  Please help.  thanks

You can force a rebuild but first thing is to check if there's really a problem with disk7, swap cables with another disk, if still missing please post the diagnostics: Tools -> Diagnostics

sorry for the late reply.  that's exactly what I did.  Changed the cable for disk 7.   reboot and disk 7 came online.  then I ran a parity check.  all good.