M3rl3n

IT's ALIVE!!! Thanks for all the help all.

That's cool. Thanks for writing that @Squid. So if I interpreted that correctly, I could set it to save a backup on my Win 7 machine periodically? Any location I want? Is that configurable in your program or would I first send it to a mount point in the array and then us something else to copy that to the Win 7 machine?

Thanks bjp. Another question and if the answer is yes, I'll either look for how to do it or post another topic. Is there a plugin or something out there that would allow us to have two USB drives in the computer, one that normally boots the server and then one that operates as a backup where periodically (once a week, every other day, etc) the entirety of the main USB is dumped to the other drive? That way if a corrupt USB drive is the issue, it would be a fast recovery.... I also suppose that since the system runs entirely out of ram after boot up, a person could just pull the USB drive and make a copy of it. The problem with that is that when the system is running fine, you may or may not remember all of the time...

Well, I guess in my haste, I forgot to put a question mark at the end of the sentence. So, here is what I'm thinking I should do. #1 pull the USB stick, put it in my Windows 7 PC and copy all of the files from it. #2 Run check / scan disk to see if anything is corrupted? #3 If it's not recoverable, re-install Unraid on it? Is it just the config file that I need to retain or are there other files that after I do the reinstall, that I will want to copy back over to the USB? Thanks.

Hi All, I'm not sure at all what happened. My system has been working and stable for a number of months. This issue has come out of left field. I had recently updated the UnRAID to the latest version. (OS 6.2.4?) but I do not believe that it has anything to do with the update. It may have been a power outage or something very strange. The problem (and yes, I know I should have gotten the logs before the reboot, but at that time I didn't know there was a problem.) is that the system will not boot. It gets to the point of "---[ end trace 7dd3f0b09101348a ]---" and then stops. The keyboard has flashing LEDs flashing on the keyboard for the Caps Lock and the Scroll lock. It just stops. My disk configuration and everything was stable prior to the issue. What's my next step to recover the system. Thanks.

ok. I'll keep an eye out and make sure to NOT format. I'll report any issues or oh oh's.

The system was just built last year, so it is version 6 (6.2.4) and all drives are xfs. So, if I just put one of the 3TB HDs in in place of one of the 500GB, I don't have to do format or anything? Is it a correct assumption then that the file system is "rebuilt" as part of the rebuild and once that's on the drive it's all set?

Awesome - Yup that's an approach that I hadn't considered.

Success!!! I now have a single parity drive again at 3TB. All of the other original drives are stable and the old parity drive has been added to the array as a new storage device. Now when I get some more power splitters for the additional HDs, I will be adding on three more 3TB HDs for a total space of 18TB!!. I do have a new, somewhat related question and if you say start a new thread I will do that. In my new array, I would have two 500GB HDs, four 2TB HDs and three 3TB HDs. For the two 500GB HDs, I'm considering just removing them because they take up two slots hardware wise and my case is getting low. Can anyone point me to a procedure, or outline it here that would allow me to move the data on the two 500GB HDs to one of the new 3TB HDs, then just remove them without too much disruption? Thanks!!

I haven't written anything new to the array and I do want it to be right. Otherwise, what's the point in doing anything. I realize it'd fine as it is, but... That is the part that I messed up on... creating a new config. So, I want to do it again. Can I just start from step 6 and create the new config or should I pre-clear the new parity drive again? Thanks for all of your help and advice.

Ok - Sorry I was in a hurry last night and I neglected all of the other stuff. So, the reasons and steps that I took: I obtained 4 new 3TB HDs. My system currently has / had Parity = 2TB Disk 1 = 2 TB Disk 2 = 0.5TB Disk 3 = 0.5TB Disk 4 = 2TB Disk 5 = 2TB I followed the steps laid out by bjp999 here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=33277.msg306300#msg306300 which are: I like the way you think! Great question! 0. If the new parity disk is brand new or has never been tested, do a preclear on it. 1. Take smart reports of all drives. Look for reallocated sectors and pending sectors or anything that says failing now. If you haven't already, you might consider installing unmenu and bringing up the myMain smart view (see my sig). It will run the smart reports for you and highlight anything it detects as concerning. Ask on the forums if questions about smart issues. 2. Do a parity check on the existing array. A parity check creates about the same level of stress as the parity build. 3. Do the smart reports again and compare if anything important got dramatically worse. For example, if your first check had 4 reallocated sectors, and after that disk had 316 reallocated sectors, I'd be worried about that disk! 4. If all is good, stop the array and make a backup of the config directory of your USB stick. 5. Note the placement of all the disks and what slots they are assigned to. 6. Do a new configuration, and assign the new parity, all data disks to their respective slots. And assign the current parity to the next data slot (if you intend to use it as a data drive). 7. Start the array. Let parity build. Do not format the unformatted old parity disk. Do not write to the array. 8. Should something go wrong like a red ball, save the syslog, stop the array, shutdown the server, fix loose connection (often the cause of the red ball), restore the USB (config directory) backup, and reboot. The old parity will be back in its prior place and the red ball will likely be gone. Run a parity check. You may get a few sync errors early. It's ok. Go back to step 3. Or ask for advice on the forum if drive red balls again. 9. If all goes well with the build do a parity check. My problem was that when I got to step six, unRaid said invalid configuration and it would not let me restart the array. The only way I could do it was to put the original drive back in for Parity and then the new 3TB drive became parity2. Then I built parity. When I deactivated parity(1) the system said all was fine, but now in reading the replies I'm pretty sure I want the original means of parity calculation. So, now my question(s) are: Can I just do another parity check with the original drive deactivated and with the new drive alone as parity? Will it then be made "parity" or would it always say parity2 even though it's calculated using parity(1) methods? Or should I put the original parity back in do another pre-clear on the new drive and try it all over again? If I do that why did unRaid say my configuration was invalid and not allow me to restart the array to rebuild parity? Did I miss a step? Did I really have to assign the old drive to another slot before trying to restart the array? Is that what I missed? (I wanted to not risk the parity drive yet.) Thanks for all of your helps. madison-diagnostics-20161228-0916.zip

Probably a noob mistake, but when you don't do it that often... Anyway, I thought I followed all of the procedures correctly, but I think I messed up by keeping both parity drive in while I rebuilt parity. I went from a 2 TB drive to a 3 TB drive for parity. Now when I disable the original drive that was used for parity, the system says all is good, but my main dashboard, for drives, it lists "parity 2" as the first device. Is there a way to change this to be "parity". And may be a brief explanation of what step I messed up on? Thanks!

OK - Thanks for that. Hmm.... I wonder if I should take the two 500GB drives out of the array and make them part of the cache. I could make the cache the 620GB, 500GB, and 500GB. Then move the 320GB to the array. That would give me 6.32GB (or just get rid of the 320GB drive) in the array and how much in the cache?

Hi All, I'm slowly getting things set up. I had a real "DUH" moment when I spent WAY too much time trying to figure out how to install Docker, only to find it in the Settings area and then realized I only had to enable it. I do have a question with regards to the cache drives. Please take a look at the attached picture. Why is the size only 480GB and no stats for the Cache 2 drive? I just realized that 480GB is 1/2 of the 960GB size... guess maybe that's by design? Can someone explain it for me?

Hi All, Although I'm a software engineer, I have little / no experience with servers and managing a network. I know what I want to do but, I'm not sure how to get there, so I have a feeling I'll be asking a lot of questions. So far, from what I've seen, I really like the Lime Tech OS, although I will continue on the trial period until I have things configured right. In advance, I apologize for all of the questions that I will be asking. As far as hardware, I believe that I done a pretty good job in setting up a good server. In a beautiful Fractal Mode 804 case: MB: ASRock FM2A88M Pro3+ APU: AMD A10-5800K Trinity Quad - Core 3.8GHz Socket FM2 RAM: 32GB G. Skill DDR3 PC312800 Currently, with the limitations of the Trial software, I have three hard drives. Set as the parity drive, a 2TB WDC drive, Disk 1 is a Hitachi 2TB, and a 640GB drive set as a Cache Drive. I do have more drives to add in which will take total storage space to ~6TB (for now - I plan to replace drives with 2TB drives as I able) and another drive to add to the Cache. What I want the server to do (her name is Becca) is 3 fold; 1) Backup my files from my (our) cell phones, tablets, laptops and the main desktop, especially my photographs (see also www.briodan.smugmug.com). 2) Serve as a media server for our music and movies 3) Provide a backup server for my family's files from their computers. Any suggestions as to how to setup the above capabilities would be most welcomed. Thanks for you help.