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Investigating Problems with Disks
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I'm starting to think all of my concerns the past week have been a result of something that is not the disks themselves (and yes I take all disk errors very seriously). To recap:
1. One of the 7 HDDs in my ThunderBay Flex 8 encountered a read-error upon mounting the volume. Asked here and proceeded to validate the volume (successfully).
2. Frantically racing to manage terabytes and leave town to work remotely, I prepped for nearly a week: bought a 2TB portable SSD from Costco. Certified with 4-passes. Created the volume, then went back to the work computer and transferred a bunch. Sometime while sleeping after completing a large cloud upload (fiber speed!), SoftRaid alerted me in the morning to an error on the disk. A disk for the volume "2024 SSD" (disk25) encountered a read error (E00002CA). The disk (disk24, SoftRAID ID: 0A7D57921E017880) was unable to read sectors. The error occurred at volume offset 18926702592 (i/o block size 4096). This disk should be replaced.
3. Transferred 2TB off of the volume to a 16TB archive volume in a dual OWC Elite Pro Enclosure. Then with 16 hours to go before making the plane, began the certification process on the Costco drive AGAIN. Another 4 passes. Certified successfully. By late morning, initialized and created new volume. Mounted the archive volume in the Elite Pro enclosure. Transferred some data back and archived some Davinci Resolve projects.
4. By now it was 2:05 pm, the plane was departing at 5 pm, I was on anywhere between 2-3 hours of sleep, and the Uber was arriving shortly. Used the OWC Disk Ejector to eject all volumes, as I had about 4 USB-C SSDs, multiple volumes from the ThunderBay Flex 8, and the Dual Elite Pro disks/volumes which had transferred the projects back to the portable drive after re-certifying. Upon using OWC Disk Ejector:
5. SoftRaid alerts multiple disk errors on the two disks in the Elite Pro enclosure (set to independent disks, not used for RAID). It actually says there are so many errors that it will stop reporting them to not overwhelm the logs.
Dec 17 13:59:25 - SoftRAID Driver: The SoftRAID volume "Offsite Backup ThunderBay SSD Video Editing Dec 2023" (disk46) encountered an error (E00002E4). A program attempted to read or write to a volume which was no longer accepting i/o requests.
Dec 17 13:59:25 - SoftRAID Driver: The SoftRAID volume "Resolve Archives (2024 YouTube)" (disk44) encountered an error (E00002E4). A program attempted to read or write to a volume which was no longer accepting i/o requests.
Dec 17 13:59:25 - SoftRAID Driver: The SoftRAID volume "Master DRP Backups Year-End 2024" (disk49) encountered an error (E00002E4). A program attempted to read or write to a volume which was no longer accepting i/o requests.
Dec 17 13:59:25 - SoftRAID Driver: The SoftRAID volume "Resolve Archives 2024 Vol 2" (disk47) encountered an error (E00002E4). A program attempted to read or write to a volume which was no longer accepting i/o requests.
Dec 17 13:59:30 - SoftRAID Driver: A disk for the volume "Resolve Archives 2024 Vol 2" (disk47) encountered a read error (E00002D9). The disk (disk40, SoftRAID ID: 0A0D992591B35300) was unable to read sectors. The error occurred at volume offset 7662782115840 (i/o block size 57344). This disk should be replaced.
Dec 17 13:59:30 - SoftRAID Driver: A disk for the volume "Resolve Archives (2024 YouTube)" (disk44) encountered a read error (E00002D9). The disk (disk40, SoftRAID ID: 0A0D992591B35300) was unable to read sectors. The error occurred at volume offset 0 (i/o block size 512). This disk should be replaced.
Dec 17 13:59:30 - SoftRAID Driver: A disk for the volume "Offsite Backup ThunderBay SSD Video Editing Dec 2023" (disk46) has encountered 2 or more read/write errors in the past 24 hours. SoftRAID will stop reporting read/write errors from this disk for the next 24 hours to prevent system log files from filling up. This disk (disk40, SoftRAID ID: 0A0D992591B35300) should be replaced.
Dec 17 13:59:30 - SoftRAID Driver: A disk for the volume "Master DRP Backups Year-End 2024" (disk49) encountered a read error (E00002D9). The disk (disk48, SoftRAID ID: 0A7AB8A4326A9300) was unable to read sectors. The error occurred at volume offset 0 (i/o block size 512). This disk should be replaced.
Dec 17 13:59:30 - SoftRAID Driver: A disk for the volume "Master DRP Backups Year-End 2024" (disk49) has encountered 2 or more read/write errors in the past 24 hours. SoftRAID will stop reporting read/write errors from this disk for the next 24 hours to prevent system log files from filling up. This disk (disk48, SoftRAID ID: 0A7AB8A4326A9300) should be replaced.
I was almost going to carry the Elite Pro on my physical body as a carry-on to bring this home for 3-weeks, deal with it as need be, and continue to sort this out with support on this forum, but my Dad was the voice of reason, and so between the metal enclosure chassis, airport security, and realizing it would be far less of a concern to leave the disks at home in Nashville, I put the enclosure back on the shelf and made the Uber to the airport.
While I take all disk errors seriously to the point of huge quantities of time drains, the sheer odds of errors on 4 disks within the past 7-14 days seems more than highly unlikely.
I have a new Mac Studio waiting to power on in January after the holidays and this early 2021 Intel MBP has been getting slower and clunkier the past several weeks. I have no concerns about Malware. I check for that too. Every single error every single time was when either the volumes were mounting, volumes were ejecting using Dock Ejector, or the Costco USB-C SSD that was sometime while I was sleeping (and the upload was finished...presumably the computer went to sleep).
Ambiguity and uncertainty does not feel good, particularly when I am unable to further investigate or follow-up on anything during the next three weeks away.
Any ideas on causes other than actual disks that could trigger errors? I thought about the OWC Thunderbolt 3 Pro Dock, but the Flex 8 goes straight to the computer, no dock between. The Samsung SSD drive that I re-certified was also connected directly. The Elite Pro Dual DID go into the dock. But I had to shut things down and meet the Uber driver.
Posted : 18/12/2024 4:00 pm
Sorry for all the hassle on this and its good to take all disk errors seriously, as even if not an actual disk failure, it does mean a communications error.
Disk errors can also occur from connection issues, even file system (directory) problems (like a corrupted directory pointer that is a non existent location)
Remember the Disk utiility driver ignores disk errors, which is why you only see them on SoftRAID controlled disks.
Considering the certifications (generally a certification tells you a drive is good, until in the case of HDD's it starts reallocating sectors, etc.) your disks are highly likely to be just fine.
Maybe when you get back, just do a backup, and restore, using Carbon Copy Cloner? If there is a directory issue, that will fix it.
Posted : 18/12/2024 5:35 pm
Topic starter
@softraid-support Thanks. Of the four issues, the (few days old) USB-C SSD was certified twice. The HDD disk in the ThunderBay was pre-certified years ago upon purchase but because it's had data on it has not been re-certified yet. May do that in January though after offloading.
The dual disks in the Elite Pro enclosure were both meticulously certified by me about a year or so ago upon purchase and hardly ever get used but that enclosure has had issues from time to time with connecting to the MBP, which was always a little unnerving but never like the other day when ejecting all volumes triggered all those error messages.
SoftRaid has been slow to show disks in the left column and volumes in the right column for some time now. Over the past several months things have gotten a bit wonky. I'm not suggesting it's SoftRaid because I don't think it is. I bought the Mac Studio a couple weeks ago not directly because of this but was factoring in that it made sense to go from an Intel Mac to an M2 Ultra with a bunch more RAM and GPU cores for video work.
Because I have my Davinici Resolve serial number with me on my phone and know how to this many years in, what I'm starting to think about is possibly performing a full clean install of the OS over this 3-week break. If there's a directory issue then certainly a clean install would fix that. And besides, I have a clone drive with me and can clone it a second time onto yet a second disk if there are any questions. Other than having to re-install some applications, maybe it's time to clean install a new macOS and on this machine.
Posted : 18/12/2024 9:44 pm
"SoftRaid has been slow to show disks in the left column and volumes in the right column for some time now."
SoftRAID shows the disks in real time, as they respond to MacOS. So either the drives are taking more time to spin up (less likely), or the power supply is weaker and taking more time to spin up. Something like that.
A clean install is best if you create a second system:
run Disk Utiliity, click on your startup volume and + volume.
Then shut down, boot into recovery mode (Hold the power button), and in options, "reinstall MacOS", and point it to the new volume. This gives you a second startup system, without sacrificing the main volume (do not migrate data at this time, just use the same admin name, etc.)
I meant however, backing up the RAID volume and restoring it may be what you need to do. HFS volumes you can use Disk Warrior, which does not work with APFS, though.
Just some ideas.
Posted : 19/12/2024 12:00 am
Topic starter
"SoftRaid has been slow to show disks in the left column and volumes in the right column for some time now."
SoftRAID shows the disks in real time, as they respond to MacOS. So either the drives are taking more time to spin up (less likely), or the power supply is weaker and taking more time to spin up. Something like that.
A clean install is best if you create a second system:
run Disk Utiliity, click on your startup volume and + volume.
Then shut down, boot into recovery mode (Hold the power button), and in options, "reinstall MacOS", and point it to the new volume. This gives you a second startup system, without sacrificing the main volume (do not migrate data at this time, just use the same admin name, etc.)I meant however, backing up the RAID volume and restoring it may be what you need to do. HFS volumes you can use Disk Warrior, which does not work with APFS, though.
Just some ideas.
Thanks as always. Glad I've got a few weeks to think about this casually away from the immediate rush of management when I'm in the thick of video work.
When you say, "...or the power supply is weaker," are you referring to the enclosure power supply? As in the Elite Pro enclosure and/or ThunderBay Flex 8's supply? Just trying to make sure I understand all of your reply.
The two disks in the Elite Pro dual are non-RAID, just independent disks. Would it still work to use CCC to back up those individual disks/volumes, or must it be a RAID volume?
Posted : 19/12/2024 12:41 am
I read your message as the disks in the MEPQ (USB enclosure) being slow to spin up. Which ever it is.
CCC works on any volume. Its powerful once you understand it. Backups by default are volume to volume. But you can copy volume to folder, and volume to single file archive, etc. Worth learning a little about all its capabilities.
Posted : 19/12/2024 2:59 am
