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Investigating Problems with Disks
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Topic starter
I had a disk fail. I might have screwed something up when replacing the disk. I followed a OWC video saying to blink the light, find the bad disk, unmount the raid, replace the disk, and power the raid back on. But SoftRaid still thinks the failed disk is "missing," and it won't let me:
A) "Remove disk" (even with the failed disk put back in). It gives me errors that say "you can't remove the disk from the raid volume, it is already missing one disk."
or if I put the new drive in it's place, it shows up with a question mark (which I then initialized), but I can't...
B) Add disk to the volume. I get an error saying "you can't add a disk to this volume because it is not ready to be mounted." The volume now reads TWO missing disks...
How do I clear this "missing disk" from the Raid Software? I wonder if the failed disk wasn't actually the one with the blinking light? Did I remove the wrong disk?
I have attached a picture of Softraid with the failed disk installed. I am also now seeing an out-of-sync error on a different disk.
Running Softraid/driver 7.0.1, MacOS 13.0.1
Attached log.
Thanks!
-AJ
Posted : 29/09/2023 8:23 pm
This is complicated.
There are two disks missing. Neither has the partition map for the volume on it. Is there any chance you deleted the volume, or initialized these two disks? One of them shows 0 hours. Is there another disk that you removed? If so, if you put it back and save a new support file, and attach it, maybe it will help me understand how to help out here.
Posted : 30/09/2023 1:11 am
Topic starter
@softraid-support Thanks for your response! Okay, I must have made that log when the clean, new disk was in place. I've only removed what SoftRaid told me was the dead disk, and installed a new disk, and then reinstalled the dead disk in an attempt to "remove" the dead disk from the volume. Attached is a new log with the original "dead" disk back in it's old place.
Here are the steps I originally took -
1) Powered down problem raid (did not do anything else, like "remove disk" or anything prior to power down. Just unmounted volume, powered down raid, and replaced disk.)
2) Installed new disk and powered up.
3) Noticed SoftRaid still saying that disk was dead. Figured it was because the new disk in it's place wasn't initialized. Tried to initialize "dead" disk (before I realized SoftRaid was seeing, somehow, both the original dead disk (even though it wasn't in the raid) and the new disk. This might have screwed up everything even more? (I must have generated the original log at the point.)
4) Saw the new disk with question mark icon. Initialized this disk. Couldn't figure out how to "remove" the dead disk from SoftRaid, it looked like SoftRaid expected the dead disk AND was seeing the new disk.
4) Powered down again, took out new disk, reinstalled dead disk, and, seeing the issues laid out in the OG message, wrote this post.
Fortunately, this is my backup raid, so if I have to wipe and re-backup everything, it's not the end of the world. Just spend a couple days re-copying 65TBs of data. Appreciate your assistance.
-AJ
This post was modified 3 years ago by Styphin
Posted : 30/09/2023 1:24 am
Its possible you removed the incorrect disk, not the one starting to fail.
Your volume mounts now, but note that the last disk is "out of sync".
You want to be running 7.6 now, BTW. We fixed/improved a few issues.
I think you need to update your backup, (this is a backup, so maybe nothing to do), then recreate the volume and copy the data back. Sorry for this, but when two disks are out of sync, its not worth the risk to data, so SoftRAID does not allow a rebuild when one disk is missing.
Posted : 30/09/2023 9:47 am
Styphin reacted
Topic starter
@softraid-support Okay, thanks. Can I bug you for one last question?
Knowing that my failed raid might be out-of-sync, and that I might have removed the wrong disk (even though that was the one with the blinking light), what's the best way of going about wiping the volume and ensuring that my bad drive still isn't in the raid? How do I tell SoftRaid to wipe the volume and start over with a clean drive in the right spot?
Posted : 30/09/2023 12:31 pm
Easiest way is disable Safeguard on the volume, delete it, then create a new RAID 5 volume. Only takes a few seconds.
Posted : 30/09/2023 3:36 pm
