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Investigating Problems with Disks
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Topic starter
Greetings,
I have a Thunderbay unit running RAID 5 (12TB) connected to my iMac. The unit has functioned extremely well for 3-years. Recently, when logging in, SoftRAID tells me that a drive is expected to fail in 2-6 months. I have a replacement disk ready to install following the manual. However, before I can right click and choose identify the drive, my system freezes and then reboots. I’m a professor and use this unit to store my, and colleagues’s NIH grant data. How can I get the unit up and running again ASAP?
Cheers.
Posted : 19/10/2018 2:35 pm
You may need direct support for this. Its clear that there is indeed a bad disk.
Second, you really need to have a backup!!! Never rely on any single source for your data. Get a subscription to backblaze, buy a couple external disks, whatever, but keep at least one, if not two copies of your data, and one of them off site!
Here is one thing you can do
shut down.
remove all the disks from your Thunderbay (pull them out one inch is enough)
Run SoftRAID.
Insert only one disk.
See if it is predicted to fail.
Pull it out an inch, then do the next, until you find the bad drive.
then, IMPORTANT:
Shut down again and insert all three "good" drives. Restart.
Does your volume mount?
if so, good. then I would make sure you are backed up, then you can insert the new disk and "Add disk" and rebuild your volume.
I would not go any further until critical data is backed up!
Posted : 19/10/2018 2:45 pm
Topic starter
You may need direct support for this. Its clear that there is indeed a bad disk.
Second, you really need to have a backup!!! Never rely on any single source for your data. Get a subscription to backblaze, buy a couple external disks, whatever, but keep at least one, if not two copies of your data, and one of them off site!
Here is one thing you can do
shut down.
remove all the disks from your Thunderbay (pull them out one inch is enough)
Run SoftRAID.
Insert only one disk.
See if it is predicted to fail.
Pull it out an inch, then do the next, until you find the bad drive.then, IMPORTANT:
Shut down again and insert all three "good" drives. Restart.Does your volume mount?
if so, good. then I would make sure you are backed up, then you can insert the new disk and "Add disk" and rebuild your volume.I would not go any further until critical data is backed up!
Thank you for the quick response and suggestion.
Your point about backups is well taken. I maintain a nightly backup of the ThunderBay to a Mercury Elite Pro QX2 and have much of the raw data saved elsewhere.
Regarding the potential solution.
When you say
then, IMPORTANT:
Shut down again and insert all three "good" drives. Restart.
Do you mean shut down the computer or SoftRAID?
Cheers.
Posted : 19/10/2018 3:02 pm
Computer. one disk in a volume cannot mount. So all you are getting is a scan of the disk. This should avoid the problem of the computer crashing, or if it does, you know the disk that is causing it. (A disk with bad sectors can time out for as long as 2 minutes, which can cause the OS to hang.)
Posted : 19/10/2018 3:33 pm
