RAID 5: How to find bad disk - Investigating Problems with Disks

RE: RAID 5: How to find bad disk

SoftRAID Support — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 01:34:16 +0000

@micheloupatrick

I think you need to go by drive serial number. Its something I will inquire about.

RE: RAID 5: How to find bad disk

micheloupatrick — Sun, 17 Oct 2021 12:15:04 +0000

I have the same question for the Mercury Pro U.2 Dual with OWC shuttles : how do I identify the faulty SSD stick in a raid configuration (luckily everything works well so far) ? There's no individual 'blink disk light' on the enclosure.

RE: RAID 5: How to find bad disk

SoftRAID Support — Tue, 05 Oct 2021 18:21:18 +0000

@noobwl

Many USB enclosures do not make the drive available. it hides it behind the USB chipset, so all you see is the enclosure information. the Mercury Elite Pro does not pass through the drive model/serial.

Once you initialize the drive, you can add a disk label to each disk, so you can identify it.

RE: RAID 5: How to find bad disk

NoobWL — Tue, 05 Oct 2021 17:57:00 +0000

re: "that is the fault of the enclosure"

I am using the Mercury Elite Pro Quad. I have a similar issue.

Luckily SoftRAID does identify the bay, and the "blink disk light" command works, so I can find the disk that way.

But the lack of other basic information is disturbing.

Make, model#, serial numbers don't match anything on the disk.

Instead of the disk model, it lists the enclosure name.

see images.

892 893

This disk completed verification.

If I take it out and put it back in the bay, it shows the same (arbitrary) serial number. So at least it's consistent that way and would correspond to the log notes.

The "Add Disk Label" command is greyed out. Not sure if that would help.

RAID 5: How to find bad disk

leviathan — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 18:58:00 +0000

Thank you. I would advise everyone stay away from Akitio 4 bay enclosures if this feature matters (and it should matter).

RAID 5: How to find bad disk

SoftRAID Support — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 18:26:46 +0000

That is the fault of your enclosure, which is reporting an enclosure serial number, not the disk serial number.

RAID 5: How to find bad disk

leviathan — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 14:42:01 +0000

Thanks for the Blink Light heads up. :-) Here is a screen shot. These numbers don't match the SNs on the physical hdds. https://www.dropbox.com/s/yp0chtoihna0587/SoftRaid.png?dl=0

RAID 5: How to find bad disk

SoftRAID Support — Fri, 06 Oct 2017 20:53:49 +0000

SoftRAID will display the serial number which is unique. The SoftRAID disk label will show in log entries also. Use the "blink disk light" feature to identify the physical disk associated with each disk in the disks column. Then put a SoftRAID label on each, like B1-A, B1-B, etc. Then you can easily see which is which.

RAID 5: How to find bad disk

leviathan — Fri, 06 Oct 2017 15:04:07 +0000

I have several RAID 5 setups using SoftRAID. I am using Thunderbay 4 and Akiti JBOD enclosures. How do I go about finding which disk to replace when one fails? Each bay has a label on it with a unique number (1, 2, 3, ...). I had hoped to keep a small file with that unique number tied to hard drive information. SoftRaid is not picking up any information from the label on my HGST drives that is unique. All SN match on drives that are the same. I have also found that noting the disk identifier "disk3, disk15, etc." also can change if a case is powered off. Maybe my observations are wrong and I hope so. Can anyone give some pointers or help before I get a failure and mess this up?