I'm running Monterey 12.4 on an i3 mini.
I've got an OWC Express 4M2 attached with 4 ADATA 2TB blades installed. I've set it up as RAID 4 per Mark's recommendation. One of the blades just dropped out of the array starting on Monday (IIRC).
When I look at the array in SR, all drives show no errors, but the problem blade shows significantly less time than the others (140 vs 311).
I ran a SR certify on all blades before building the array.
I just would like to be able to mount the array so I can copy data from it onto another array, but it's stuck on rebuilding with the offset value unchanging. After one restart, the array mounted, but then I received an error from the OS about the array unmounting. It hasn't appeared on the desktop since.
I've enclosed a tech support file for your perusal.
Is there any other information you would need for recommendation? And could I simply pop a different brand blade in there as a stopgap?
Thanks.
Cheers,
Jon
The first problem is the volume is not mounting. APFS is supposed to be robust, but it can have damaged directories.
There are no repair tools for APFS, either, so repairing it is not possible at this time.
When a volume cannot mount, SoftRAID cannot rebuild the volume as SoftRAID requires a mounted volume to rebuild.
Are you backed up?
Are you backed up?
No, it isn't backed up. This was (is) my scratch disk but I had a large download on it that I hadn't copied off yet.
I'm OK with losing the entire volume.
I guess I'm better off using HFS+ here. Not the first time an external disk was corrupted on me.
So, what do you recommend for getting a functional volume? Delete the volume and re-create? Should I be worried about that blade?
Thanks.
Cheers,
Jon
Yes, I would use HFS+
Delete the volume and create it again.
I would probably certify all the blades, if I had time, and assuming they pass, give the one that went missing a SoftRAID label and see if it disappears again. It should certainly not.
Yes, I would use HFS+
Delete the volume and create it again.
I would probably certify all the blades, if I had time, and assuming they pass, give the one that went missing a SoftRAID label and see if it disappears again. It should certainly not.
I've started a certify on the problem blade and it's up to 335+ hours and still climbing. To me that seems abnormally long, even for 2TB. No errors reported. It's still installed in the 4M2, so it should be reasonably cool and not throttling due to heat.
Should I just cut my losses now?
Thanks.
Cheers,
Jon