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Topic starter
I had a disk failing in my first Thunderbay unit I bought back in 2015. So I ordered a new disk and replaced it without incident. Softraid operated perfectly. Then I figured the other disks would be likely to fail soon considering they are 10 years old. So I bought three more disks and replaced the next one. I was doing one at a time so I wouldn’t lose any data. The 2nd disk installed perfectly just like the first. All my data was intact. Then I went to replace the 3rd old disk so I pulled out the old disk and put
the new disk in slot 3 and when I restarted my Mac, Softraid indicated that the disk in the 4th slot was going to die soon. So I reinserted the old disk back into slot 3 and then took out the disk that was going bad in slot 4 and put the brand new disk in that slot. (I know it sounds confusing because typing this out is melting my brain). But that’s when I couldn’t do anything else. I resorted to ChatGPT and the instructions seemed good but after a long time we were going around in circles. I initialized the new disk somewhere in the mix (i have no idea why). I was getting what you see in the screen below. I can’t get the Thunderbay Volume to rebuild. Basically after going around and around with ChatGPT I threw in the towel. I have everything backed up with Backblaze if things go completely bad but I would like to know if savings this is possible. Please let me know what to do if you can.
Posted : 03/06/2025 12:48 pm
The problem is you have a disk out of sync, and a missing disk. That means effectively 2 disks are missing.
You need to backup and restore at this point, the SoftRAID driver cannot know what to do, which is why it is not attempting a rebuild. (nor can you "add disk")
Posted : 03/06/2025 1:14 pm
Topic starter
The problem is you have a disk out of sync, and a missing disk. That means effectively 2 disks are missing.
You need to backup and restore at this point, the SoftRAID driver cannot know what to do, which is why it is not attempting a rebuild. (nor can you "add disk")
How does one get the disk back in sync? I am not sure what you mean by “Backup and Restore”. How? By the way the missing disk I have I slot 4 is a brand new disk I never installed because of what I said in the original post. It’s physically in the Thunderbay unit but it was initialized and then the trouble I mentioned above occured.
I'm not well versed in any of this. I need step by step instructions. Now if I go into Finder I can see all my files intact in that Thunderbay unit. I have everything backed up to Backblaze. Are you saying that I should send for my backup drive that Backblaze will send me with all my data and back it up to the Thunderbay RAID 5 system? That would be after I install all 4 new drives into the Thunderbay unit. I have no room to back up 6TB of data so Backblaze sending me a drive filled with my data would be my only option. Unless I misunderstand what you said. Again….I can follow instructions well but I am not well versed in this.
Posted : 03/06/2025 5:20 pm
When a volume is "out of sync", it means that SoftRAID cannot guarantee all the parity data is correct. So it cannot add a disk to the volume.
Yes it requires a backup/restore. If you do not have local backup, then the BackBlaze backup will have to do.
So;
Do a current backblaze backup
when you get it, easiest is delete your volume and create a new volume. (You will need to disable "Safeguard" on the volume to delete it)
Copy your data back to it.
Posted : 04/06/2025 12:20 am
Topic starter
When a volume is "out of sync", it means that SoftRAID cannot guarantee all the parity data is correct. So it cannot add a disk to the volume.
Yes it requires a backup/restore. If you do not have local backup, then the BackBlaze backup will have to do.
So;
Do a current backblaze backup
when you get it, easiest is delete your volume and create a new volume. (You will need to disable "Safeguard" on the volume to delete it)
Copy your data back to it.
Finally an answer I can use. I have 4 brand new Toshiba N300 4TB NAS 3.5-Inch Internal Hard Drives - CMR SATA 6 GB/s 7200 RPM 512 MB Cache. I have two installed. I guess I’ll wait until the Backblaze drive gets here and then I will install the other two new Toshiba drives. Any special instructions for doing that?
Posted : 04/06/2025 12:53 am
Topic starter
When a volume is "out of sync", it means that SoftRAID cannot guarantee all the parity data is correct. So it cannot add a disk to the volume.
Yes it requires a backup/restore. If you do not have local backup, then the BackBlaze backup will have to do.
So;
Do a current backblaze backup
when you get it, easiest is delete your volume and create a new volume. (You will need to disable "Safeguard" on the volume to delete it)
Copy your data back to it.
I just checked my Thunderbay 2 drive. It has 6.3TB of space available. My Thunderbay 1 has 5.9TB of data. That’s cutting is close. Do you think I could transfer all the data from Thunderbay 1 to Thunderbay 2 and then install the new drives in Thunderbay 1 and after that is all setup to RAID 5 move the data from the Thunderbay 2 drive back to the Thunderbay 1 drive?
Posted : 04/06/2025 1:06 am
Yes you can move all data over, create the volume, and move it back, then delete it.
There are no special instructions, but if it helps, here is a video link on creating a new volume:
https://softraid.com/support/support-videos/
Posted : 04/06/2025 10:16 am
Topic starter
Yes you can move all data over, create the volume, and move it back, then delete it.
There are no special instructions, but if it helps, here is a video link on creating a new volume:
https://softraid.com/support/support-videos/
Final VERY important question. When I move the data from Thundrbay 1 to Thunderbay 2 do I simply drag and drop the 5.9TB of files to Thundrbay 2 or should I use SuperDuper? I have tons of important data on Thunderbay 2. I don't want to risk losing any of it. SuperDuper options include "erase Thunderbay 2 then copy files from Thunderbay 1" selection, and a "SMART update Thunderbay 2 from Thunderbay 1" or "Copy newer file from Thunderbay to Thunderbay 2" or "Copy different files from Thunderbay to Thunderbay 2". Obviously when I saw the "erase data on Thunderbay 2 then copy Thunderbay 1" I kind of freaked out. How should I do this migration from Thunerbay 1 to Thunderbay 2 in the safest manner where I don't risk losing data?
Posted : 04/06/2025 11:16 am
I believe this is similar to the issue I ran into. One disk was reporting I/O errors on my Mercury Elite Quad Pro (2TB Drives/Raid 5). I did a Validation on the Raid. After completing, I inserted the new drive, same size and MFG. Initialized it, then added it to the Raid. SR said it was out of sync and started rebuilding. This was taking a long time, so I let it run. In the morning, I awoke with some vague error that something had happened and the rebuild had stopped. It said there was an error with another disk's partition map and that it needed to be rebuilt. So I took out the new drive, put back in the old drive, and now I have three disks in the raid, one with I/O errors and one disk not in the raid (I fixed the partition map with fsck_hfs). Attached is a screenshot of what I'm seeing in SoftRaid. Also, I don't have a local backup, but I do have all the files backed up to Backblaze. I'm kinda a nøøb when it comes to raids.
How do I fix this issue? It seem I cannot add the "old" disk back to the raid without rebuilding, and I cannot rebuild with one disk reporting I/O errors (fsck_hfs didn't find any I/O errors on this disk)
Doug
Posted : 04/06/2025 4:21 pm
nomatterhowgood reacted
Please attach a SoftRAID tech support file, we can take a look.
Posted : 04/06/2025 5:22 pm
If you are not sure, use a Finder copy. Or, if SuperDuper can copy "to a folder", or a disk image, and verify the data, that would take longer, but be best.
Posted : 04/06/2025 5:25 pm
nomatterhowgood reacted
Topic starter
@softraid-support I am using a Finder copy and just dragged everything over. It’ll be done in 2 more hours. The whole process will 7 hours once completed.
Posted : 04/06/2025 5:58 pm
Something bad happened, not sure what. Its possible we may be able to repair part/all of this. Are you backed up?
Engineering won;'t be able to look at this until next week, which is why I ask that first.
Posted : 13/06/2025 3:33 pm
@softraid-support Yes, I have all the files backed up to the cloud. ~ 2.2 TB
Posted : 13/06/2025 4:43 pm
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