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A single disk has failed in my RAID-5 setup

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(@barrysharp)
Posts: 61
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Subject: A single disk has failed in my RAID-5 setup

Here's my setup using SoftRAID 5.5 on my MacPro6,1 12core system running latest El Capitan OS.

1) I have four LaCie 4TB Thunderbolt 2Big units
2) Each of these units have two 2TB disks inside of them for a total of 8 disks.
3) All four LaCie 2BIG units are on a single Thunderbolt daisy chain
4) So there are a total of eight 2TB disks in these four units; D1,D2,D3,D4,D5,D6,D7,D8
5) There are 4 RAID-5 Volumes configured and named BIG-1, BIG-2, BIG-3 and BIG-4
6) Each RAID-5 volume is 3.5 TB in size
7) These RAID-5 Volumes have been running smoothly now for some 6 months.
8) Today SoftRAID has reported disk D2 has errors. This affects all the RAID-5 Volumes as each one has a chunk of the disk D2.
9) SoftRAID auto rebuilds have taken place and ONLY BIG-1 and BIG-3 are in a degraded state. BIG-2 and BIG-4 display "no errors".
10) The SoftRAID display is showing BIG-1 has i/o errors
11) The SoftRAID display is showing BIG-3 is degraded - needs rebuilding and has i/o errors
12) I'm running a Verify on the disk D2 and that has not reported any errors so far and has some 3 hrs left to complete.
13) If the D2 Verify completes without errors how should I proceed to get BIG-1 and BIG-3 back into operation ?
14) Yes, I will need to replace the disk D2 and when I do will BIG-1, BIG-2, BIG-3 and BIG-4 get auto rebuilt ?
15) Can I force a rebuild on BIG-1 and BIG-3 after D2 is Verified successfully ? Is it necessary to perform these rebuilds ?

What more should I be doing to ensure there's no loss of data on these four RAID-5 volumes ?

See attachment for clarification of my RAID-5 configurations.

Thanks for any help and advice.

 
Posted : 04/10/2016 8:52 pm
(@softraid-support)
Posts: 8006
Member Admin
 

First thing to do is make sure your back up is secure. Never risk everything on one volume!

Now, if all your volumes mount, do a validate on big 1 and big 3. Leave them mounted when validating, I would not unmount any volume right now, nor restart, until you are sure you are backed up!

you are doing the correct thing by doing a rebuild, and a validate on the other volumes. If any volume is un-mountable, then stop and contact us directly. A failing disk can sometimes affect other disks or disk communication on the same bus.

Once your Big1 and bug3 are validated, then you can begin the process of replacing D2.
All you need to do is remove D2 from the chain. Connect the new disk. "Add disk" to each volume, one at a time, and let them rebuild.

You should be OK at that point.

Always remember to have multiple backups or backup strategies!

 
Posted : 05/10/2016 1:09 am
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