SOLVED Boot Drive died. Uploaded old config. Pool Status: Offline.

[Plato.Manchi]

Hi,

My setup is janky and not at all recommended kind of setup.

Have old refurbished Dell Latitude 7480 that came with a ssd (probably as old as laptop) and one 4TB HDD connected through USB.
It worked great for a year until today when the ssd that has trueNAS scale died. It is pretty dead I checked it by connecting to my PC and its dead.

I did remember having old config file that I saved while following tutorial but I'm not sure if I saved config after setting up pools and everything or before. I also don't remember which version of truenas scale that I have installed. Pretty sure its around 3 to 6 months that I updated it to latest.

I installed another ssd and installed current truenas scale 22.12.0 version. And uploaded the config that I have.

I can see the pool and all datasets under it that I created before.

When I open Storage tab, this is how it looks like

It says my pool status is offline. I tried clicking upgrade thinking that some features might have got added and it might just upgrade the pool to newer version. But it just says

[EFAULT] Pool Pool 1 not found

I read people saying to import pool on other discussions where poster's boot drive died. I tried but the drop down to select the pool to import doesn't have any options showing up

Initially I was using this as learning platform to learn about TrueNAS and learn the kinks and stuff about it, so that when I upgrade my current PC, I'll convert the old one into actual real NAS with redundancy and all that.

But having it was so convenient when I have PC and laptop, that I started putting some important things like project files and started using it as perforce server for my personal projects etc.

I would love to restore them back if possible.

Thanks for your time and patience and I really appreciate everyone's help

 

[Plato.Manchi]

Just wanted to add this.

I remembered that I have to do export/disconnect if I ever want to remove a HDD and add it to another pool and can keep the data. So in all of my wisdom I thought what if I export/disconnect it and then reimport it and clicked it. (unchecked delete data option ofcourse) and its been like 5 hours and its just stuck at 40% so I restarted the TrueNAS I now realize how stupid that was.

Does this means I lost the pool. But the pool still shows up in data set

 

[Whattteva]

You're brave to knowingly run a janky setup and putting important project files on it. I don't have the answer to your question but your data is likely still intact. I hope someone more knowledgeable will come in and solve your problem. Best of luck.

 

[Arwen]

From the command line you need to run these commands. Only one will likely return real data;
zpool status zpool import
Please paste the output in code tags here, in case you need further help.

Next, if you don't get output from either above command, it is possible that your USB hard drive needs some tweaking to get it recognized. Try powering off the PC, then then the USB hard drive, wait several minutes. Then power on the USB hard drive, wait 1 minute, power on the PC. Repeat the above 2 commands.

 

[Plato.Manchi]

From the command line you need to run these commands. Only one will likely return real data;
zpool status zpool import
Please paste the output in code tags here, in case you need further help.

Next, if you don't get output from either above command, it is possible that your USB hard drive needs some tweaking to get it recognized. Try powering off the PC, then then the USB hard drive, wait several minutes. Then power on the USB hard drive, wait 1 minute, power on the PC. Repeat the above 2 commands.

I did power off everything and powered them up just in case and ran the commands

This is the output I got

 

[Arwen]

Looks like your data pool "Pool1" is available again.

Check the GUI, it is possible that you are good to go now.

 

[Plato.Manchi]

Looks like your data pool "Pool1" is available again.

Check the GUI, it is possible that you are good to go now.

In GUI pool status still shows offline. Import Pool option still doesn't show any pools.

Even if I click upgrade, it says can't find the pool.

I tried to map network drive anyway to check what it says and it says my "The specified network password is not correct"?
I changed the password for the user to make sure I didn't forget my old password and still says the same. Even if I create a new user and use that to map the drive it says the same

So I tried to delete the SMB share for Media folder and recreate the SMB share and I got this

 

[Arwen]

You can't use the GUI to import a pool that is already imported.

You can try is to export the pool from the command line. Then try to import the pool from the GUI.

It appears the GUI is confused.


Don't bother with sharing until your GUI & pool are happy.

 

[Plato.Manchi]

You can't use the GUI to import a pool that is already imported.

You can try is to export the pool from the command line. Then try to import the pool from the GUI.

It appears the GUI is confused.


Don't bother with sharing until your GUI & pool are happy.

DId the exporting of pool from CLI

And it is gone when I do zpool status

Ofcourse dataset is empty and has only one big button that says create a pool

Storage shows a Unassigned Disk, when I click Add to pool, I get option to choose existing pool and that has option Pool1.
Import Pool still doesn't show any options in dropdown though.

Is this the way to do it through GUI?

 

[Arwen]

You need to use the "Import Pool" button, upper right corner of the screen shot. It should allow you do see all exported pools, (which is just one in your case). Simply import it.

 

[Plato.Manchi]

You need to use the "Import Pool" button, upper right corner of the screen shot. It should allow you do see all exported pools, (which is just one in your case). Simply import it.

I couldn't edit the post so I said this in reply.

Just wanted to add this.

I remembered that I have to do export/disconnect if I ever want to remove a HDD and add it to another pool and can keep the data. So in all of my wisdom I thought what if I export/disconnect it and then reimport it and clicked it. (unchecked delete data option ofcourse) and its been like 5 hours and its just stuck at 40% so I restarted the TrueNAS I now realize how stupid that was.

Does this means I lost the pool. But the pool still shows up in data set

I did this in haste. It might have done some things that aren't desirable because when I click the drop down box that says select pool, I don't get any options. It just says No options when I click the drop down

 

[Arwen]

Did you export the pool from the command line first?


If you did, their can be problems with USB attached storage because of the lack of serial number(s) for the disks;

Why you should avoid USB attached drives for data pool disks

This subject has been coming up quite often in the last year or 2. Perhaps because of TrueNAS SCALE has brought forth some attention to TrueNAS in general and ZFS in specific. Please note that this is about USB attached storage for ZFS data...

www.truenas.com

Not saying you can't do it, just a friendly warning that somethings may not work properly. And this might be one of them.

 

[Arwen]

Sorry, I just re-read the a prior post, and you did export the pool.

So I don't know why the GUI won't let you import it.

 

[Plato.Manchi]

Sorry, I just re-read the a prior post, and you did export the pool.

So I don't know why the GUI won't let you import it.

No worries. I think it might have something to do with me restarting truenas when export/disconnect is at 40% and not waiting for it finish which might have messed up something.

or

Did you export the pool from the command line first?


If you did, their can be problems with USB attached storage because of the lack of serial number(s) for the disks;

Why you should avoid USB attached drives for data pool disks

This subject has been coming up quite often in the last year or 2. Perhaps because of TrueNAS SCALE has brought forth some attention to TrueNAS in general and ZFS in specific. Please note that this is about USB attached storage for ZFS data...

www.truenas.com

Not saying you can't do it, just a friendly warning that somethings may not work properly. And this might be one of them.

Like you mentioned here might have to do with not being able to detect serial numbers because its connected through USB.
I want to test this theory though.

But before that I will try all other USB ports and see if one of them works. It might just be that I have to connect it to same port as before.
If all else fails I'll just redo everything. My initial intentions with this janky setup is to learn and fail and learn. But having a NAS is so convenient especially when you have multiple devices at home and it was so stable that I started trusting it more and used it for more than testing and learning.

Data is not non recoverable, its projects I coded so I can code them again if needed, or stuff that I wrote on text files that I can write again, I'll just loose time.

Lesson learnt never be hasty and start clicking buttons that kind of mildly look like they might fix issues. And always post here

I do want to test the theory, I'll clean install everything and make a pool put some test files in there. Then I'll clean install truenas again and this time I'll make sure to follow the right process of exporting and importing pool to see if its possible or if storage attached through USB can't be recovered.

Would be interesting weekend project.

Thanks for being so patient and replying to everything

 

[Arwen]

If you have access from the command line, you CAN get ALL your data. It is that the TrueNAS software & GUI may not be happy with the USB drive.

 

[Plato.Manchi]

If you have access from the command line, you CAN get ALL your data. It is that the TrueNAS software & GUI may not be happy with the USB drive.

Command line as in the command line on truenas server? Or the shell in the GUI?
I have access to both of them. They are all local

Edit: Oh I can edit now. don't need moderator approval and can edit.
Do you happen to have links of any blogs or videos or can tell me keywords that I should search using to get results I want please?

 

[Arwen]

Either one would be local to the TrueNAS server. You can manually import the data pool and should have all your files. How you copy the files off, it up to you. For example, you can use PuTTY's SFTP.

Trouble shooting this type of problem remotely is tricky, which is why I am a bit vague. I can't walk you through the "fix", as I have not experienced it. Thus, what I would do for trouble shooting is bit complex.

 

[Plato.Manchi]

Either one would be local to the TrueNAS server. You can manually import the data pool and should have all your files. How you copy the files off, it up to you. For example, you can use PuTTY's SFTP.

Trouble shooting this type of problem remotely is tricky, which is why I am a bit vague. I can't walk you through the "fix", as I have not experienced it. Thus, what I would do for trouble shooting is bit complex.

Do you have pointers that I can read or watch regrading this? I can also follow your instructions if you are ok with giving me any.
Debugging has to somewhere right.

 

[Arwen]

No, sorry, walking someone through troubleshooting is what I do daily. After work I am a bit burnt out.

 

[Plato.Manchi]

No, sorry, walking someone through troubleshooting is what I do daily. After work I am a bit burnt out.

No worries. Thanks for all the help till now though