Degraded, but not really?

[Chris230291]

Hi. Got a message the other day saying my array was degraded. I restarted the system today and it now reports "Healthy". Running zpool status -v also looks good. However I still have a flashing red alert that says " CRITICAL: May 9, 2017, 9:53 p.m. - Device: /dev/hpt27xx [hpt_disk_1/5/1], 1 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors"

Should I be concerned? Whats going on? As I understand it, degraded means a drive is on the way out?

Cheers,
Chris

 

[joeschmuck]

Yes, you should be concerned. Looks like you have a failing hard drive. It looks like you are using a RAID controller as well not in IT mode but I could be wrong, I am not the expert on RAID controllers. If that is the case, you should still figure out the failing drive and also fix your RAID controller setup.

 

[Chris230291]

The RAID controller is in "legacy" mode. Not sure what IT mode is?

Should add that my setup, while not optimal (8 disks) has been running great for many years now.

 

[Stux]

A "Currently unreadable (pending)" sector is a sector on the HD that can't be read. Perhaps it's a permanently damaged sector or perhaps it's just faded. Either way your HD is waiting for you to replace the sector with new data so it can read it again.

You can actually go through a process to perhaps fix this. If it works, there ya go

Either way, that HD is beginning to fail.

 

[Chris230291]

So next time I transfer a file it will make sure to test it again?

Suppose the drive just dies completely, is it as simple as turning off the system, replacing the drive and booting back up? Will it do everything for me or do I need to tell it that I've replaced the disk?

Thanks,
Chris

 

[Stux]

So next time I transfer a file it will make sure to test it again?

Slightly more to it than that. Try doing a search for "fix unreadable pending sector" or something like that.

Suppose the drive just dies completely, is it as simple as turning off the system, replacing the drive and booting back up? Will it do everything for me or do I need to tell it that I've replaced the disk?

Thanks,
Chris

Nearly. It's documented in the manual. You need to select the now missing disk and then click replace and select your new disk.