FreeNAS 8.3 Will Not retain ZFS Pool

[ghostlobster]

OK...So..update on the status here.
I was able to get the ZFS pool imported within the MFSBSD boot CD environment. The standard FreeBSD 9 live CD would not import it at all! Unfortunately, I could not find any way to have that particular environment connect to a SMB share on my network! Using mount_smbfs -I x.x.x.x //user@hostname/sharename just returned an error indicating that some samba libraries needed to be loaded. No way to load them seeing as it was on a bootable CD! Augh! After a few hours of wrestling with a 2TB USB external drive, and then that same drive connected to another SATA port with absolutely no luck as MFSBSD is very limited in what it can do, or at least, limited in what I can get it to do, I surrendered.
I then bought 4 new SATA cables, and put a new SATA controller and PSU in the box. I installed a new build of FreeNAS on a new USB stick, and once again, exact same error. That one stinking drive was reporting a corruption. I used the read-only import command you posted above and was able to partially import the pool. Awesome! A lot of the data is not available, but a lot was. I was able, luckily enough, to snag my work files and some essential customer backups. My music and pictures are backed up regularly, so I'm all good there, and, well, I needed to redo my movie library anyway and ditch those old DVD rips in lieu of sweet Blu Ray mkvs.

So, once these last few customer backup files finish copying over to my external 2TB drive, I'll be deleting that ZFS pool and building it from scratch, properly setting up all 4 in a RaidZ1 array for redundancy. And then, I'm never messing with it again unless I'm certain that I have a full backup! Lesson learned!

Thanks so much for your help. That last command was it...importing the pool, read only, specifying the -R parameter and using the -Ff flags. On the positive front, I now have another 4 SATA ports in my rig, as well as a sweet new 1000watt PSU, so...When I need to slap more drives in there, I've got the space and power.

Thanks again...you saved my butt!

 

[paleoN]

I used the read-only import command you posted above and was able to partially import the pool. Awesome! A lot of the data is not available, but a lot was. I was able, luckily enough, to snag my work files and some essential customer backups.

Excellent.

So, once these last few customer backup files finish copying over to my external 2TB drive, I'll be deleting that ZFS pool and building it from scratch, properly setting up all 4 in a RaidZ1 array for redundancy. And then, I'm never messing with it again unless I'm certain that I have a full backup! Lesson learned!

It's a failing of FreeNAS to not require the user to specifically force different vdev configurations in the same pool. I believe there is an open ticket on this, #1577. It just hasn't gotten the love it deserves.

Thanks so much for your help. That last command was it...importing the pool, read only, specifying the -R parameter and using the -Ff flags.

Optionally, you can try with the -X flag afterwards. It will try a more drastic rewind which depending on the corruption may make more data, but older data, available. Expect it to take a while.

On the positive front, I now have another 4 SATA ports in my rig, as well as a sweet new 1000watt PSU, so...When I need to slap more drives in there, I've got the space and power.

Keep an eye on 199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count for your drives. While I don't believe this was the cause of corruption on the one disk, it's still a Bad Thing and something you want corrected before it does become more serious.