i386-pc not found

[rm65453]

Hi everyone,

Looking for some help here. Have been using Freenas for a few years and had had a couple of instances of losing data and now find myself in a similar situation again.

Got an error for one of the drives going bad, replaced one of the 4 3TB WD Red drives with a new 4TB WD Red drive. Booted the system and now I am getting an "Error 'i386-pc' not found" and ending up in Grub Rescue.

here is the structure for the HD0,gpt2 and HD0,gpt2 partitions
/grub
/ROOT
/ROOT/default
/ROOT/Initial-Install
/ROOT/9.10.XXXXX
/ROOT/9.11.XXXXXX

have tried to set the root to both the partitions and tried to boot from the directories listed above but with insmod normal get the same error from regular boot.

Is there a way I can recover access to my drives from this situation?

Thank you

 

[Arwen]

It's possible your boot drive just needs to be replaced. If you have the FreeNAS configuration saved somewhere, it's easy. Just re-install FreeNAS to a new boot drive and restore your configuration.

What is your hardware & NAS configuration?
Meaning, what do you use for your boot drive(s)?

If you did not save your configuration, you may need to restore it by hand.


One note, if you really bought a new WD Red, (and not a Plus or Pro), you may want to re-think and get a refund. Western Digital pulled a fast one, and in essence, crippled the "WD Red" line by using SMR, (Shingled Magnetic Recording), without telling anyone. Whence WD was "caught in the act", they created a new line called "Red Plus", which is basically the same drives as use to exist in the "Red" line before the SMR debacle.

In general, for ZFS use you want to avoid SMR drives.

 

[rm65453]

Thanks Arwen,

Just reinstalled freenas and importing the pool now. I think it will be all good. And yes you are right about the WD drives, they have been dying out a lot on me. Sending them back and would ask for the Red Plus ones instead.

Thanks again for your help.

 

[rm65453]

On a seperate note, between red plus and pro, which is my better choice?

 

[Arwen]

If I remember correctly, the Red Pros have a 5 year warranty and run at 7200 RPM. So they cost more and run hotter. But, you get a little speed up. Though if the drives are mixed Pro & Pluses, the speed will vary some, nothing to worry about. Just don't expect changing 1 disk to Pro to improve speed noticeable.

When I put together my old NAS, it had 4 x 4TB disks in a RAID-Z2. To try and scatter the failure times around, I bought 2 x Red Pros and 2 x Reds, (before the SMR thing). And each weeks apart from each other, (trying to get drives from different batches).

Some people don't worry about simultaneous drive failures. But I do, and have seen it at work. (Some of the places I've worked had >10,000 drives.) Even if not simultaneous, having to replace another drive in the same RAID set within 2 weeks is never comfortable.

In general, with good backups, most people should not worry. Even if you lost a few days, it would probably be more annoying that catastrophic. (Unless they were really important files, like a wedding or child's first birthday, etc... then you might want to make backups quicker.)