Trouble in River City

[Stux]

1.33 TB free of 1.79 TB, Mike

Oh dear.

You have no redundancy, your two 1TB disks are striped not mirrored.

When the drive fails that is failing, it'll probably take the whole array with it.

 

[Mike Zahorik]

Hmmm.... I just view the volumes and it reports it as healthy. Maybe a couple of bad blocks do not change this? Mike

 

[Stux]

Hmmm.... I just view the volumes and it reports it as healthy. Maybe a couple of bad blocks do not change this? Mike

It reports as healthy because its never checked the health. Your failing HD is currently gasping, its actively failing, and when it falls over, it will take your data with it.

If you value your data at all, you really need to backup what you can before its too late.

 

[danb35]

You might want to consider a new system, which you should be able to do for about $500. More details later.

OK, I'm assuming you're in the US, since the time zone in your SMART reports was CDT. With that assumption, the details:

• Start with the Proliant ML10 I mentioned earlier. $190.
• Add an 8 GB stick of RAM. $92 A 16 GB stick for $165 wouldn't be a bad idea, but probably not necessary.
  
• Add two 2 TB disks (yes, you can still get 1 TB, but the cost delta is so low that it really doesn't seem worth it). $90 each.
  
• Add a small SSD for a boot device (yes, you can still use USB sticks, but the SSD is faster, more reliable, and still cheap). $34

Done. Without shipping, $496. Set the disks up as a ZFS mirror, configure email alerts, schedule regular short and long SMART self-tests and scrubs. You'll have a stable, secure place for your data, which will regularly confirm that the data's in good shape, and alert you if there are any problems

 

[danb35]

It reports as healthy because its never checked the health.

...which I don't think there's a way to do on a UFS volume.

 

[danb35]

Hmmm.... I just view the volumes and it reports it as healthy. Maybe a couple of bad blocks do not change this? Mike

No, bad blocks won't change that--the volume status will show "healthy" until a disk drops offline.

 

[Stux]

...which I don't think there's a way to do on a UFS volume.

You can still schedule SMART testing on a UFS disk. I see no evidence that SMART tests have ever been run, other than just now.

If the "healthy" thing is reporting the SMART status the status will be "Passed" since there's never been a test run to fail.

of course, I have no experience with FreeNAS 8.3, or UFS. But what I do know is that the storage is Raid 0 with one very unhappy drive

 

[Mike Zahorik]

Well..... thanks for the ideas, but $500 probably will not pass muster with the SSA check. How about just replacing the 1TB drive with a new one? I found Tiger Direct can send me one for $50. Then should I correct this stripe to mirror? Mike

 

[Stux]

OK, I'm assuming you're in the US, since the time zone in your SMART reports was CDT. With that assumption, the details:

• Start with the Proliant ML10 I mentioned earlier. $190.
• Add an 8 GB stick of RAM. $92 A 16 GB stick for $165 wouldn't be a bad idea, but probably not necessary.
  
• Add two 2 TB disks (yes, you can still get 1 TB, but the cost delta is so low that it really doesn't seem worth it). $90 each.
  
• Add a small SSD for a boot device (yes, you can still use USB sticks, but the SSD is faster, more reliable, and still cheap). $34

Done. Without shipping, $496. Set the disks up as a ZFS mirror, configure email alerts, schedule regular short and long SMART self-tests and scrubs. You'll have a stable, secure place for your data, which will regularly confirm that the data's in good shape, and alert you if there are any problems

Currently OP has 1.33TB of data, so will need the 2TB disks. Even then, that's only 25% free. It would certainly be worth thinking about larger drives still.

 

[danb35]

You can still schedule SMART testing on a UFS disk. I see no evidence that SMART tests have ever been run, other than just now.

Agreed, on both counts.

But what I do know is that the storage is Raid 0 with one very unhappy drive

Agreed. @Mike Zahorik, you should work on backing up your data. Like now. Like today, if you can. As @Stux says, when that drive fully fails (which it's trying to do), you'll lose all the data on that volume.

 

[Stux]

Well..... thanks for the ideas, but $500 probably will not pass muster with the SSA check. How about just replacing the 1TB drive with a new one? I found Tiger Direct can send me one for $50. Then should I correct this stripe to mirror? Mike

You really need two 2TB disks so that you can combine them into a mirror of 1.78TiB, which is your current storage size with your striped 1TB disks (ie 2TB of storage, but no redundancy).

That's 180$ of the $500.

Can you put more memory into your current system? What mother board is it?

 

[danb35]

Currently OP has 1.33TB of data, so will need the 2TB disks. Even then, that's only 25% free. It would certainly be worth thinking about larger drives still.

Yeah, I hadn't seen his response with the disk usage, but he has 1.33 TB free, not used. So that would allow a mirror of 1 TB disks to work, though it'd be pretty full. A mirror of 2 TB disks would be only about 35% full.

 

[Mike Zahorik]

"Currently OP has 1.33 TB data?", no I have 1.33 TB of free space. Mike

 

[Mike Zahorik]

OK, if I did purchase two new 2TB drives, what should I look for? I generally go with seagate stuff. I read somewhere that maybe I should use a 5400 rpm rather than 7200 rpm. I suspect that the largest cach would be good. What else should I consider? Mike

 

[Stux]

"Currently OP has 1.33 TB data?", no I have 1.33 TB of free space. Mike

I apologise, two 1TB drives will be sufficient, and will leave you with circa 500GB free.

Ie, you could just replace your 1TB failing drive.

Depending on how things work, I would suggest installing the 3rd 1TB drive into your chassis. Setting it up as ZFS, then copying all the data off your failing array to your new 1TB pool, then destroy the old volume, and add the remaining healthy 1TB as a mirror of the new 1TB.

I'm not sure how well that will work with 4GB of ram.

 

[Stux]

OK, if I did purchase two new 2TB drives, what should I look for? I generally go with seagate stuff. I read somewhere that maybe I should use a 5400 rpm rather than 7200 rpm. I suspect that the largest cach would be good. What else should I consider? Mike

Pretty much you want to buy a NAS drive. So, WD Red or Seagate IronWolf. I think the IronWolf's are generally cheaper.

 

[Mike Zahorik]

I have a 500GB portable drive that I could copy all the data to. Then start fresh? Mike

 

[Stux]

I have a 500GB portable drive that I could copy all the data to. Then start fresh? Mike

Yes. Start backing up to your portable drive, I think a replacement 1TB drive should cost about $60

 

[danb35]

How about just replacing the 1TB drive with a new one? I found Tiger Direct can send me one for $50.

At a bare minimum, you'll need two mirrored 1 TB disks in your system. But that will be pretty full, which is rarely a good thing--I'd really recommend 2 x 2 TB instead. And there's no way (that I know of) to turn UFS RAID0 into UFS RAID1.

So, how to do that as inexpensively as possible? Here's the best I can think of:

• Copy all the data off your FreeNAS onto your client computer
• Destroy your existing volume, remove the failing disk, and install the new 2 TB disk
• Create a ZFS mirrored volume (or pool) using the good 1 TB disk and the new 2 TB disk. This pool will only have a capacity of 1 TB right now.
  
• Copy your data back onto the FreeNAS box
• In the not-too-distant future (perhaps next Sunday, A.D.), buy another 2 TB disk and replace the 1 TB disk with the new 2 TB disk. This will expand the capacity of your pool to 2 TB.

You would really want to upgrade your RAM to at least 8 GB if possible, as well.

 

[danb35]

OK, if I did purchase two new 2TB drives, what should I look for? I generally go with seagate stuff. I read somewhere that maybe I should use a 5400 rpm rather than 7200 rpm.

There's nothing wrong with 7200 rpm disks, but they don't really do anything for you, they tend to cost more than 5400 rpm, they draw more power, and they tend to run warmer. Your disk temps are fine, and with two disks, power isn't a major concern either. If there isn't a cost difference, you might as well use the 7200 rpm disks, but if there is, go for the cheaper ones. You'll find the WD Red disks are the most popular around here, but Seagate NAS (which I guess they've now branded as Ironwolf) are fine as well.