Parity upgrade nightmare [solved]


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So I had a 4TB drive which I wanted to install in my unraid server to upgrade a smaller drive.

Can't do that as it tells me that parity is smaller (also a 4TB drive) so I have to use it to replace parity instead.

Calculated parity on the new drive, showing up fine in the system.

Moved parity to a different slot, as I am trying to rearrange the drives to reduce extreme temperatures of my 500GB drives (55C during parity calculation).

BOOOOOOM now I have wrong disk messages for parity. It says that the drive in the system is "xxxxxxx (sda)" instead of "xxxxxxx".

And it also says it is 3TB instead of 4TB.

Tried swapping it back to the previous slot. No change, same message.

AAAAARGH!

Any suggestions to make it see that it is a 4TB drive, and restart parity calculations?

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Moved parity to a different slot, as I am trying to rearrange the drives to reduce extreme temperatures of my 500GB drives (55C during parity calculation).

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What is this different slot? It sounds as though the controller you moved it to may have an incompatibility with that drive.

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Moved parity to a different slot, as I am trying to rearrange the drives to reduce extreme temperatures of my 500GB drives (55C during parity calculation).

...

 

What is this different slot? It sounds as though the controller you moved it to may have an incompatibility with that drive.

 

I thought that, but when I moved it back to the slot where parity was created on that 4TB WD drive, it still said it was the wrong drive. Why wrong? It does not tell you why, but it showed a different name for the drive WD40EZRX-WCC4EKLRLUUK which was missing (the available drive was "WD40EZRX-WCC4EKLRLUUK (sda)") and the size reported was 3TB vs 4TB for WD40EZRX-WCC4EKLRLUUK (which is the same god forsaken drive!).

 

, cause it was smaller and

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No ideas anyone on how to resolve this?

Well, I am going to try a nuke approach. I believe this to be a software issue.

So I will wipe the key and start from scratch. What I want to do is to remove any memory of what drives I had in the configuration.

Any other way to do that other than wiping the key?

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It was showing correctly in Unraid. I used it to replace the old parity, it calculated parity fine.

Then I moved it to a different sata connector (slot) and there my troubles began. It is like UNRAID has rewritten the description of the drive when I moved it and it is now seeing it as a 3TB drive no matter which slot I place it in.

I had the same issue with the current parity drive (the old one).

Wiping the key seems to be connected with the fix, although I will only know for sure if it fixes it this time too.

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Understand.  The issue, however, is whether or not the drive's internal parameters have been modified, or if this is just some strange behavior on the part of UnRAID.

 

If you simply connect the drive to a different system, and then see what size Disk Management shows for the drive, that would answer that question.    If the drive's internal parameters have been modified, it's easy to set them back to the correct value.

 

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So I plugged it in another PC, and it showed to be of size over 3TB.

I deleted the only partition on it, and now it says size is 2794.54 GB.

I will try to put it back in the unraid server and see if deleting the partition has made any difference.

 

2794.54 is correct for a 3TB drive => remember that disk drive makers use decimal values; while in "computerese" a KB is 2^10 = 1024.  So a GB in "computerese" is 1024 x 1024 x 1024 bytes.

 

If you multiple 2794.54 by (1024 x 1024 x 1024) you get over 3,000,000,000,000 bytes, or 3TB in "disk drive maker - ese")

 

However, the issue still remains that your 4TB drive now "looks" like a 3TB drive => but since it's consistent on different platforms, that simply means it's set incorrectly in the drive's internal memory.

 

 

You can change that with the free HDat2 utility.  Just download the bootable ISO; boot to it; and use the "SetMax" function to change the drive to its native size.    ... I'd do this on a system where it was the only drive installed, just to be CERTAIN you don't change the wrong drive  :)

http://www.hdat2.com/

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  • 2 weeks later...

You just need to select the Set Max function ... by default it will reset the drive to its native size.

 

Well, you were so right garycase, HPA of 1TB, for some reason. Strange but true.

Removed it using the utility you linked, now it is seen again as a 4TB drive.

Thanks for that, appreciated!

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