It's my PARITY and I'll cry if I want to (Continued....l)

[Suse User]

Sorry, I couldn't resist using that title for the thread

 

As a follow up to my rather peculiar "incredible shrinking disk" parity problems Here

 

And another user's similar experiences Here

 

I thought I'd share what just happened at my next upgrade attempt today.  First off, I'm not in any difficulty, I'm merely posting to see whether it helps to get to the bottom of what has been causing it and find out whether an upgrade to v3 would cure it.

 

The Incredible shrinking Parity Disk - Chapter 2

This week I bought 2 new identical Make & Model 750gb Disks to increase the capacity of my UnRaid array, my previous biggest Disk was 400gb. Here is the sequence of events and subsequent results.

 

1/ I placed one of the brand New & Unformatted 750gb disks in the Parity slot and rebuilt the array.  This worked fine.

 

2/ I Stopped the Array, switched off & replaced one of the smaller Disks (a 300gb one) with the 2nd Brand New & Unformatted 750gb Drive.

 

3/ I restarted the array and got the message "Disk in Parity Slot is Not the Biggest", Screen Grab Here.  You can see from the image that newly formatted parity drive has reduced in size by 1056 bytes and now being reported as smaller than the newly added 2nd 750gb disk.

 

4/ I swapped the original, smaller (300gb) drive back into the array so that all disks were now in the same state & position as the last time that array parity was valid (after step 1 in this list), and rebooted.  The UnRaid server reported that "The Replacement Disk is Too Small", Screen Grab Here.  I had not replaced the Parity drive, in fact you can see from the screen grab that the model number is still the same but the size is different by that 1056bytes and that the 750gb Parity drive is way bigger than the next biggest (400gb) disk.

 

This would suggest that adding the 2nd large Disk was the point at which the parity disk's reported size got altered.

 

5/ I have now swapped the slightly reduced size 750gb Drive with the other new 750gb Drive and am currently rebuilding parity again.  Once this has completed (in 823 minutes time) I intend to replace one of the smaller disks with the now slightly smaller ex-parity drive.  This worked for me last time I had this problem when adding the first of my 400gb drives.

 

I wonder whether this helps shed any light on the problem?  I really can't go through this hassle every time I want to add a disk so I've decided that once this is all done I'm going to attempt a v3 upgrade.

 

Upgrading makes me very nervous so I'm going to build a trial system out of other bits to practice on first and try to re-create the problem on that.  Unfortunately I'm a little busy at the moment so it may take me a few weeks to find sufficient free time.

 

Some question before I try a v3 solution..

1/ I read on AVSForum that there is an imminent newer kernel UnRaid update.  Would I be better off waiting from that? 

 

2/ Was the problem I've been experiencing ever identified & fixed?

 

3/ If not, should I bother upgrading to v3?

 

Thanks,

 

Mark.

[Suse User]

Wishing to see if v3 will cure the parity size troubles I'm having I requested an upgrade license last Friday, hopefully it'll arrive any day now   But should I know wait for the new Kernel version anyway?

 

Thanks,

 

Mark.

[georgema]

If you are feeling ambitious you could always try the V3.1 Beta at http://www.lime-technology.com/dnlds/

 

You might want to check if this is a public beta and how stable it is. Anyone care to comment?

 

George

[Joe L.]

The 3.1beta version has been very stable for me.

 

Attached is the "readme.txt" file that is included in its distribution zip file.  Toward its bottom it lists the change history of the 3.x.beta series.

 

Most of the recent additions (since 3.0 final) were to add drivers for additional network cards.

 

Joe L.

 

 

[Suse User]

Thanks for the replies Joe & George,

 

The 3.1beta version has been very stable for me.

 

Attached is the "readme.txt" file that is included in its distribution zip file.  Toward its bottom it lists the change history of the 3.x.beta series.

 

Most of the recent additions (since 3.0 final) were to add drivers for additional network cards.

 

Joe L.

 

 

 

I would like to go straight to the newest version I can as doing these upgrades brings me out in a cold sweat every time.  I have home stored "disaster recovery" backup of business critical data on my unraid as well as my media storage.  In fact I have an Acronis backup of all my home PCs on there.  So I don't like to upgrade often.

 

I still haven't received an upgrade key from support, I did the Telnet USB key info check & sent the info to support last Friday.  Am correct that I need this upgrade to my licence key in order to use v3?

 

Also, because of various drive upgrades etc. I have almost enough bits to build a test rig to see whether I still get this parity resize problem occurring prior to trying it on my live data.  Does anyone know whether this is allowed under my purchased licence?  If I'd liek to to use this more modest array...Would I need to buy another licence in order to use it as additional storage on my network?

 

Many thanks,

 

Mark.