FreeNAS won't boot after shutdown - Blinking Cursor -- Rebuild Advice

[mgerety]

Issue:
Have 3x3tb drives in a Raid-Z1 vdisk in my zpool.
The pool is degraded, one of the drives died. I logged into the web app and recorded the serial numbers of the working drives. Shutdown the server, disconnected the drives and pulled them out to find the bad one, plugged them all back in and power up. The server wasn't coming up.

Attached a monitor and keyboard/mouse, and get to a blinking cursor when booting from the USB, without any progress. I am certain i'm hitting the USB, as there is different behavior (a message stating I can't boot from a NAS drive) when I remove it. I've chosen it explicitly on boot.

I'm assuming the boot disk (USB Drive) is corrupted. My ONLY concern is the data. My configuration was off lately, I screwed up Sonarr and had a weird permissions issue. I was planning on rebuilding the server at some point anyways.

Questions:
Can I somehow import this zpool into a fresh install of FreeNAS?
Since I was planning on re-configuring the server from scratch, any harm in installing freenas 11 and importing the pool? (And is there any guidance on doing this?)
Should I install freenas 9.10 on a new usb and start there instead?

What's the best course of action?
I've already ordered 2x Sandisk Cruzer small form factor USB drives for a mirrored boot setup going forward.
I have 2x 8TB WD EasyStores to shuck, and i'm ordering another on the way to set up a new Raid Z-1 array for a new zPool.




Setup:
AsRock Rack E3C224D2I
Core i5-4590
8GB RAM
3x Seagate NAS HDD ST3000VN000 3TB drives -Raid Z1
Boot Drive - 16GB USB in Internal USB port

 

[Chris Moore]

I'm assuming the boot disk (USB Drive) is corrupted.

Sometimes a failed drive can prevent a system from booting. You might want to remove the failed drive and try again.

Can I somehow import this zpool into a fresh install of FreeNAS?

Yes. No problem. Since the pool is degraded, it might need to be forced, but it should still work.

Since I was planning on re-configuring the server from scratch, any harm in installing freenas 11 and importing the pool?

What version of FreeNAS are you using now?

Should I install freenas 9.10 on a new usb and start there instead?

If this question indicates you are still on 9.10, my question would be why?
Still, if you can't get your existing boot media to boot, you should be able to do a fresh install of the latest version of FreeNAS. There have been changes to ZFS, but it should not prevent you from importing the pool.

I've already ordered 2x Sandisk Cruzer small form factor USB drives for a mirrored boot setup going forward.

I would have suggested using a SSD instead because they are more reliable.

I have 2x 8TB WD EasyStores to shuck, and i'm ordering another on the way to set up a new Raid Z-1 array for a new zPool.

If you want to do that, I would suggest making a 4 (or more) drive RAIDz2 pool. RAIDz1 is not suggested with drives larger than 1TB.

 

[mgerety]

What version of FreeNAS are you using now?

9.10

If you want to do that, I would suggest making a 4 (or more) drive RAIDz2 pool. RAIDz1 is not suggested with drives larger than 1TB.

Can I start a RZ2 it with 3 and add one later? Budget doesn't allow for another 8TB until next month.

 

[Chris Moore]

Can I start a RZ2 it with 3 and add one later?

No. The minimum number of disks for RAID z2 is 4, but you could use a smaller disk you already have and replace it later. It just needs to be as large enough that the resulting pool would allow you to copy all your data over. Here is how it would work. The pool would be limited by the size of the smallest disk, so you could have three 8TB drives and one 4TB drive and they would all be treated like 4TB drives. With four 4TB drives, in RAIDz2, you would have around 6.8TB of space. Then, when you replace that one 4TB drive, so they are all 8TB drives, the pool would autoexpand to about 13.6TB. You just need a good drive that you can use temporarily.

 

[mgerety]

Chris,

Thanks for all the help!