Help!

[domquark]

Please help! After trying to add drives to expand, my FreeNAS is reporting "Error getting available space" Status = "Unknown".

My setup is 4x 2TB HDDs on an Intel SRCSATAWB RAID card.

I added another 4x 2TB HDDs, which went in OK (according to the Intel BIOS). Immediately, FreeNAS threw the error, so I removed the extra drives but FreeNAS still won't recognise the original setup. When I try "zpool list", I get "no pools available". To be safe, I have ghosted the drives (which still show as being OK and ready in the RAID BIOS) and I am working off the copies.

Is there any way to force FreeNAS to redetect the drives, or am I going to have to try to recover all my data manually?

Many thanks in advance...

 

[cyberjock]

1. There is no "manually" recover data. The complexity of ZFS makes manual recovery not an option. There's a reason why there are no ZFS recovery tools and no "hard disk recovery professionals" list ZFS as a file system they can recover. There is also a reason why backups are mentioned throughout the FreeNAS manual and throughout the forum. Slide 32 on my presentation was created because of the blood, sweat, and tears of people that don't recognize this.
2. If you were actually using the RAID functions of the card, you made a big mistake. It's clearly stated in the manual, my guide, and (if you did any searching in the forums) that using hardware RAID with ZFS = kiss your data goodbye when things go wrong. If you chose to use the IDE or AHCI mode(usually called JBOD on real RAID controllers) then you didn't make this usually fatal mistake.
3. You can try to auto-import the zpool, but you've provided so little information on your configuration I can't even tell you if that has a reasonable chance of success.
4. If you did successfully add any disks to your zpool it is imperative that you not do anything with those drives. In the past people have added a single disk(realized they made a mistake seconds later) and then chose to shutdown FreeNAS and wipe the disk. By wiping the disk he made his zpool permanently unmountable and lost everything since he had no backup.

What you need to do is explain what you mean when you added the disks. Did you add them from the Intel RAID BIOS or from FreeNAS? The fact that you "removed" the drives makes me thing you were using the Intel RAID BIOS(which means you used the hardware RAID controller) because you cannot remove disks or vdevs from a zpool once they have been created.

Post the output of "zpool import". And whatever you do don't try to "force" a zpool import with the -f and/or -F parameters as that can have permanent(and often data loss causing) consequences.

And please tell me you made backups...

 

[domquark]

1. There is no "manually" recover data. The complexity of ZFS makes manual recovery not an option. There's a reason why there are no ZFS recovery tools and no "hard disk recovery professionals" list ZFS as a file system they can recover. There is also a reason why backups are mentioned throughout the FreeNAS manual and throughout the forum. Slide 32 on my presentation was created because of the blood, sweat, and tears of people that don't recognize this.
2. If you were actually using the RAID functions of the card, you made a big mistake. It's clearly stated in the manual, my guide, and (if you did any searching in the forums) that using hardware RAID with ZFS = kiss your data goodbye when things go wrong. If you chose to use the IDE or AHCI mode(usually called JBOD on real RAID controllers) then you didn't make this usually fatal mistake.
3. You can try to auto-import the zpool, but you've provided so little information on your configuration I can't even tell you if that has a reasonable chance of success.
4. If you did successfully add any disks to your zpool it is imperative that you not do anything with those drives. In the past people have added a single disk(realized they made a mistake seconds later) and then chose to shutdown FreeNAS and wipe the disk. By wiping the disk he made his zpool permanently unmountable and lost everything since he had no backup.

What you need to do is explain what you mean when you added the disks. Did you add them from the Intel RAID BIOS or from FreeNAS? The fact that you "removed" the drives makes me thing you were using the Intel RAID BIOS(which means you used the hardware RAID controller) because you cannot remove disks or vdevs from a zpool once they have been created.

Post the output of "zpool import". And whatever you do don't try to "force" a zpool import with the -f and/or -F parameters as that can have permanent(and often data loss causing) consequences.

And please tell me you made backups...

Hi Cyberjock,
Thanks for your prompt response.

Yes, alas, I did use the Intel RAID to add the drives. The Intel BIOS reports that all is OK with the array (from it's point of view). And yes, I did make the mistake of using the Intel RAID functions (damn!). Alas, the card I am using does not have a JBOD function.

I tried your suggestion of running the command "zpool import" from the CLI, but it returns nothing at all.

Looks like a restore from backups.

Thanks for your help!

 

[cyberjock]

Yep. Very glad to hear you say "looks like a restore from backup" because without a backup I have no other good ideas. One of the many selling points of ZFS is to remove the requirement that you have a RAID card to get access to your data.