NAS flawless for a year... then no longer accessible by Windows. Need help retrieving a ton of data

[Joe_N9OK]

I am not a networking guru or a FreeNas guru. Over the last 15 or so years I've used prior versions of FreeNAS, Windows Home Server, and maybe another one to create a NAS, which is used for backups, photos, videos, music, etc.

Several weeks ago I started receiving emails that my FreeNAS device was almost full. I delayed dealing with this due to being busy. Now I get this message:
"Checking status of 3ware RAID controllers:
Alarms (most recent first):
mv: rename /var/log/3ware_raid_alarms.today to /var/log/3ware_raid_alarms.yesterday: No space left on device"

Now, my network share has disappeared. I can ping the server, so I know it's there, I just can no longer mount the drive.

I have tons of data on this server that I want to move to another network device I have.

Any suggestions how to access my data would be *greatly* appreciated.

Thank you.

 

[Joe_N9OK]

Should have included: FreeNAS-11.2-U3 (Build Date: Mar 27, 2019 18:24)

 

[sretalla]

mv: rename /var/log/3ware_raid_alarms.today to /var/log/3ware_raid_alarms.yesterday: No space left on device"

That would seem to indicate your boot device is full.

If you can get a config backup from the GUI, you may be able to simply rebuild FreeNAS and restore the config to get back in business.

If that's a non-option, you may need to build fresh and re-import the pools, perhaps if your system dataset is on one of the pools you can find a config backup there and restore it.

 

[Joe_N9OK]

Thank you for your response. The boot drive is not full, one of the 2 data pools are.

One of the pools is named JDK_NAS, it's a 5.24TB pool which contains all my data. The Pools dashboard reports 0B available.
The other pool, named Bulk_2TB, is empty, as I've never figured out how to access it from my Windows network. The Pools dashboard reports 1.75TB available on this one.

The 5.24TB pool (the full one) is comprised of 3x 3TB drives structured in such a way that the resultant pool is 5.24TB.
The 2TB pool (the emply one) is comprised of 2x 2TB drives structured to form a 2TB pool.

Could I simply purchase another 3TB drive and add it to the 5.24TB pool, increasing its size? Is this likely to work?
Or, could some of the data on the full pool be temporarily moved to the empty pool?

Thanks again for any assistance! I'm sweating here, really hoping I can access my data.

 

[sretalla]

That's an odd location to be reporting full, but perhaps it's the system dataset, hence in your pool if you left it as default.

If the pool is full, you won't be able to add a disk to it... due to the Copy On Write nature of ZFS, any changes need space to write to.

You may still be able to access the pool to copy data off it, but no changes will be possible.

See if you can get the system dataset to move to the empty pool and you may at least be able to re-assess what can be done.

 

[Joe_N9OK]

Thank you for your response. The system data pool is indeed located on my full data pool. How do I move the location? I see where I can point it to the empty pool (SystemSystem / Dataset). but will that empty the old location? How can I do that? Unfortunately I don't speak Linux or Freebsd at all...

 

[sretalla]

As I mentioned, a completely full pool can't be "fixed", you will need to get your data off it and start again.

Moving the system dataset in the screen you found is the way, and it may not work, but could succeed in allowing the system to work "normally" with the full pool still mounted (which then should let you copy off your data to an empty or additional pool).

 

[danb35]

Checking status of 3ware RAID controllers:

I hope this doesn't indicate that you're using a 3Ware (or any other) RAID controller--if you are, get rid of it, destroy the pool, and rebuild it using a supported disk controller.

As I mentioned, a completely full pool can't be "fixed"

I don't believe this is completely true. If there are no snapshots, I've seen it reported that large files can be truncated using a command like echo "" > largefile. That would erase the contents of that file, freeing its space. If there are snapshots which cover that file, of course, that won't work.

 

[Joe_N9OK]

I moved the System Dataset to the blank pool and rebooted. Not sure the reboot was needed, but I come from a Windows-centric universe so I never miss a chance to reboot. Voila, I can now map the full pool on my Windows machines. Sucking data off now.

There is no RAID controller on my old repurposed PC that I'm aware of. I agree that it sure does appear as if one is being used. Not sure what is going on here.

Thank You!