FreeNAS RAID-5 shines!

Talk about scary… Walked into the server room and saw horrible messages screaming by on my FreeNAS console stating WARNING: device name truncated (c9c9c9c9c9c9c9c9c9c9c9c9a9a9a9a9a9a9)

Checked the network for all NFS / AFP / SMB connectivity and all was GONE!! The system just get rebooting over and over. Well, Free NAS really shined through on this one.

Before I get to the solution, here’s my setup. 2U server w/ 1 bootable IDE drive and 3 x 400 GB IDE drives for the RAID-5. OK, enough already, here’s the solution.

I had to first determine which HD was causing the issue, so upon a reboot I paused the boot-up screen while booting in logging mode. I used the brute force method, but it worked. Brute force method goes something like this….

RAID-5 drive 3, swap with a new 400 GB drive, reboot FreeNAS… still had the issue… plug back in old drive.

RAID-5 drive 2, swap with the new drive, reboot FreeNAS… still had the issue… plug back in old drive.

RAID-5 drive 1, swap with the new drive, reboot FreeNAS… guess what, FreeNAS picked up and started booting. So, drive 1 went bad.

Once you have a booting system, log into the GUI and do an insert of the new drive into the RAID-5 and that initiates a rebuild of the RAID-5. Yes even an 800 GB RAID-5 takes all night to rebuild.

Once you rebuild, you can remount the RAID-5 and all should be fine.

It worked well for me and my faith continues strong in FreeNAS.