External USB disk failing, then GUI wouldn't come up, back now, pls advise on replace

TrueNAS General
1

I have a Truenas Mini and have been totally happy with it for years. Set up tasks, jails, everything works. I added an external USB disk (WD Passport) for backup. This worked great with ZFS backup.

A recent alert told me the monthly scrub had failed on the USB disk, with unrecoverable errors. I tried running a scrub manually. More errors. It started to become difficult to login via the web GUI. I decided to stop the scrub.

However now I can’t get into the web GUI all: I get the message about making sure the connetion is good. And I can’t stop the scrub in the CLI because I don’t have root console access enabled. I can ssh into the NAS and into the jails, and everything looks fine. But I can’t bring up the web GUI.

I do a hard boot and now I can’t even ssh in. The truenas.local name is no longer known. I’m locked out.

Help please!

2

I uncabled the external USB disk, did another hard reboot, and it came back!

I’m in again!

– Jon

3

The pool is now gone from zpool status.

The web GUI shows the pool as offline.

I accept that this external disk is toast. Now I want to replace it. Is this the procedure?

  1. web GUI storage → pools → EXPORT/DISCONNECT
  2. attach the new external USB disk
  3. web GUI storage → pools → add

Thanks!

– Jon

4

Yes, basically.

While USB drives are discouraged, using one for a backup is reasonable. Part of the problem is that some USB to SATA adapters won’t pass through SMART commands. So you can’t tell when the drive is having trouble.

5

Thanks for your help!

I have now replaced the external disk, and completed scrub and replication tasks. It’s good to have my backup!

Thanks again,

– Jon