My weekly zpool scrub came back with this:

  pool: blackhole
 state: DEGRADED
status: One or more devices are faulted in response to persistent errors.
    Sufficient replicas exist for the pool to continue functioning in a
    degraded state.
action: Replace the faulted device, or use 'zpool clear' to mark the device
    repaired.
  scan: scrub repaired 0B in 02:01:59 with 0 errors on Tue Jul 11 04:02:09 2023
config:

    NAME                                    STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
    blackhole                               DEGRADED     0     0     0
      raidz1-0                              DEGRADED     0     0     0
        ata-WDC_WD120EDAZ-11F3RA0_5PG8DYKC  ONLINE       0     0     0
        ata-WDC_WD120EFBX-68B0EN0_5QKJ6M8B  ONLINE       0     0     0
        ata-WDC_WD120EFBX-68B0EN0_5QKJTT8B  FAULTED     51     0     0  too many errors

errors: No known data errors

I only got the drive 6 months ago, well within WD’s 3 year warranty so I opened a support case, but do errors like this basically always mean the drive is its way out or is it possible to have false positives?

  • Relic5646!OPEnglish
    2•1 year ago

    Thanks, I’ll try some of those things out and see if a second scrub says the same.

    That being said I have pretty good backups

    Out of curiosity, what do you do for backups? The initial cost of 3x12TB drives was enough to make me not want to spend a bunch more money on backup stuff at the time, but now that I’m seeing errors I’m willing to spend a bit of money again and should look into my options.

    • NineEnglish
      2•1 year ago

      I use Backblaze B2 and restic. Just a simple systemd unit & timer setup to kick off the backup. I also have a restic repo setup on a external drive for my most important things eg family photos. I try to follow the 3,2,1 rule as much as possible. Fedora magazine has two articles on the site about setting up restic like that. They’re pretty helpful if you need pointers.

      If there’s something I want to share or don’t need/want encrypted I’ll just use rclone to sync it to B2.

      Backups are very cheap with B2, restores can be costly. But cost less than something like AWS Glacier. So it’s my last resort for restoring things. Mostly I rely on snapshots in the case that I delete something by accident. (Check out SANOID)

      I also have all my other systems using B2. I have a bucket setup for all of my family’s laptops that they backup too as well. Keeps everyone’s data safe.

      If you have some data that required putting on an eyepatch & tricorn (Yarr me matey) to acquire and you don’t care about loosing it then don’t back that up.

      Edit: I also keep my important data on set of mirrored pairs. It’s not space efficient but it does the job of keeping things performant and safe. Eventually I’ll expand that past 3 pairs but for right now it’s 3 pairs (6 drives) of 10TB disks.

      Anything else that isn’t important is just on a small Z1 array. I put all my older drives on that array because they would just be on a shelf doing nothing otherwise so I don’t care about wasting storage on that array. Not a recommended practice at all. So do as I say not as I do kinda thing.

      • Relic5646!OPEnglish
        2•1 year ago

        Wow that’s pretty substantial, thanks for the tips! Wow yeah Backblaze does seem pretty affordable.