Hello. I have recently run into issues with one of my drives in a windows storage space and want someone to double check what I am about to do before I mess up all my data.
Current Problem
Currently I have one drive that is rapidly dying. It is basically flickering in and out and every time it comes crystal disk info reports more bad sectors, pending sectors and uncorrectable sectors. I have had this setup to email me when errors are detected and that number is getting higher.
I have also been away from home for a while due to school but will be getting back in about a week.
My Current Setup
My current "server" is running Windows Server Datacenter 2025. I have had the windows storage space setup for close to a year now. It consists of 3 renewed / refurbished Seagate Exos 14tb SATA drives (CMR) running in parity mode. This totals to ~25 TB of usable space. I am only using about 4tb at the moment. In case it is relevant it is running on the X399 Threadripper platform. I know I have seen negative views towards windows storage spaces but I have found this to be the best for my use since I still use this computer for day to day stuff and am not quite ready to switch to Linux yet.
Unfortunately, I do not have a backup of all of this yet as I am trying to slowly build up my systems.
Current Recovery Ideas
My ideas for recovery follow two different plans. The first is to purchase another one of the drives and replace the failing drive with this new one and then let the pool rebuild as best as it can. I am currently scanning the files to see what level of corruption I am dealing with.
My second idea is to transition the pool to a mirrored setup. Since I am not really using a ton of storage at the moment this could work but I would like to be able to expand the array in the future.
Current Questions
- Are either of my plans safe to follow?
- Is there a good temporary way to back up my data while I change over the drives? I only have 10 mbps upload so internet uploads could be an issue. I do have other storage on my server that I could potentially use.
- Should I stick with parity or would it be better to go to mirrored? Is there a point at which one becomes better than the other?
If you have any other questions about the setup I am more than happy to reply to the comment. I am sorry for any lack of information. In all honesty I have a LTT level of this is a cool thing I want to do knowledge on this and have never had to do data recovery.