FreeNAS - Degraded Boot, can't access share

[Spotty]

Have a NAS set up using FreeNAS 11.1 which has some volumes with system backups, backup of games, and also a media server (plex).
Tried accessing the drives remotely earlier today from my Windows machine and had the red network error on the drives, and when I tried to access them windows explorer would crash and I would need to restart (the windows system). Similar to when you're trying to access a dead/dying HDD and it just constantly tries to access the disk and ends up freezing up.
I can access the FreeNAS system through its IP, and can also access the Plex app through my PC (Browser app and the PlexMediaServer network location) as well as on my TV, and all the files play fine. I can even access the files through the PlexMediaServer and copy the files from it to the PC (Plex is pulling the files from the Media volume). 
The HDDs are there, the volumes are working, the machine can connect to them, can play the files stored on it... The windows PC just can't access them or mount them to a drive letter.

 

I tried deleting the volume mount in Windows and remounting them, but same thing again where if I browse to the network location \\FreeNAS\ I can see the shares, but trying to access them will just get stuck trying to load them and freeze up explorer. If I right click the folders to try and mount them, system freezes up.

The volumes are all on different HDDs, and are all showing Healthy status in FreeNAS. I can't access any of the shares, so I don't think it's a dead/dying HDD that is responsible.

 

Did the obvious stuff like restart the SMB service, as well as restart the FreeNAS system from the GUI. Still no luck.

Looking in FreeNAS GUI I see there's a Critical error for a degraded boot drive. Checking the Boot tab also shows the degraded error message. The Boot device is a 16GB USB flash drive.

Quote

 

CRITICAL: April 1, 2019, 8:01 p.m. - The boot volume state is DEGRADED: One or more devices has experienced an error resulting in data corruption. Applications may be affected.

 

Boot Volume Condition: DEGRADED One or more devices has experienced an error resulting in data corruption. Applications may be affected.

 

Spoiler

 

Could the degraded boot drive be what is causing my issue?

Have plenty of USB flash drives I can replace the degraded one with, and I'm going to have to swap it out anyway, but just want to know if that's what is responsible or if there's another issue that I need to look in to.

 

Also, anything I should do before creating a new boot drive and chucking the old USB drive in the bin? Any files or configs I need to back up or anything like that?

[Spotty]

As a sanity check, I just tried accessing the shares from my laptop and same problem. Can access the \\FreeNAS\ network and see the shares listed, but as soon as I try to open or interact with them the system just gets stuck on the little blue spinning icon until Windows Explorer gives up. So not an issue with my windows machine.

[AbydosOne]

On 4/1/2019 at 5:36 AM, Spotty said:

Could the degraded boot drive be what is causing my issue?

Most likely. I've had my FreeNAS boot drive(s) go degraded on me a few times, leading to all sorts of wackiness.

 

On 4/1/2019 at 5:36 AM, Spotty said:

Also, anything I should do before creating a new boot drive and chucking the old USB drive in the bin? Any files or configs I need to back up or anything like that?

If you don't already have a copy of configurations (I wouldn't recommend saving one now...), your pool is safe (assuming it's not encrypted, at which point... *shrug*), but you'll have to set everything else up again. When you're done setting everything up again, save a copy of the configs in case this happens again.

 

 

On the subject of USB boot in FreeNAS: I could never get it to be stable. I mean, I wasn't using the "recommended" flash drives, but even with two in mirror, I'd still have them fail scrubs/go degraded all the time. I ended up getting a 16GB Kingston M.2 SATA SSD (and a PCIe adapter card for power) to boot off of, and haven't had any issues since (almost a year).

[Spotty]

Just to update... Last night I installed a new copy of FreeNAS 11.2 on to a new flash drive. Set it all back up again, imported my pools and they imported without any issues, the volumes were still intact and in good health. Fairly basic NAS set up so it didn't take me long to set up my pools, user permissions, and plugins (Plex). Everything is working now and I haven't had any connection issues since installing a fresh copy of the OS on a new flash drive.
 

Not sure if the degraded boot drive was responsible for the connection issues I was facing, or if something else completely unrelated that just happened to fix itself with a fresh install... But regardless the problem is fixed now [hopefully].

 

On the plus side the upgrade to FreeNAS 11.2 is nice. Night mode

 

5 minutes ago, AbydosOne said:

On the subject of USB boot in FreeNAS: I could never get it to be stable. I mean, I wasn't using the "recommended" flash drives, but even with two in mirror, I'd still have them fail scrubs/go degraded all the time. I ended up getting a 16GB Kingston M.2 SATA SSD (and a PCIe adapter card for power) to boot off of, and haven't had any issues since (almost a year).

I'm out of SATA ports and my motherboard (MSI P55 something) doesn't have any M.2 slots. Only option would be either a PCIe to M.2 or PCIe to sata expansion card... Which I may do in the future when I expand the storage. But for now flash drive will have to do. I'll see how this one goes and if I have any issues with this new flash drive as the boot device I'll definitely look in to alternative options.