- Closed
I've recreated this issue twice as I expand my primary array, previously in 6.12.8, now in 6.12.10:
- Purchase new disk(s), slot into backplane
- Drives are recognized under Unassigned Drives
- Start Preclear on some/all drives, wait for drives to complete Preclear.
- Optional: Purchase and add more new disks to backplane
- Once Preclear is complete, stop array to add drives
- Add drives, start array, this succeeds as expected
- Tick the "Yes, Format" and click Format to officially add the precleared drives to the array
- Formatting begins, and because I am impatient, I go down and start preclear on any new Unassigned Devices I may have installed but not yet cleared
Formatting will now silently stall until the Preclear(s) are complete (25+ hours for 18TB drives).
I recognize this is likely intended or untested behavior, and an edge case. And now that I've found it, it's easy to avoid. I think my low-priority bugfix suggestion would be: have Unassigned Devices grey out Preclear while a formatting operation is occurring, as Formatting should only take a few minutes for Precleared drives to finish on an array, and/or have a warning note on Format button to please wait before starting additional Preclear functions.
You can see what happens in my attached syslog: I start Formatting 3 precleared drives, click Preclear on a new drive (not logged in syslog, afaict), then the Format process just stalls completely for 12 hours. I then realize the Preclear is probably causing me grief, stop the preclear, and the stalled formatting completes quickly as expected and the drives are available in the array.
(Array drives: Seagate 18TB Ironwolf Pro)