rgagne

If this is a new install - an error I made that prevented the server from being available was to skip the step of assigning the Volume label of the USB key that contains the server to "UNRAID"

Great - I will do that. Thank you!

One more clarification - this was not a precleared drive. I put a fresh disk in, started the format - lost power - restarted - continued the process - got online ---- and then was unable to write to the disk.

Thanks The problem I had was that there was no format button. For whatever reason, because the format had started (but was then interrupted by the power failure) the disk went through the parity sync and everything was showing green --- except that I could not write to the disk. Once I did the format I was able to write to the disk. So it all seems to be working now - but given the comments I found I wonder if it is actually working. Is there a reliable way to check? Should I start over? If so, how?

Agreed. I ended up formatting it because I was not able to find another solution. The drive was showing up but was not writable (and I had not read the link I posted above yet). Once I formatted it started to work properly.

Yes, I am hoping that the fact that both the data and parity disk are written is a good sign. My concern is due to this thread: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2817 After doing the above, I found this comment in the above thread: "Do NOT format the drive on your own using a reiserfs linux command, or using a button in unMENU, if you do, the pre-clear will be invalid, and you may even fool unRAID into thinking it is cleared when it is not." This comment is in relation to pre-clear, so not exactly the same, but I'm still wondering if I did the right thing.

Power lost during initial format I lost power partway through the initial format before the parity sync/clear. When I brought the machine up again it restarted the parity sync/clear from the begining. Eventually that finished and the disk was available but was not writable. I restarted the array, restarted the machine, etc. but the disk would not write. It was my first disk to add to the array (and my first time using UnRaid). Example log when trying to add a share: Jan 24 09:51:19 Storage emhttp: shcmd (14): mkdir '/mnt/user/Movies' Jan 24 09:51:19 Storage shfs: shfs_mkdir: mkdir: /mnt/disk1/Movies (30) Read-only file system Jan 24 09:51:19 Storage emhttp: _shcmd: shcmd (14): exit status: 1 Jan 24 09:51:19 Storage emhttp: shcmd (15): chmod 700 '/mnt/user/Movies' Jan 24 09:51:19 Storage emhttp: _shcmd: shcmd (15): exit status: 1 Jan 24 09:51:19 Storage emhttp: shcmd (16): rm /etc/samba/smb-shares.conf >/dev/null 2>&1 Jan 24 09:51:19 Storage emhttp: shcmd (17): cp /etc/exports- /etc/exports Jan 24 09:51:19 Storage emhttp: shcmd (18): echo \"/mnt/disk1\" '-async,no_subtree_check,anongid=0,anonuid=0,all_squash' 'Disks' >>/etc/exports Jan 24 09:51:19 Storage emhttp: shcmd (19): killall -HUP smbd Jan 24 09:51:19 Storage emhttp: shcmd (20): /etc/rc.d/rc.nfsd restart | logger Jan 24 09:51:19 Storage mountd[1313]: Caught signal 15, un-registering and exiting. Jan 24 09:51:20 Storage kernel: nfsd: last server has exited, flushing export cache I then logged in, with the array still running, and ran reiserfs to format the drive. Both the data disk and the parity disk were written to. I restarted the array. The disk is now writable; I can create shares, etc. Everything seems to be working properly. My question - is the disk actually protected by the parity disk? It seems to be writing to both disks when I write to it.