captain_video

Great! I have a couple of disks that I'm running the long generic tests on before attempting to run a pre-clear on them. They're 8TB drives so it could take about 45 hours or so to run pre-clear on one of them. I'll post my results when the first one completes.

I got this exact same sequence of error messages when attempting to preclear a drive. I have a slot in my server rack that I use specifically for pre-clearling drives. I replaced the SATA cable and put the drive into a new slot in my server rack and the messages disappeared. The drive did finally fail during the zeroing process at around the 75% complete point. I pulled the drive and ran SeaTools on it and it failed the short drive self-test so it turned out the drive was bad. I think this is actually unrelated to the error log you posted and feel it was more of a cable or backplane issue in my server. I would suggest replacing the cable and try to pre-clear it again. I just realized you have an external drive, but it could still be a cable issue. The vast majority of drives that I use in my unRAID server are drives shucked from external enclosures

UnRAID version 6.9.1 and 2021.01.03 version of preclear. I tried running preclear on a new disk and it craps out with the following errors in the log: Mar 15 15:28:51 preclear_disk_Z84013MY_11172: /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/preclear.disk/script/preclear_disk.sh: line 475: /tmp/.preclear/sdaf/dd_output_complete: No such file or directory Mar 15 15:28:51 preclear_disk_Z84013MY_11172: /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/preclear.disk/script/preclear_disk.sh: line 475: [: -gt: unary operator expected Mar 15 15:28:51 preclear_disk_Z84013MY_11172: /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/preclear.disk/script/preclear_disk.sh: line 478: /tmp/.preclear/sdaf/dd_output_complete: No such file or directory Mar 15 15:28:51 preclear_disk_Z84013MY_11172: /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/preclear.disk/script/preclear_disk.sh: line 480: /tmp/.preclear/sdaf/dd_output: No such file or directory The above messages are repeated about a dozen times before it just stops. Note that the disk being precleared is designated as device sdaf. This happened with the previous two versions of unRAID and I have always upgraded to the latest version of preclear when it was posted. I've never had any issues with preclear before. Is there a way to downgrade back to a previous version? I just removed the plugin and reinstalled it from the community apps tab. I'm rebooting the server to see if I can get it working again. The server got hung up and would not complete the boot process. This happened with the last drive I tried to pre-clear. The server would boot fine if I removed the drive from the pre-clear slot. OK, I also swapped the slot where I had been inserting drives to perform the preclear as well as replacing the cable that was connected to the backplane. Pre-clear is at 2% and counting. So far so good. This is the furthest it's gone since I started having these issues so I'm thinking it's either the backplane connector or the cable.

I'm sure the drive I had was an exception to the rule. I would like to think that these drives are decent enough to use in a PC or a server. Mine just seems to be an aberration. The weird thing is that it seemed to have no problems working on a Windows PC. my UNRAID server just seemed to take great exception to it for some reason. I've probably used about five dozen different drives in my unRAID server over the years and this is the first time I have ever experienced anything like this (I've got over 40 hard drives sitting on a shelf that were pulled from the server over the years due to upgrades). The server has never had any problems booting regardless of which make or model drive I had installed in the array. Update: I picked up some 8TB Seagate Archive drives on ebay and tried to run a pre-clear on one of them. Had the exact same issue with the new drive. The drive would show up as an unassigned drive in the array and would start the pre-clear process before crapping out after only a few minutes. I uninstalled the pre-clear plugin and installed it again from the community apps tab. When I booted up the server I had the same issue with it hanging up as I did with the WD drive. I shut down the server and swapped the drive and placed it into another empty slot in the server rack. I used a different cable attached to the backplane and this time it booted with no problems. I started running the pre-clear plugin with the new configuration and so far everything is looking good so I'm thinking it was either the cable or the backplane connection that was causing the issue.

I've been gradually upgrading all of the 3TB and 4TB drives in my server with 8TB drives as they get a lot of age on them. I have about a 60-40 mix of Seagate to WD drives with a few HGST drives mixed in. I've never had this issue with any drive before, regardless of manufacture or capacity. I used to have a lot of 1.5TB Samsung drives and never had a single failure using them. I believe Seagate bought them out years ago so they're pretty much defunct now. I also had a handful of Toshiba 3TB drives, but they have since been upgraded with 8TB drives. The server is currently at 176 TB capacity and counting. I've been running unRAID for about 11 years or more and couldn't be happier. It's been running off the same 1 TB flash drive for most of that time so that drive is probably living on borrowed time.

I believe that was mentioned in one of the articles I saw. I have to wonder if that's going to become a trend with newer WD drives. I'm hoping that the shortage of red drives was the real issue and they will start using them again once supply catches up with the demand. I won't buy another 8 TB WD drive in an external enclosure until I'm sure I'm getting one of the other drives. I'm perfectly fine with using Seagate. Over half of the drives used in my server are either 4TB or 8TB Seagates shucked from external enclosures and they're still working just fine.

I did some further research and it seems that Western Digital is using a different drive in the 8TB easy store external enclosures. Speculation is that there's a shortage of the WD red drives that they had been using so they went with a different drive that they had on hand. Apparently these drives get extremely hot and are not very good from that aspect, especially in an external enclosure. That doesn't answer my question about why it doesn't work in UNRAID or why it causes the server to bog down or completely freeze during bootup. I reinstalled the drive back in the enclosure and reformatted it so it could be recognized in Windows. It just doesn't have the WD extra partition or software on it anymore. I took it back to Best Buy and they gave me a refund.

UNRAID version 6.8.3 I recently purchased a WD 8TB EasyStore external drive from Best Buy that contained a WD80EDAZ drive. I've been shucking drives from external enclosures for years and never had any issues with them. All of the other WD drives in my server are WD80EMAZ or WD80EZAZ models and they work fine with no issues. I am using a 24-bay Supermicro server rack in conjunction with an 8-bay Supermicro rack all connected to the same ASUS A88X-PRO motherboard in the larger rack. I have a single extra SATA slot in the smaller rack that I use to pre-clear drives exclusively. I have tried running a pre-clear on this drive several times and it just quits after a few minutes with an error. I don't recall what the exact error was but it would always crap out after just a few minutes. The server backplane is powered by 4-pin Molex connectors from the PSU so there's never been an issue with the 3.3V signal on pin 3 since it simply isn't there. I pulled the drive and ran the WD Data Lifeguard diagnostics on a standalone PC that I use for that purpose, both short and long tests, and it passed. I performed a quick erase to get rid of the extra partition that WD installs with their external drives. When I reinstalled the drive back in my server it just bogged everything down to the point where it was extremely slow to boot or just failed to boot altogether. I saw some kind of error message about SATA9 and that the transfer rate was dialed back to 1.5 Gb/s on the one occasion where it did actually boot up, but the drive didn't show up on the web GUI as an unassigned drive. I removed the drive from the array and now it boots up just fine so it's definitely what's causing the boot issue. I am currently running a full erase on the drive to see if that helps. Right now I'm stumped since this drive does not seem to be compatible with my server. The Windows 7 PC that I use to run the diagnostics boots with no problems with this drive connected. Does anyone else have any experience using this drive in their server? If so, have you run across any similar issues and what did you do to correct them?

I've upgraded the BIOS on every motherboard I've ever owned and never bricked a single on of them, and I've owned more motherboards than I can count. I once contracted a virus that infected my BIOS and reflashing the BIOS got rid of it so sometimes it's a necessity for various reasons. I recently had an email account hacked and inadvertently opened an email from the hacker telling me he had installed ransomware on my PC and wanted me to pay him in bitcoin. I immediately disconnected my PC from the internet and shut down the PC. I pulled all of the data drives and copied them to my server using another PC and a USB docking station. Once I had all of the data copied I wiped the drives and trashed them. I installed a new OS drive in my PC and did a fresh install from scratch after reflashing my BIOS just to be on the safe side. I installed new data drives in the PC and formatted and partitioned them as before and then copied the data from my server back onto the new drives. Of course, I changed my email password using a different PC since the hacker said he was using a program that would alert him if I tried to change my password. What he didn't know was that I never open my email on my PC but always view it remotely on their server. I have since received several more emails from the hacker that I immediately deleted without opening. This happened about a month ago and my PC is working perfectly. I had to laugh because he also told me he got hold of my contact list from my email account. I looked at the list and there were only a couple of email addresses from people I know. The rest of them were probably put there by spammers. I contacted the few people in the list that I actually knew and told them not to open any emails from me using that email address and gave them all my current address. The irony is that the account that got hacked was an account that I don't use anymore. What's funny is that I'm hoping he sends emails to the other addresses in my contact list and spams the spammers. Now that would be true justice. The point to all of this is that flashing your BIOS is a simple task and not one you should be afraid to perform. Just follow the instructions posted on the download site for the latest BIOS file and you should have no problems. I should also like to mention that I have since switched to using a password manager instead of the simple password that got hacked for all of my accounts. It was far too easy for someone to crack but I was just too lazy to change it. I can never remember long passwords, especially complicated ones.

I reinstalled the linuxserver Plex docker and finally got the volumes mapped correctly. The Plex webGUI couldn't find the shares in unRAID because I was entering the wrong paths in the entry fields. It's currently in the process of rebuilding the libraries. The flash drive is the same one that's been plugged into my server going on about ten years now. I don't know why it didn't show up under the previously installed apps, but there was nothing there. Plex is the only docker I have installed. I try to keep unRAID up to date. I'm wondering if files get purged after a certain amount of time or if they get deleted when updating the OS. FWIW, I had uninstalled the limetech Plex docker and that is now showing up in the previous apps as you would expect.

It's been quite some time since I set it up so I've forgotten a lot of things since then. After looking at the FAQ it jogged my memory about some of the things I did before to get it working. Thanks for pushing me in the right direction.

I checked the Previously Installed Apps and it says No Matching Content Found. How would I map volumes to my media? I haven't changed anything in my setup that I'm aware of since I first installed Plex. I don't recall having any problems setting Plex up before. I installed the latest linuxserver Plex and disabled the limetech PlexMediaServer so they're both installed, but only the linuxserver Plex is running. I have the same issues with both versions of Plex.

I had the linuxserver Plex running fine on my unRAID server and then I decided to swap out my cache drive for a larger one. I lost Plex in the process because the appdata folder was on the old cache drive. It tried reinstalling Plex, but I mistakenly installed the limetech PlexMediaServer version. I tried adding libraries using the web GUI with no luck. When I browsed for folders it displayed what you see in the attached image. I can't see any of the media files on my server. How do I get to the shares on my server?

I upgraded the preclear plugin recently and I'm currently running the plugin on an 8TB Seagate drive pulled from a Back-Up Plus external enclosure. The pre-read process took about 14 hours, which is about normal for the size drive in my setup. The zeroing process was at about 10.5 MB/s when it started the process and then slowed to about 9 MB/s. Right now the process is at 91% and it's been running for over 218 hours. I saw another thread on how to replace the current script with the 2018.05.03 version which is supposed to run much faster. I've precleared the exact same drives before and never had a problem until upgrading to the latest plugin. I'm going to let the current preclear run to completion. I figure it should finish the zeroing process in another 23 hours, give or take, and then run the post-read process. If I don't have any luck using that older plugin on another drive I have waiting then I'll probably give this one a try.

I've got the linuxserver.io docker installed on my unRAID server (version 6.3.5). I was able to get the libraries setup but my Nvidia Shield doesn't acknowledge the server as being online. The Shield shows the unRAID server in the Settings, but can't see it as being online. The Plex WebUI sees the Shield as being an available player, but it's not listed under the Devices tab. When I checked the Plex Docker log (attached) it shows an IPv6 error. I'm wondering if this is the issue. If so, how to I go about fixing it?

Sorry about the semantics. I'm so used to using preclear I forgot that the terminology changes once the drive is inserted into the array. I was unaware that the array isn't taken offline with the newer versions when clearing a disk. That simplifies things considerably and solves my problem, assuming there's nothing wrong with the drives themselves. I've really got to start reading the release notes when I upgrade my software. Update: I installed five disks in the external bays and assigned each one to a slot. I was presented with a warning that all data on the drives would be erased when the array was started. I started the array and the disks are currently being cleared while still leaving the array active and unaffected. I can access files and play videos from the server with no problems. This is exactly what I wanted to do so it's all good. Like I said, I hadn't read the release notes on any current versions of unRAID so I wasn't aware that it had been fixed to clear the drives and still allow the array to be used normally. I was so used to it being unavailable during the clearing process that it never occurred to me that the authors may have changed that functionality. Is it any wonder why I love this program? Been using it for over nine years now and it was the best money I've ever spent on a piece of software. It just keeps getting better.

Got it. I was hoping I wouldn't have to let the array preclear it because it takes it out of commission while the drive is being precleared. Thanks for all of the input. I appreciate all of the comments and suggestions.

All of the drives in question have been partitioned and formatted in unRAID so they will not be precleared automatically when added to a new slot. They were all new, blank drives that had been precleared prior to insertion into the array for the first time. I have never had an issue using the preclear plug-in or the old command line version on a new drive, only with drives that had been removed from the array and replaced. None of the disks in question had reported any errors. I agree that it is disconcerting about the drives that are not completing the preclear process. I intend to run a complete diagnostic on them to see if they're reporting any issues. This whole situation is confusing and quite perplexing. I've re-purposed drives from the array before and never had any issues.

OK, that makes sense about the rebuild with a replacement disk. Thanks for the clarification. However, that brings me back to my original predicament. I can't seem to preclear a disk that was already precleared and then had data added after being inserted into the array. I basically want to wipe it clean so I can install it as a new disk without affecting parity, as you mentioned. I've tried it with several different disks and the preclear function either fails, stalls, or is extremely slow. The last disk I tried to preclear was only 52% through the pre-read process before it stalled. That took 19 hours for a 1.5TB disk. Doesn't unRAID write the clear signature to the disk in an area that would be unaffected by a low level format or am I off base with my thought process? This is why I was asking whether a low level format would zero the disk and still allow unRAID to see it as a precleared disk. If the rest of the disk is zeroed out then wouldn't that basically be seen by unRAID as a new disk that had been precleared? I'm just trying to figure out how to make this work without having to do a parity rebuild or do a new configuration from scratch. In a nutshell, how does one install a drive in an unRAID array that been previously used in the same array but was replaced so it is no longer part of the current configuration? I'd like to clear whatever data is on the drive so unRAID sees it as a blank, precleared drive. Doing a preclear on the drive doesn't appear to be a workable option, at least not using the plug-in. I also tried running the command line preclear script but the drive does not show up as a candidate for being precleared, which makes sense since it had already been precleared previously. I don't really want to install it and do a new configuration because it would do a new parity build with duplicate data on both the old drive and the one that replaced it. I'm starting to think that I may have to install all of the drives in the new enclosure, start with a new configuration, and let it rebuild parity even if the drives contain data. Once the parity rebuild is complete I can access the individual drives and delete the data from the drives. Parity will be updated to reflect the deleted data. This would limit the system to a single parity rebuild and still allow me to access the data. Does this seem like the only scenario that will work or do I have other options?

Hmmm, OK. On a side note, I reinstalled one of the drives that failed the preclear attempt and it treated it like a new precleared drive and rebuilt the data from parity. The drive had been in the array previously in a different location and I replaced it with a new, larger drive. After it rebuilt the data on the new drive from parity I attempted to perform a preclear on the old drive to write all zeroes to it. The preclear got hung up and subsequent attempts to preclear it failed. I took a risk and swapped out the old drive with a smaller one in the array to see what would happen. I figured if it tried to rerun a parity check I'd just stop the array and replace the old drive and restore the original configuration and the perform a new parity check. Instead, it treated the old drive as a precleared drive and restored the data, even though the drive had data from it's former location. I assume the preclear wiped the MBR so it saw it as a blank drive and rebuilt the data from the old drive using parity.

The enclosure is a Supermicro CSE-M35T-1B 5-drive bay that has five discreet SATA inputs. I'm just sitting the enclosure on top of the server chassis and using extension cables for the power inputs and 36-inch SATA cables for the signal connections. My server board uses three Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 8-port SATA controllers for the drives in the internal array and parity drive and a single dual-port SATA III controller (not currently connected to anything). The motherboard has six onboard SATA III ports, one of which is currently used for a 250GB SSD cache drive. I plan to use the five unused onboard SATA ports to connect directly to the enclosure so speed shouldn't be an issue. Doesn't a low level format write all zeroes to the disk? I'm using the HDD LLF Low Level Format tool from this site: http://hddguru.com/software/ The drives were healthy and working fine before I pulled them from the array. I only replaced them with larger drives for increased capacity.

I just picked up an external 5-bay disk enclosure I'd like to add to my 24-bay server. I have a bunch of smaller disks that came out of my unRAID array that I had previously updated and want to use in the external enclosure. I have been attempting to run a preclear on the drives and it either fails or runs painfully slow. I'm using the preclear plug-in on unRAID Server Pro version 6.3.2 with a 24-disk array (including a single parity drive and a cache drive). I have tried using both current versions of the plug-in. Do I even need to run a preclear on the drives? My main concern is that they still contain data that would be a duplicate of what's already on the replacement drives. If I add them to the array I assume that it will automatically rebuild parity with the data that's on the drives. I suppose I could stop the parity rebuild and then delete the data manually, but chances are I'd have to rebuild parity again from scratch since it's unlikely I could halt it in time. I'm trying to figure out the best approach to reintroducing drives with existing data that I would like to clear. Can I just run a low-level format and then insert them into the array without having to do another pre-clear?

Very weird thing happened to me yesterday. I went back and read through some of the older threads about turning off RAID capability on the AOC-SASLP-MV8 cards and the fact that they will cause a long boot time if it isn't disabled. I had implemented this on both of my original controllers quite some time ago, yet the long boot time persisted. I decided to take another crack at it and I found my old firmware 0.15 files with the edited 6480.txt file. I created a new boot flash drive with the files on it and set about updating the card. As expected, it failed the first attempt so I ran it again. This time it succeeded. I swapped the card with one currently running in my unRAID server and booted it up. This time it booted smoothly with no delay after scanning the controllers. I'm kicking myself for not trying this again after it didn't work the first time I tried it. For several years now I've been dealing with extremely long boot times because of this. Live and learn.

The same thing holds true when using multiple SASLP cards. You get a single BIOS screen when hitting Ctrl+M and you can toggle between the cards. Both cards are scanned and the drives are displayed during POST.

I've been running two Supermicro AOCP-SASLP-MV8 controllers in my server for many years. A few years ago I upgraded the firmware to version 0.21. Since that time it takes the server about 7-8 minutes to boot. It scans each controller and then displays the Ctrl+M message at the bottom of the screen and just sits there. After a while it reboots, scans the 2-port controller and then boots up unRAID. My motherboard has six SATA ports so the 2-port card along with the two 8-port cards gives me a total of 24 SATA ports for one parity drive and 23 data drives. The motherborad only has two PCIe X16 slots and one X1 slot as well as a single PCI slot. I've been wanting to add a cache drive to the array but had no ports available. I found a good deal on an Asus A88X-PRO motherboard and an AMD A10 7700K processor at MicroCenter. The plan was to pick up a third AOCP-SASLP-MV8 controller and run the cache drive from one of the onboard ports. I picked up a used card on ebay that turned out to be DOA. I tried it in several motherboards, including the current server board, and it wasn't even recognized. The seller was kind enough to give me a partial refund and told me to keep the card so as not to have to pay for return shipping. The added bonus was that it came with both high and low profile brackets. I picked up another used card on ebay and this one worked fine and also had the 0.21 firmware. I did have to go into the BIOS and disable the INT13 setting, but at least I didn't have to deal with the BIOS update. In fact, it works so well that I no longer have a long wait to boot up the server. Once it scans both controllers it reboots and scans the 2-port controller and goes straight into unRAID. I did some further experimentation using combinations of the original cards and the two new ones I purchased. The bad card simply would not allow itself or the other controller to be recognized at bootup so it is definitely a dead card. I decided to keep the new good card and the original good card that didn't hang on bootup. I have since purchased another used card on ebay and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this one will work as well. The whole point of this diatribe is to make people aware that buying used controllers can sometimes be a crapshoot. I know at least one of the two cards originally installed in the server was purchased new from Newegg, but I don't recall where the other was purchased (it may also have come from Newegg).