GreggP
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Posts posted by GreggP
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I'm no longer using my old unRAID server; realistically, I don't think I'd be able to sell it. It's a basic tower PC running the old v5.05 unRAID software. I built the system way back around 2010.
I'd like to utilize the hard drives after removing them from the server. I plan to plug them into an external USB drive docking station and then use them to back up my Lightroom catalog and RAW photo image files. These docking stations are attached to my Windows 11 laptop.
Is there anything I should do to prepare them for re-formatting for NTFS?
Years ago, I used one of my former unRAID 1 TB drives after swapping it out for something larger. I installed it in one of my PCs and formatted it to NTFS. It failed a few months afterward. I was able to recover some files with special recovery software (I don't remember what I used). During this process, I discovered that Windows was having trouble with the ReiserFS partition. So I wondered if I should've done something prior to just formatting. Maybe a preclear... Someone on the r/unRAID subreddit suggested just running 'diskpart clean'. Would that be enough?
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I realize this is an old thread but I have a related post/question that may add to this.
I have reformatted several 1TB WD drives that were used in my Unraid server. I simply used Windows disk manager and deleted the old partitions and created a new NTFS basic partition. Then I used these drives in some Windows PCs. I did this quite awhile ago, so this was performed when I was running Windows 7. Since then, I've stopped using the old PCs (and sold off parts). I've kept the hard drives and have been using with external HD docking stations as backup storage for newer Windows 10 machines. Most of these older drives have been chugging along just fine. However, a couple were not recognized by Windows 10. If I determined they were damaged after running WD utilities, I'd disassemble the drives, remove the platters and toss the metal in my recycling bin. The remaining platters make interesting coasters. A couple of these old Unraid drives seem healthy, based on the WD utilities, but Windows 10 will not recognize them. In that case, I used DBAN to wipe the drives and then I reformatted them. Then they seemed to work fine.
Recently, one of those 1TB drives which successfully was converted from ReiserFS to NTFS (without wiping) is having problems. My daughter was using it with her Macbook Air and a hard drive docking station to backup her important files. Several months ago, she switched to a Microsoft Surface Pro. The same HD with docking station worked fine with her new computer until a few days ago. It is no longer recognized by Windows 10. It is listed in Disk Managment as a healthy disk drive with a active, primary partition but there's no file system. There's no way to assign a drive letter or volume. The only option is to convert from Basic to Dynamic. I'm afraid if I do convert to Dynamic, she will lose all of her backed up files. I've used recovery software to get her files and have noticed the ReiserFS partition coming up.
I'm wondering if Windows 10 has a problem with old ReiserFS drives. Has anyone else come across similar problems?
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Joe, thanks again for your help. I've run pre-clear on the "sdg" drive again. This is the one that had 4 reallocated sectors (0 pending). I've copied the contents of the screen to my clipboard:
===========================================================================
= unRAID server Pre-Clear disk /dev/sdg
= cycle 1 of 1
= Disk Pre-Clear-Read completed DONE
= Step 1 of 10 - Copying zeros to first 2048k bytes DONE
= Step 2 of 10 - Copying zeros to remainder of disk to clear it DONE
= Step 3 of 10 - Disk is now cleared from MBR onward. DONE
= Step 4 of 10 - Clearing MBR bytes for partition 2,3 & 4 DONE
= Step 5 of 10 - Clearing MBR code area DONE
= Step 6 of 10 - Setting MBR signature bytes DONE
= Step 7 of 10 - Setting partition 1 to precleared state DONE
= Step 8 of 10 - Notifying kernel we changed the partitioning DONE
= Step 9 of 10 - Creating the /dev/disk/by* entries DONE
= Step 10 of 10 - Testing if the clear has been successful. DONE
= Disk Post-Clear-Read completed DONE
Disk Temperature: 29C, Elapsed Time: 24:37:24
============================================================================
==
== Disk /dev/sdg has been successfully precleared
==
============================================================================
S.M.A.R.T. error count differences detected after pre-clear
note, some 'raw' values may change, but not be an indication of a problem
19,20c19,20
< Offline data collection status: (0x80) Offline data collection activity
< was never started.
---
> Offline data collection status: (0x84) Offline data collection activity
> was suspended by an interrupting command from host.
============================================================================
root@Media:/boot#
Not sure what it means by "error count difference detected after pre-clear" and the offline data collection activity - "was never started" and "was suspended by an interrupting command." Is the script trying to do something it can't execute? With my other new drive (the one with no reallocated sectors), I don't think there were any text strings following the line that showed the drive was successfully pre-cleared.
Anyhow, I ran another smart report and it shows nothing has changed. The reallocated sector count is the same. So hopefully this drive (sdg) is good to go.
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I also just generated a smart report that shows there are 4 sectors that have been reallocated and no pending re-allocations. Before running pre-clear on this drive the SMART report showed 1 allocated sector with 3 pending re-allocation. So it looks like those 3 were reallocated. Does this mean my drive is okay?
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I recently purchased a couple of new 2TB Hitachi drives and tried replacing both my 1TB parity and disk1 drives. I followed the instructions from the "official" unRAID manual which doesn't include several steps recommended by knowledgeable users like Joe L., including parity checks and running pre-clear on the new drives. After replacing the parity drive everything seemed fine, but after replacing the disk1 data drive, 151 errors were reported for the parity drive. More info is available in this thread: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=8096.msg78237#msg78237
Joe explained how to get my array back to its previous state with the 1TB drives. And, yesterday, I finished pre-clearing both the new 2TB Hitachi drives. However, before I put them in my array, I wanted to ask a few questions about the results of the pre-clear.
I ran the pre-clears from 2 PuTTY session windows. At the end of the session for one of the disks, there were several errors listed. I don't know how to interpret these errors, so I tried copying & pasting the text to a txt file. Unfortunately, I didn't know that common Windows copy/paste techniques could result in pasting back into the PuTTY window. Afterwards, I also discovered the command for copying everything in the PuTTY window to the clipboard. Because of my sloppy copy/paste mess, it is hard to interpret my pre-clear results. I would get a syslog, but my server (and all other computers in my home) were shut down last night during a very rare power failure in our neighborhood.
I've attached the session text from both of the drives to this message in case someone can decipher these and help me out. The "sda" drive doesn't seem to have any errors. However, the "sdg" drive might have some problems. I'd like to know whether this drive needs to be returned to Newegg because I want to make sure I do so within the terms of their return policy (not sure if it is 15 or 30 days).
Retiring my unRAID server. What's the best way to utilize the HDs?
in General Support
Posted
I decided to run the command line utility diskpart clean all to prepare my used unRAID drive for formatting in Windows 11. Probably overkill but it definitely cleans out all remnants of the ReiserFS file system. I also ran Western Digital's 'Dashboard' program to check the health of the drive.