Joe L.

Create a new post in the hardware forum. attach a current syslog. Describe the symptoms and what you have tried.

Trust me your drive does not have 18446744072344861488 sectors. 18446744072344861 sectors 18446744072344 M 18446744072 G 18446744 T 18446 P 18.446 Exabyte sectors... The HPA setting seems invalid message occurs because the HPA setting dies not equal the reported total number of sectors. If those 512 Byte sectors you would then have a 9146 Exabyte disk. Joe L.

fdisk -l or hdparm -I or hdparm -N or smartctl -d ata -a

That's how I would interpret those results. So then does that mean because mine went under the previous value that something is wrong or does it need to be run a third time to seem if it keeps going down? If you find the time to do a little bit of reading in this thread you would see that the 100 200 and 253 values are those used by the manufacturers when a disk is initially manufactured and then set to either a 100 or 200 once the disk gets a bit of time on it. There is no "standard" and it is sometimes different by disk model even within a brand. The ONLY "failure" is if the normalized value goes below the threshold. Other than that, according to SMART, the disk has not failed. As long as the pre-clear said it was successful and no attribute is below its threshold your disk is working. The only attributes we really care about in pre-clearing (and where the "raw" value has some meaning to anyone other than the manufacturer) are re-allocated sectors or sectors pending re-allocation. Joe L.

That's how I would interpret those results.

Sorry Joe, yes I need to study the prior posts and will do that. I'm using putty to telnet and "screen". Somehow I can't seem to see any of my other disks anymore so I don't know when thy will be finished or the results. I login to tower, then root, then screen -r 2048 (the session thats preclearing my drives) which did work to cycle through my drives with Ctrl A then N, but it is not available now. Is there another way to see if my drives are still in the preclear stage? Thanks, Tom look for them in the process list? top will show you active processes. Look for their entries in the syslog. Their completion is logged there. Thanks, I just assigned a parity drive, 4 data drives and a cache drive. It said the data and cache drives were not formatted so I started to format. Not sure why the parity drive did not request a format. It now says the parity drive is syncing with 700 minutes to go! The parity drive is never formatted. It does not contain a file-system, it just contains parity calculations. It sounds like you are well on your way. Do not forget to perform a "Check" of the parity once the initial parity calculation is complete. Right now you are writing the parity disk you will not know if it is readable until you perform a subsequent "Check" by pressing the "Check" button on the user-interface. Joe L.

Sorry Joe, yes I need to study the prior posts and will do that. I'm using putty to telnet and "screen". Somehow I can't seem to see any of my other disks anymore so I don't know when thy will be finished or the results. I login to tower, then root, then screen -r 2048 (the session thats preclearing my drives) which did work to cycle through my drives with Ctrl A then N, but it is not available now. Is there another way to see if my drives are still in the preclear stage? Thanks, Tom look for them in the process list? top will show you active processes. Look for their entries in the syslog. Their completion is logged there.

I guess you did not read any of the prior posts in this thread describing how to interpret the results. Your disks are quite normal.

Ok, thanks Jim A master boot record has positions in it for 4 partitions. unRAID uses only 1. The bytes describing the other possible three must be cleared in case they once held old partitioning information. as described this message is informational and completely normal.

Ok sounds good, I'll run it once more. Better safe than sorry. Once this has finished for the second time, I will be able to populate it while I pre-clear my other drives? I'm pretty sure I read that at the beginning but wanted to make sure. Yes you can add it to your array and start using it. While the array is online you can pre-clear any drive not assigned to the array.

looks fine to me too. The time will not affect the pre-clear. Joe I read earlier in the post that you recommend running a few pre-clear cycles to verify everything is fine. How many cycles do you suggest for a drive that takes 36 hrs to complete? One is probably enough... if you have the time and don't need it immediately, let it run again. Many manufacturers like to burn-in electronics for 48 hours... you've come pretty close to that.

looks fine to me too. The time will not affect the pre-clear.

yes the backslash escaped space will work, but so will putting the name in quotes... In fact, you probably did not notice, but the VERY FIRST POST in this thread says exactly that:

You've apparently not seen any of the posts on how to interpret the results. The "raw" column values have meaning only to the manufacturer in most cases. For attribute 1 the normalized value is nowhere near the failure threshold. For attribute 7 the normalized value is still set at its starting point from the factory with a new value of 253. Look at the value for "head flying hours" as an example of a value that has no meaning to us. Even if measured in billionths of a second the raw values would make no sense. (certainly the flying hours would not decrease, and the raw value has decreased) Your disk looks fine. There are no re-allocated sectors or sectors pending re-allocation.

I'm guessing it could just as easily be a loose/bad cable to the drive. But do not touch them now... Only do that after stopping the array cleanly and then powering down. (It could be either the power or data cable, or, if in a drive tray, it might not be seated well in the connectors.) Joe L.

It is trying to invoke the smartctl program on your drive. The drive is not responding. (for whatever reason) You can try to see if typing smartctl -T permissive -d ata -a /dev/sdf and see if it responds with a smart report.

What error? I do not see any.

The value 253 is used by manufacturers as an initial value until the drive is put into use. All you are seeing is the new "starting" value of 200 being instantiated. Perfectly normal.

Impossible to tell from that output the root cause. Obviously the drive is not writable. Were both drives in the same drive cage? Using the same power connector? Perhaps that is it. Were they both dropped by the same UPS delivery person? Perhaps that is the answer. Can you get a SMART report from the drive? Does it respond to an hdparm command? smartctl -a -d ata /dev/sdf hdparm -I /dev/sdf Joe L.

Nothing looks bad at all. Enjoy your new drive.

Everything looks quite normal. Enjoy your new drive.

It indicates that zeros written to the drive are not being read back as zeros. (Could be an effect of a poor power supply and the drive being sensitive to noise on the supply line, or, a defective drive, or even a defective port on the disk controller.) It certainly indicates you do not want to trust it for your data. Joe L

Looks perfect.

As you discovered, the "append" line in syslinux.cfg is the equivalent to what you posted for GRUB.

I agree, it does not look good. Yes, you can still RMA it. (and you should RMA it... it is returning many un-readable sector errors. It does not look like they'll get better with time) Joe L.