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.

Based on that output: You do not have both a DNS Nameserver and a Gateway defined in your unRAID "Settings" screen before you can use the unMENU package manager to download packages. For most people, these should both be set to the IP address of your router. Once you set them the package manager will work for downloads. It should have looked like this: root@Tower:/boot# net lookup google.com 74.125.229.17 root@Tower:/boot# ping -c 5 google.com PING google.com (74.125.229.17) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from google.com (74.125.229.17): icmp_seq=1 ttl=55 time=19.5 ms 64 bytes from google.com (74.125.229.17): icmp_seq=2 ttl=55 time=19.1 ms 64 bytes from google.com (74.125.229.17): icmp_seq=3 ttl=55 time=22.3 ms 64 bytes from google.com (74.125.229.17): icmp_seq=4 ttl=55 time=18.9 ms 64 bytes from google.com (74.125.229.17): icmp_seq=5 ttl=55 time=18.9 ms --- google.com ping statistics --- 5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 4035ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 18.924/19.784/22.381/1.319 ms Joe L.

That usually indicates you do not have a nameserver defined in your settings. What do you get when you type: net lookup google.com ping -c 5 google.com

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.

You have 6 virtual consoles available if you attach a keyboard and monitor to your unRAID server. ALT-F1 through ALT-F6 will switch between them. You can run up to 6 pre-clear sessions, one on each virtual console.

You are looking for any attribute that says FAILING_NOW. You are looking for re-allocated sectors, or sectors pending re-allocation (in the RAW column) No other RAW column is meaningful to anyone but the manufacturer, with the possible exception of temperature. You are looking for any other attribute where the current value is nearing the "threshold" column. Joe L.

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.

You will need to un-assign it before the pre-clear script can be used against it.

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.

Okay, thanks - I will give those a try ... but with 4GB available, I'm surprised. However, with this info, it does look as though something is being greedy!: Memory Info (from /usr/bin/free) total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 3943140 3570284 372856 0 115252 3294348 -/+ buffers/cache: 160684 3782456 Swap: 0 0 0 Well... If you think of it a tiny bit. Both your movie AND the disk being cleared are using the same 4Gig of memory to buffer the movie you are playing (probably over 4 Gig) and the disk you are clearing (certainly WAY over 4 Gig... probably 2000Gig) Joe L.

sounds like you are running low on memory for the disk buffer cache. Adjust the cache_pressure to a higher number... 200 perhaps, and also consider using the parameters to preclear_disk.sh to limit its use of memory. Joe L.

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.

Correct. drives not assigned to the array have not had any spin-down commands issued to them. You can issue commands to have them spin themselves down on their own, but those commands work on some drives and not others. It is why unRAID does its own timing for assigned drives. The device name may change from one boot to another as they are assigned as the drives are recognized by the linux kernel. Most of the time it will identify the drive in the same order, but adding a new drive, or a new disk controller will change the "sdX" assignments. Fortunatly unRAID uses the physical disk controller ports on the PCI bus to identifiy drives. It does not care if it is /dev/sda now, and /dev/sdb when you reboot. Memory Info (from /usr/bin/free) total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 3943140 583048 3360092 0 64204 311224 -/+ buffers/cache: 207620 3735520 Swap: 0 0 0 There goes that theory. You have a lot of free memory. It leaves some other hardware interaction perhaps. Probably not that... Unless you see "unformatted" on a drive you know is formatted, you'll not be formatting a drive with data. unformatted can be misleading though, as it simply indicates the drive cold not be mounted as a reiserfs file-system. Seek assistance on the forum if a data drive shows as un-formatted. (look in your syslog, you'll probably see the file-system could not be mounted a a file-system check is in order) As far as assigning data drives on your array you can swap around disks amoung the same set of disk controller ports. If you use different ports on the disk controllers you'll need to use th e"devices" page to assign the disks back to their respective logical slots in the array. Take a screen-shot of the "Devices" page so you'll know where each of the disks is assigned. If yo see a "red" indicator adjacent to a drive it indicates it was disabled because a "write" to it failed. When that happens unRAID simulates the disabled drive by using parity and all the other data drives. Do not be fooled into thinking it is working because you can still read and write to it. Seek guidance on the forum. It could be a bad drive, or it could be a cable came loose. Before you do anything capture and post a syslog. (instructions under troubleshooting in the wiki) Joe L

... in theory! But the only devices currently active on the network are two Popcornhours, and my ubuntu desktop. If I kill the preclear, the reads on disk2 cease instantly, and the drive spins down after 15 minutes. If I then try playing a movie on the Popcornhour, it plays perfectly. If I restart the preclear, the movie stops playing within 30 seconds. Even if I then turn the Popcornhour off, the reads on disk2 continue as before. When I then kill the preclear again, the reads on disk2 cease, and the drive spins down again after 15 minutes! I am convinced that the evidence all points to preclear reading disk2 (sdc) (which is mounted, and part of the array), while it is also reading the new drive (sdf). I'm not sure whether there is a connection, but it might be worth pointing out that I also have the problem that nfs activity on the cache drive actually performs the operations on disk2! You probably have a lot of memory being used by other processes on your server. As I pinup groups might be involved if they are on the same disk controller. I'd suggest you set the cache pressure to 200, to allow the cache to be re-used, and also use the options on the pre-clear command to have it use smaller buffers. It sounds as if the cache drive, disk2, and the drive being cleared all share the same spinup group. Joe L.

I'm a little concerned that, during the pre-read, with no other device accessing unRAID (as far as I am aware), disks 1 and 2 are not being allowed to spin down, and are experiencing something in the order of 4000 reads a minute. All of the array disks are showing status green, and the parity has now spun up for no apparent reason. If the preclear is reading from more than one disk, is it going to start writing to more than one disk? The pre-clear only reads/writes one disk. It does however read the entire disk, and therefore uses all possible disk buffer cache, displacing any older cached files and directory entries. It sure sounds as if something on your LAN is accessing the other drives perhaps a windows box doing an index scan, or creating thumbnail images... Joe L.

It indicates the second chipset is configured in your BIOS in Legacy mode where it is emulating an old IDE controller (IDE devices show as "hda, hdb,etc"). You should change the option in your BIOS to AHCI mode and get it out of legacy mode. Many BIOS have a setting for each of their disk controllers. The Legacy mode is enabled by default on many motherboards to allow them to boot older microsoft operating systems. Win-XP and prior have no SATA drivers, and therefore could not boot windows if the chipset was in SATA mode. This is not an issue with Linux or unRAID. All that said, either setting will work, and you can change the mode later with no effect or impact on your stored files. It is just that the emulated legacy mode is frequently slower, as it does not take advantage of the features available in modern drives. Joe L.