johnieutah

Update: got it working no problem. You know what the problem was? I'd been clicking "Done" on the disk settings page (where you choose the disk format), instead of "Apply". Amateur mistake I know, but I do think these buttons need to better either better distinguished either visually or renamed or something. To me "Done" does not = "cancel" which is what it is doing in affect, i.e. go back without saving. Anyways, its working. What we need next is a nice big "shut down" server button on the main tab ;-)

Ah, I never did a reboot - that's probably it. But I did let it rebuild parity. Which worked fine. As to the 2nd point... I have a test server with some test data. Now I want to migrate my "real" hard drives across. I want to do this in as cleanly as possible and start a fresh, adding the drives one by one, reformatting them to XFS as I go along. So tonight, I will try your suggestion of setting the drive to BTRFS (for example), rebooting the server, then setting it back to XFS and hopefully that will give me the format drive option.

Hmm, I tried this and when I tried to start the array it simply rebuilt parity. I will try again tonight. Once I switch out these drives that I've been using to test Unraid 6, Unraid will always try and rebuild parity on to my new drives right? - there's no way to tell it to "start new and forget the old config / data" is there? Thanks.

Hi all, currently running the trial version of Unraid 6 RC4. Is it possible within the web UI to simply reformat a disk? I know I can change the file system type when the array is stopped, but if I want to keep the current FS, XFS, but just clear the drive, will this work?

Cheers mate

Sorry for all the questions, but what was the original reasoning for needing the jumper on WD EARS drives, something to do with Unraid not supporting advanced format drives right? So now Unraid 6 supports these larger drives, I can remove the jumper, use the default 4k-alignment... do I need to preclear again, or will a simple reformat in XFS take care of things? Edit: I've noticed on my old Unraid 5 server, the alignment was set to "unaligned" (with the jumper). Thanks once again.

If you remove the jumper on the HDD, you need to reformat the drive and consequently loose all data. Performance wise it doesn't matter whether the jumper is used or not. So to be clear, I should remove the jumper and then reformat in XFS for Unraid 6? Thanks. I will be reformating in XFS anyway... I am just wondering if I will need to watch out for anything in the setting up of the new unraid 6 server, 4k alignment or something?!? Just want to be 100% sure this weekend. Thanks. The default partition format is set to MBR 4K-aligned (unless you have changed it), if you remove the jumper and reformat the disk, it will be done with the correct setting.

If you remove the jumper on the HDD, you need to reformat the drive and consequently loose all data. Performance wise it doesn't matter whether the jumper is used or not. I will be reformating in XFS anyway... I am just wondering if I will need to watch out for anything in the setting up of the new unraid 6 server, 4k alignment or something?!? Just want to be 100% sure this weekend. Thanks.

Since I would be upgrading with everything "fresh" so to speak, should I make any changes to a jumpered WD20EARS drive that I have?

Drive supports USB3, but my (old) server only supports USB2. So USB 2 then :-) It's completely new and NTFS formatted... I have heard that the linux NTFS drivers aren't that great, I guess I just expect something closer to what I get on my Windows laptop, using USB 2 40MB/s shouldn't be a problem.

Hey guys, great guide. I am currently doing a completely new build, reformatting all drives in XFS, new usb key etc... One thing I have noticed - and maybe this is the wrong place - but I am performing an rsync to backup all data to external USB drive... and it is dog slow. ~15/16MB/sec according to rsync output. I would have expected much faster read performance, and I know the external drive can support fast writes. This caught my attention: Is it possible reads from a very full ResiserFS drive are also slow? Could that explain the problem? The drive is a 2TB WD Ears, I think it has ~75GB free.

Am I right in thinking this plugin will allow me to run an SSD outside the array for my docker containers?

Thanks for the replies. No I will almost certainly get shot of it, too big and clunky. I have considered this, but without sounding tight, I refuse to pay more for WD Red drive than I did last year, which is the current price scenario here in Germany Backups would only be made onto external drives. Once the migration is complete, then I would have some smaller drives lying around which I shall make use of for the more important stuff. Thanks, sounds sensible. Just to be clear, popping an old Reiser formatted drive in to the new build won't kick off a parity build straight away will it? I should be able to select the drive from the UI and then tell it that I want to format it as XFS?

Hello all, I am currently in the process of moving my old Unraid 5 server to a new Unraid 6 build. Key facts are I don't have a single spare drive that is equal to the largest drive in the old array (I simply have a couple of external 1TB drives) and I want to make use (of course) of XFS on the Unraid 6 server. Is it possible for me to take my 3TB parity out of the old server and transition that to the new server, whilst still being able to access the old server and copy data to the external drives (array will be unprotected)? Once I have cleared off a 2TB data drive from the old server, and place it in to the new one, do I need to pre-clear this again, or just re-format from the GUI as XFS? Many thanks for the advice.

I am moving from Unraid 5 to 6 as well, and have very limited hard drive space to use as temporary storage. Unfortunately I don't have a drive equal to the largest one in the array (2TB). I only have 2 x 1TB external drives. Is it possible to do an rsync command that will only do 1TB worth of data, or will I have to manually split and copy the directories over? Is this the best way forward given my situation? I want to start from fresh in 6. Once data is copied off a drive and put in to the new array, I will reformat as XFS. What's the best way to build the new server, should I add drives one-by-one or add them all and then calculate parity? Thanks guys.

I got exFAT working with this package: https://slackonly.com/pub/packages/14.1-x86_64/system/fuse-exfat/ Just would be nice to have it baked in to Snap. But for NTFS, Snap works great.

Great thanks for the heads up. Works really nicely, only problem is it doesn't currently support exFAT.

Hey all, I'm just getting running with Unraid 6 and am wondering if there's a nice one click "mount this drive" plugin/option, that will allow me to attach an external USB drive and mount it from the dashboard, without having to hit the command prompt. I seem to remember Unmenu could do this in 5 right? Cheers!

Looks great. No sectors re-allocated or pending re-allocation. Reassign the new disk as your parity disk, let it compute parity... Then, perform a parity check. (That will prove you can read the parity bytes you stored) Only then should you move any other drives. Joe L. All went according to plan. Am constantly amazed by the disk upgrade process reading the parity drive, works like a charm.

I just finished pre-clearing a 3TB Red drive. Can someone double check the attached results? Currently I have the following 3 disk setup: P: 2TB WD20EARS (jumpered) 1: 750GB Samsung 2: 750GB Samsung I would like to suffle these disks down and slot the new drive in as parity. I remember when I did the install on the EARS drive a lot of talk about jumpers/aligned/unaligned etc... Can I just re-assign the disks from the disk management page or is there something I need to watch out for especially? Much appreciated for any advice. preclear_finish_WD-WMC4N1806503_2014-06-17.txt preclear_rpt_WD-WMC4N1806503_2014-06-17.txt preclear_start_WD-WMC4N1806503_2014-06-17.txt

So it's been a long time since I've had to preclear a drive. Thursday I purchased a 3TB WD Red, can't believe how cheap they've gotten. I'm just running through the process now. Is there still a results page to which we can post for analysis?? Also, I would like to use this 3TB drive in place of a WD20EARS drive, which is jumpered. Does this mean I will need to be careful when configuring the Red drive? When repositioning the EARS drive in the array (I will move it to be a normal data drive) I assume I should keep the drive with the current settings sector-63 aligned I believe? Many thanks guys.

One more quick question. Now the preclear has finished, I have two unallocated drives showing:- Drive Partitions - Not In Protected Array Device Model/Serial Mounted File System Temp Size Used %Used Free /dev/sdd scsi-SATA_WDC_WD20EARS-00_WD-WMAZA1718008 22°C 2000.3G /dev/sdd1 scsi-SATA_WDC_WD20EARS-00_WD-WMAZA1718008 Why is this? To add this as parity drive replacement, can I simply change it in the device settings page or do I need to physically remove the old parity drive and add this one into its slot? Thanks! Matt. Your disk is perfectly healthy. No current "Value" (normalized) is at or below its affiliated failure threshold. In fact none are even close to their affiliated failure thresholds. There are no re-allocated sectors, nor any pending re-allocation. Joe L.

Hi, I've just finished pre-clearing a 2TB WD20EARS. Took around 28 hours in total for one run through. I've attached the finish log. Any help in interpreting it is most appreciated Is the start log needed too? Cheers, Matt. smart_finish2528.txt

Hi, I'm just pre-clearing a 2TB WD20EARS drive (jumper in place). I've noticed a few bits of info in the syslog which don't look great, such as... Jan 6 02:15:49 Tower kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev sdd, sector 3814563928 Jan 6 02:15:49 Tower kernel: __ratelimit: 22 callbacks suppressed Jan 6 02:15:49 Tower kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdd, logical block 476820491 Jan 6 02:15:49 Tower kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdd, logical block 476820492 Jan 6 02:15:49 Tower kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdd, logical block 476820493 Jan 6 02:15:49 Tower kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdd, logical block 476820494 Jan 6 02:15:49 Tower kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdd, logical block 476820495 and Jan 6 02:15:48 Tower kernel: ata4.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen Jan 6 02:15:48 Tower kernel: ata4.00: failed command: READ DMA EXT Jan 6 02:15:48 Tower kernel: ata4.00: cmd 25/00:00:58:a0:5d/00:01:e3:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 131072 in Jan 6 02:15:48 Tower kernel: res 40/00:00:01:4f:c2/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x4 (timeout) Jan 6 02:15:48 Tower kernel: ata4.00: status: { DRDY } Jan 6 02:15:48 Tower kernel: ata4: hard resetting link Anything to worry about or should I just sit tight till it completes?? Also, once the pre-clear is complete and assuming all is well, can I just upgrade my current parity drive with the new drive by re-assigning the devices in the settings page, or do I need to physically unplug the old drive and move the cabling to the new one? Thanks, Matt.

Thanks for the heads up. Brilliant, the F4204UI isn't supported yet. So what to do, send it back to Amazon, or wait and see if there is a solution... which could be a fair few months. From reading around it looks like it may well work, but isn't advised as a parity drive. And I need the space now.