Octavius

Thanks!

Just finished preclearing a drive. Got the drive out of an old computer...is it OK/safe to use in my server??? Seems like some things are "near threshold". Thanks in advance! ========================================================================1.15 == invoked as: ./preclear_disk.sh /dev/sdb == ST3500413AS Z2A8GC0E == Disk /dev/sdb has been successfully precleared == with a starting sector of 64 == Ran 1 cycle == == Using :Read block size = 8388608 Bytes == Last Cycle's Pre Read Time : 1:27:09 (95 MB/s) == Last Cycle's Zeroing time : 1:17:55 (106 MB/s) == Last Cycle's Post Read Time : 3:05:32 (44 MB/s) == Last Cycle's Total Time : 5:51:37 == == Total Elapsed Time 5:51:37 == == Disk Start Temperature: 26C == == Current Disk Temperature: 30C, == ============================================================================ ** Changed attributes in files: /tmp/smart_start_sdb /tmp/smart_finish_sdb ATTRIBUTE NEW_VAL OLD_VAL FAILURE_THRESHOLD STATUS RAW_VALUE Raw_Read_Error_Rate = 117 114 6 ok 151669370 Spin_Retry_Count = 100 100 97 near_thresh 0 End-to-End_Error = 100 100 99 near_thresh 0 Airflow_Temperature_Cel = 70 74 45 near_thresh 30 Temperature_Celsius = 30 26 0 ok 30 Hardware_ECC_Recovered = 51 41 0 ok 151669370 No SMART attributes are FAILING_NOW 0 sectors were pending re-allocation before the start of the preclear. 0 sectors were pending re-allocation after pre-read in cycle 1 of 1. 0 sectors were pending re-allocation after zero of disk in cycle 1 of 1. 0 sectors are pending re-allocation at the end of the preclear, the number of sectors pending re-allocation did not change. 0 sectors had been re-allocated before the start of the preclear. 0 sectors are re-allocated at the end of the preclear, the number of sectors re-allocated did not change. ============================================================================

[sOLVED] Thanks very much, everyone. Your assistance has helped me fix the problem. It was actually two problems. The first was a bad SATA cable. I'm guessing it got badly kinked or damaged during the transplant/organ exchange/upgrade from old processor, motherboard, and memory to the new stuff. The second problem was a bad SATA port on the motherboard (surprisingly, not connected to the bad SATA cable). One of my drives (not attached to the bad SATA cable) completely dropped off while troubleshooting. Multiple reboots did not fix the problem, but moving the drive to another SATA port did. The cable attached to the bad SATA port was relocated and attached to another drive and there was no issues with unraid seeing that drive. After resolving the problem, I was successfully able to do a parity check @ 80mb/s - 130mb/s. 2TB parity check completed in about four hours, which was about the same amount of time my parity checks were being completed before the upgrade (a bit faster, actually). I'm doing one more parity check now just to make sure there's no issues. If there is, I'll post here again. In the meantime, looks like I'm waiting for a sale on SATA cables (got enough open spots in my array that I can make do without the faulty one for a while). Thanks everyone!

So you figure it's a loose SATA cable somewhere? I'm not too worried about my power supply; I think my current one is up to the task.

Hi everyone, My wife's work was giving out old computers. The computer she got from work (Core i3 2100, DDR3, 6 SATA Ports) was considerably better than the computer I was running unRAID on. Figured it was time for an upgrade. Before the upgrade, these were my specs. I had absolutely no issues with parity checks at the time (80MB/s-120MB/s) - AMD X2 4200+ - Asus Mobo - 4GB Ram DDR2 - Supermicro SAS 8 SATA Card - 1 Parity, 1 Cache, 4 data drivers After the upgrade was when the problems began to occur. My parity checks are now ~3MB/s. Estimated time to complete parity check on 2TB parity drive was 4 days... - Intel Core i3 2100 - Asus Mobo - 4GB Ram DDR3 - Supermicro SAS 8 SATA Card - 1 Parity, 1 Cache, 4 data drivers I'm not sure if this makes any difference or not, but my new mobo has 2 x SATA 6 ports and 2 x SATA 3 ports. I'm using the Nordic (?) hot swap hdd cages that I got from NewEgg a few years back. I think they're SATA 1.5? Anywho, syslog attached from when I was running the parity check. It's clear there's some errors being generated here (these errors, to the best of my knowledge, were not there before the hardware upgrade)...I just don't know what they mean or how to fix them. Please help Thanks. Syslog_-_Extremely_Slow_Parity_Check.txt

Oh, OK. Glad to hear everything's OK! Thanks!

Hi All, Just installed the final piece of hardware (hard drives excluded) into my unRAID tower. I ran the following command to make sure all my SATA ports are detected: dmesg|grep SATA|grep link And it came back with 8 SATA ports. These ports appear to be the ports from my motherboard (4), PCI-e SATA card (2), and PCI SATA card (2). The SASLP ports do not appear to be showing up or detected at all. When I turn on the computer, the card is detected and it finds that no drives are connected to it (not a problem, don't have any drives connected to it yet) and then it proceeds to boot into unRAID. If someone can please let me know what I can do to fix this, I'd greatly appreciate it. Also, for further info: unRAID Pro 4.7 SASLP-MV8 - INT 13 has been disabled; bios is .21 ASUS M2A-VM Motherboard System log attached. Thanks in advance! syslog-2011-08-11.txt

4.7

Hi All, After moving a bunch of data on my unRAID server, I've realized that I haven't plugged in the SATA cables into the motherboard in sequential order. As I'm anal-retentive about these things, I want to switch my SATA cables around so that they are in sequential order. Aside from taking a screenshot of the HDD drives and their serial numbers and which drive number is what and reassigning them accordingly, is there anything else I need to do? Is my data at risk? Thanks!

From what I understand about unRAID (and I'm still new, so I could be wrong), yes, it will. However, if you lose another disk between now and when you get the new disk into the array, you'll have lost the data that was on the two drives that were lost. As such, I'd recommend holding off on transferring any new data to the server. In fact, I'd probably shut it down entirely until I got the new disk in.

Thanks guys.

This website should help you out with your questions, if you haven't looked at it already: http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Configuration_Tutorial

Get a SMART report for the drive -- unMENU is the easiest route to that. Ah, yes, that was quite easy. Thanks.

I've already done this on my two WD20EARS drives and I don't hear any constant "clicking", but I can't seem to figure out how to find out how high my LCC count is. How would I go about finding out what the current number is?

Hello All, I've started transferring some files over to my unRAID server and I noticed in MyMain that my data drive (only have one in at the moment) had the following error under "Additional Issues/Failures" » udma_crc_error_count=1 The drive is brand new and it went through quite a few preclears with no issues (about 7). unRAID had started a parity check earlier today, but I stopped it because I wanted to transfer more files over this evening before it ran. Did my stopping the parity check cause this? Anything I need to worry about with this HDD? Thanks!

I've got a couple Samsung F4s, and while I haven't added them to my unRAID server yet (probably by the weekend, transferring some files over at the moment), I did do my homework on them. OP: Regardless of what your F4's Firmware is, you should be upgrading it. As I mentioned previously, if you upgrade the FW with the current US one, you'll be clueless as to whether or not the FW was actually installed as it will be the same FW number as you've posted on the F4s. This is because Samsung did not bother adding a revision to the FW update for the USA version, which they really should have. This is why people have suggested upgrading the FW of the driving with the Japanese version, because it DOES change the FW version and it DOES fix the bug. I have updated the FW on both of my Samsung F4s with the Japanese version and both have been working just fine in my Windows box since then. When I get the data off of them and transferred to my unRAID server, I'll be popping them into my unRAID server as well. Anyway, here's what the OP needs to do: 1) Backup the data on the F4 drive(s) in case something goes terribly wrong during the FW upgrade. 2) Create a Dos-Boot USB flash drive and include this file on it: http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/faqView.do?b2b_bbs_msg_id=387&page=1&faqType=QI&faqKeyword 3) Power down the computer and unplug all the hard drives except the one you'll be flashing. If you'll be flashing more than one F4, flash each one at a time, leaving the other one(s) unplugged. 4) Pop in the USB drive and turn on the computer, change your Bios settings to boot off USB 5) Follow the instructions on the above link (essentially, type in the .exe at the prompt) and let the program do its magic. If all is successful, your FW on the F4 drive should change from what it is now to a higher number. The bug is now no longer an issue and it is now safe to use the drive(s) in unRAID. Hope this helps.

Quick question. I've precleared 2 HDD's and very soon I'll be ready to start my array. Should I stick with 4.7, or make the jump to 5.0b10? I'm a bit concerned about the "beta" tag, but it seems as though many people recommend taking the plunge? Will I have to re-clear my HDD's (both are 2TB HDD's)? Furthermore, how easy will it be to upgrade 5.0b10 to 5.0b11 or even 5.0 final? Thanks!

The problem with the Samsung F4 bug is that you won't find out that there's a problem until it's too late; it tells you your data is written, when in fact, it isn't. There's nothing to prompt you or to tip you off that there's a problem either. This is what the other thread was discussing in great detail, and what is so worrying about the problem. So long as you update the F4 drive's FW to the new one so that the bug has been fixed, you won't have any issues. People recommend upgrading the FW to the Japanese one as it will change the FW revision number so that you know the update worked. Upgrading the FW using the USA version will leave you wondering whether or not it actually did anything as the number will remain the same. Anyway, best of luck.

Welcome, and congrats on building your first server! If you are anything like the rest of us, it won't be your last Interpretting SMART reports can be somewhat involved, but Joe L. (the author of the preclear script) has created this nifty output report that makes it much easier. Each of your drives will have a report that looks like this: What this does is run a SMART report before the preclear cycle, then another one after the preclear cycle. It then subtracts the before values from the after values and shows you the difference (the bold numbers above). In this case, there were no differences, so the numbers are all zero. This is a good thing. Numbers greater than zero generally indicate some sort of mechanical problem with a drive, but they don't necessarily mean that the drive must be replaced immediately. You have to evaluate the numbers on a case-by-case basis. This is a topic that you'll learn about little bit at a time as you spend more time on these forums, don't try to digest it all at once. There are a lot of parameters involved in assessing a hard drive's health. In your case, all of your drives look perfectly healthy. Awesome. Thanks very much for the warm welcome and the interpretation of the smart report. I'll keep an eye out for any anomalies! Thanks again!

Hi all, With the help of many of your community's posts, I've just build my first unRAID server. I was looking for something to replace my inadequate DNS-323, and I really liked everything that unRAID had to offer. Thank you all so much for being so helpful to the users and for answering their questions. It has made it that much easier for me to make the plunge (especially since while I'm quite the Linux noobie). I've precleared to WDD HDD's twice, and both times on each drive it has said that the preclear was successful. I tried reading the output results but I couldn't really make heads or tails over much of what was in there. Can someone please look through my log and tell me: 1) What specifically I should be looking for in determining if someone is wrong with an HDD 2) Whether or not my HDDs are good to go Thanks in advance! Looking forward to getting more familiar with unRAID and in being a contributing member to the unRAID community! I just attached the 2nd half of the tests, let me know if the first half is needed. preclear_results_002.txt