I bought 2 of the Hitachi 2TB 5K3000 from Newegg a while back and I'm just now getting around to installing them (life's been busy).

 

I've got one harddrive in there right now, but I just wanted to check with you guys.

 

1. When you install a hard drive, I'm assuming that you want to first "preclear" it to make sure that it's (probably) 100% okay.  Right?

 

2. If it doesn't preclear correctly, am I supposed to return the drive?

 

3. How exactly do you preclear the drive?  (Sorry I'm not very familiar with the Linux Command Line)

 

From my basic research in this thread: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=7315.0, the steps are

         a. Turn on the unRAID Server

         b. At "Tower login:", Login with "root"

         c. Get a list of the drives by typing the command: ls -l /dev/disk/by-id

         d. Change the directory to the flash drive by typing: cd /boot

         e. invoke the preclear command by typing: preclear_disk.sh /dev/sdX (where sdX = the three letter device name of the disk you wish to clear.)

         f. WAIT (for like, 25 hours or something)

 

4. Can you Preclear more than 1 drive at once?

 

5. Is preclearing really necessary?  Everyone on the forum seems to do it, but I see little mention of it on the main Lime-Technology.com website.

 

6. Is there anything other than preclearing that I'm supposed to do to the drives before I install them?

 

BONUS QUESTION: Is anyone else using or planning to use the Hitachi 2TB 5K3000 as a Parity Drive?

 

Thanks for any help.  I know these questions may seem very simple to a lot of you guys.  I really appreciate the assistance.

Hi krackato--

 

I'd HIGHLY recommend reading every word of a forum member's wiki post here:

 

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Configuration_Tutorial

 

My apologies to that member for forgetting his name but it's an INCREDIBLY useful document when first starting out--one that set me on the right track and getting things setup!

 

I have just purchased 4 of the Hitachi 5k3000 drives for my array and I've heard nothing but good feedback about them.  I wouldn't hesitate using one as a parity drive.

 

Yes you can preclear more than one drive at once---again see the config link above for a helpful reference.  Good luck to you--there are plenty of FAR more knowledgable members around here then me that will jump to help.  It truly is a GREAT user community!

Preclearing has two distinct purposes:

 

1 - it runs a good burn in test on a drive. Since some % of drives will die an early death, it is good to test them early. Much better to find a drive is bad and exchange with the seller for a new one, than deal with the manufacturer when you realize the disk is bad months later.

 

2 - unless you are creating your array from scratch, unRaid requires that new drives added to the array be cleared. If they are precleared. unRaid will instantly add the drive to the array. If not, unRaid will clear tha drive itself. This clearing will take many hours during which the array will be offline.

 

Either of these is a good reason to preclear. But both benefits are normally enjoyed.