skip pre-clear/clearing for new array and existing drives

[sluggathor]

hi,

if i setup unraid without a parity drive (for the moment) - do i still need to clear the drives i am adding to the new array? i am thinking about switching back to unraid but don't want to do the data shuffle with all my existing drives (all in xfs).

 

so tldr: new setup, no parity for now, add drives with existing data, skip clearing?, add parity drive later and establish parity.

Edited January 1, 2022 by sluggathor
missed a word

[Squid]

You never need to actually pre-clear any drive.  If the drive isn't precleared, then Unraid will automatically clear it when adding it as a new drive to a parity protected array

 

Without a parity drive (or on a new config and assigning a parity drive), Unraid will not automatically clear any new additional drive

 

[sluggathor]

1 hour ago, Squid said:

You never need to actually pre-clear any drive.  If the drive isn't precleared, then Unraid will automatically clear it when adding it as a new drive to a parity protected array

 

Without a parity drive (or on a new config and assigning a parity drive), Unraid will not automatically clear any new additional drive

 

if i understand you correctly i woud have to do a big data shuffle when adding new disks? adding existing disks in a vm (pre-formatted as xfs) will give me the unmountable: unsupported partition layout error. my existing disks are all xfs and about 75% full of data. i think i might get the same error when trying with them.

i read somewhere that unraid partitions disks from sector 64 onwards and that might be the reason for the error since all my drives start at 0

 

and another thing just to clarify for me: if i somehow manage to add my disks to a new and unprotected array i could later add a parity drive without losing any existing data? (ofc if nothing fails beforehand)

Edited January 2, 2022 by sluggathor

[Squid]

If the partition layout doesn't match what Unraid expects, then yes the drive will come up as unmountable when adding to the array.

1 hour ago, sluggathor said:

and another thing just to clarify for me: if i somehow manage to add my disks to a new and unprotected array i could later add a parity drive without losing any existing data? (ofc if nothing fails beforehand)

Yes

[sluggathor]

is there any way i could modify the existing drives partiton layout to match what unraid expects without losing the data on the drives or moving it about a bunch?

[itimpi]

1 hour ago, sluggathor said:

is there any way i could modify the existing drives partiton layout to match what unraid expects without losing the data on the drives or moving it about a bunch?

Not that I know of unfortunately