Unassigned Devices Preclear - a utility to preclear disks before adding them to the array

[thorneo]

On 1/21/2023 at 4:42 AM, Kilrah said:

You added a 6TB data drive which requires that neither parity1 or parity2 be smaller than 6TB, but you have 4TB for parity2.

 

See https://wiki.unraid.net/Manual/Storage_Management#Parity_Swap

Thank you for your help I was wondering if I needed both parity drives to be 8 tera's so that anwser would be yes..

[trurl]

17 hours ago, thorneo said:

Thank you for your help I was wondering if I needed both parity drives to be 8 tera's so that anwser would be yes..

Parity drives don't have to be the same size as each other, but no data disk can be larger than any parity disk. If your largest data disk is 6TB, then each parity must be at least 6TB. So 8TB parity (P) and 6TB parity2 (Q) would be allowed, for example.

[thorneo]

On 1/23/2023 at 3:01 PM, trurl said:

Parity drives don't have to be the same size as each other, but no data disk can be larger than any parity disk. If your largest data disk is 6TB, then each parity must be at least 6TB. So 8TB parity (P) and 6TB parity2 (Q) would be allowed, for example.

OK I see what you are saying now. And it does make sense to myself now..

[danimal86]

Does this do multiple passes on pre-clearing?  

 

I'm running two pre-clears of 16tb exos and it already did the pre-read and almost done with the zeroing, but it says 2 of 5, does that mean its going to run 2 more passes before doing the post read? If so, how any way to stop extra zeroing passes?

[dlandon]

2 minutes ago, danimal86 said:

Does this do multiple passes on pre-clearing?  

 

I'm running two pre-clears of 16tb exos and it already did the pre-read and almost done with the zeroing, but it says 2 of 5, does that mean its going to run 2 more passes before doing the post read? If so, how any way to stop extra zeroing passes?

One preclear pass is 5 steps.  It's indicating what steps are done in the preclear process.

[danimal86]

2 minutes ago, dlandon said:

One preclear pass is 5 steps.  It's indicating what steps are done in the preclear process.

Just wanted to make sure it wasn't doing multiple zero'ing passes.  

 

So are the steps?:

1. pre-read

2. zero

3. post-read

4. writing signature

5. verifying signature

[dlandon]

1 minute ago, danimal86 said:

Just wanted to make sure it wasn't doing multiple zero'ing passes.  

 

So are the steps?:

1. pre-read

2. zero

3. post-read

4. writing signature

5. verifying signature

Yes, but you can specify the number of zeroing passes (called cycles) up to a total of 3 if you want to do more.

[danimal86]

1 minute ago, dlandon said:

Yes, but you can specify the number of zeroing passes (called cycles) up to a total of 3 if you want to do more.

Thanks!  I cant remember what i selected (i think i just left the defaults) but is the default to 1 cycle?

[dlandon]

7 minutes ago, danimal86 said:

Thanks!  I cant remember what i selected (i think i just left the defaults) but is the default to 1 cycle?

Yes.  I see no reason to do more.

[sanEmus]

Hello!

 

I think something may be wrong with my preclear. It was at 80%+ zeroing last night. Woke up it was at 30%.

 

Any thoughts would be much appreciated, thanks. Here are the logs:

 

https://imgur.com/a/feVxlRL

 

https://imgur.com/a/9VlTu6v

[danimal86]

The message above is regarding preclearing SMR drives.  I did a little research, is there an issue with the plugin and SMR drives?

[Goldmaster]

Running the plugin right now and is very useful to have. A useful feature would be a feature to shut down or put a server to sleep once the pre clear is done?

 

The plugin could tell dynamix s3 sleep not to shut the server down or put it to sleep if a pre clear is running

[Interstellar]

Just noticed that when running this pre clear script that UnRAID keeps trying to put the disks to sleep every 15 minutes (as per my array settings).

 

Not the end of the world, but it really shouldn't be attempting to spin down disks that are being pre-cleared.

 

I've changed my Spindown delay to 60 mins whilst the disks pre clear.

 

This comment suggests this is intended behaviour: 

 

I don't agree if that is the case...!

[mathomas3]

This plugin is very questionable... I had only 2 drives that were new to my setup... yet I had 4 disks listed... and while only 2 of them were clearable... the second clearable disk listed conflicting information as to which disk I would be clearing... I can provide screenshots should they be required... but I dont trust this current version of the software

 

I stand corrected... It turns out that since I had 2 HBA cards in my DAS, conflicting information confused the plugin with strange data... 

 

 

Edited February 20, 2023 by mathomas3
provided update and clarification

[dlandon]

44 minutes ago, mathomas3 said:

This plugin is very questionable... I had only 2 drives that were new to my setup... yet I had 4 disks listed... and while only 2 of them were clearable... the second clearable disk listed conflicting information as to which disk I would be clearing... I can provide screenshots should they be required... but I dont trust this current version of the software

Poat screen shots.

[mathomas3]

In the screenshot you will notice that I have 4 devices listed of which only two of them are clearable while I only have 2HDDs that are not currently in the array... The selected device is the "Dev 1" device and yet on this confirmation page it shows conflicting information for Dev 1 and sdg... 

 

You will also notice that SDG is not a drive letter for one of my unassigned devices... 

 

 

 

Edited February 20, 2023 by mathomas3

[mathomas3]

Another interesting thing about this plugin is that I had to uninstall it to get the Main page to list the unassigned disks.

[dlandon]

Post a screen shot of the UD page.

[mathomas3]

1 hour ago, dlandon said:

Post a screen shot of the UD page.

Sorry... but what is a UD page?

[dlandon]

1 minute ago, mathomas3 said:

Sorry... but what is a UD page?

Main->Unassigned Devices tab.

[mathomas3]

This was after uninstalling this plugin

[dlandon]

Just now, mathomas3 said:

This was after uninstalling this plugin

I need to see it with the plugin installed.

[mathomas3]

 

[dlandon]

Just now, mathomas3 said:

 

Post diagnostics.

[mathomas3]

as requested

tower-diagnostics-20230220-0621.zip