I'm having issues starting a new Array for the first time. I installed 7 drives and ran Preclear disk on all drives to test for errors. Then formatted the drives into encrypted xfs (Settings > Default file system: xfs - encrypted).

 

When the array is started I get an orange lock with the hover message "Device to be encrypted" on all drives except on parity (this should be correct).

 

 

 

If I stop the array, under Array Operation, I have Encryption status: Enter new key. It seems like I have not set an encryption key at this point. If I put in a key the array starts back up but with orange unlocked locks. Is the encryption key never being set? Because if I stop the array again I will be prompted to enter a new key or keyfile. Do I need to format these disks again?

 

 

Diags would be better but screenshot suggests drives were formatted non-encrypted, assuming there's no data there insert the key you want to use, start the array and re-format the drives.

 

 

 

That worked. Thanks!!

 

I was being too cautious about formatting again thinking it would take as long as Preclearing the drives. It only took a few minutes and since they are all new, the loss of data was not an issue.

2 hours ago, Diskman said:

formatting again thinking it would take as long as Preclearing the drives. It only took a few minutes

Formatting doesn't touch 99.9% of the drive, it's just adding the book keeping section. Clearing, on the other hand, writes binary 0 to the whole drive, which as you noted, takes quite a while.

 

Think of a hard disk like an empty room. Sure, you could just throw some pages of a book in the empty room, and you could search through and eventually find what you wanted to retrieve, but a nice set of filing cabinets with labels sure would make things easier. Formatting is the filing cabinet system. It takes up space, and a little bit of time to set up, but it adds the features needed to store and retrieve files. You set up locking file cabinets that require your encryption key to open.

 

BTW, if your file system (filing cabinets) ever gets corrupted by bad RAM or a crash or something (somebody takes a sledge to your file cabinet index) the fact that you added encryption makes recovery pretty much impossible. The normal advice to make sure you have backups elsewhere of anything important applies double.

 

Unraid's parity protection will recreate a drive exactly as it was when it failed a write operation, and that emulated recreation is the entire drive, file system included. If your file system gets corrupted, Unraid will happily recreate that corruption to a new drive.

Had the same issue but not the option to input a key (array was stopped)

After a reboot I was able to add the key and the format was succesfull