Joe L. Posted May 10, 2011 Share Posted May 10, 2011 Can I keep the array online while I pre clear, my guess is no Thanks my guess is yes, you can keep the array online. It is one of the main reasons why the utility was written. (and since I wrote the pr-clear script, odds are good my guess is correct) The only limitation is you cannot clear a drive if it is assigned to the unRAID array. (this is to keep you from erasing your data by accident) Joe L. Quote Link to comment
prostuff1 Posted May 10, 2011 Share Posted May 10, 2011 Can I keep the array online while I pre clear, my guess is no Thanks Indeed you can. So long as the drive is not assigned to the array you can preclear it while the remainder of the drives are serving content. Quote Link to comment
squirrellydw Posted May 10, 2011 Share Posted May 10, 2011 Can I keep the array online while I pre clear, my guess is no Thanks my guess is yes, you can keep the array online. It is one of the main reasons why the utility was written. (and since I wrote the pr-clear script, odds are good my guess is correct) The only limitation is you cannot clear a drive if it is assigned to the unRAID array. (this is to keep you from erasing your data by accident) Joe L. LOL, Joe your guess was right Thanks Quote Link to comment
madburg Posted May 11, 2011 Share Posted May 11, 2011 JoeL knows what he is talking about... Quote Link to comment
MrLondon Posted May 11, 2011 Share Posted May 11, 2011 Quick question, when I done the preclear on my Samsumg HDDs it said at the end I should use -F Samsung or Samsung2 however as far as I can find the -F option does not exist? Thanks MrLondon Quote Link to comment
teamhood Posted May 11, 2011 Share Posted May 11, 2011 Question for you all. I'm building an array for my buddy and he sent over 8x 2TB WD drives. I was starting to preclear these drives and I was wondering if there is any concern with SCREENing 8x instances of the script? Thoughts? Quote Link to comment
Joe L. Posted May 11, 2011 Share Posted May 11, 2011 Question for you all. I'm building an array for my buddy and he sent over 8x 2TB WD drives. I was starting to preclear these drives and I was wondering if there is any concern with SCREENing 8x instances of the script? Thoughts? no. There have been reports of a person doing 15 at once. It will go slower the more you do at the same time, as they all must compete for the same disk controller and/or PCI? bus. The process is not really CPU intensive, but it is I/O intensive. Quote Link to comment
Superorb Posted May 13, 2011 Share Posted May 13, 2011 I just ran a single cycle of preclear on my new 2TB drive, and everything looks good except one thing. Is a raw read error rate of 51 anything to be worried about? I can't figure out what program to open the preclear log file with either, it's a jumbled mess with notepad. Changed attributes in files: /tmp/smart_start_sdd /tmp/smart_finish_sdd ATTRIBUTE NEW_VAL OLD_VAL FAILURE_THRESHOLD STATUS RAW_VALUE Raw_Read_Error_Rate = 100 252 51 ok 0 Quote Link to comment
BRiT Posted May 13, 2011 Share Posted May 13, 2011 You're reading that SMART attribute wrong. The raw value of RAW_READ_ERROR_RATE is 0. Your nominal value is "100". The failure threshold is "51". Last I checked, 100 > 51, so the drive is not failing. ATTRIBUTE NEW_VAL OLD_VAL FAILURE_THRESHOLD STATUS RAW_VALUE Raw_Read_Error_Rate = 100 252 51 ok 0 Quote Link to comment
Joe L. Posted May 13, 2011 Share Posted May 13, 2011 I just ran a single cycle of preclear on my new 2TB drive, and everything looks good except one thing. Is a raw read error rate of 51 anything to be worried about? I can't figure out what program to open the preclear log file with either, it's a jumbled mess with notepad. Changed attributes in files: /tmp/smart_start_sdd /tmp/smart_finish_sdd ATTRIBUTE NEW_VAL OLD_VAL FAILURE_THRESHOLD STATUS RAW_VALUE Raw_Read_Error_Rate = 100 252 51 ok 0 I don't think this has been said enough. MOST RAW VALUES ARE MEANINGLESS TO ANYONE OTHER THAN THE MANUFACTURER. Your disk had a NORMALIZED value of 252 for that attribute when you started the preclear. It has a value of 100 now that it has a few hours on it. The 252 is an initial value assigned at the factory. It moved from that value to a new starting value once the drive had a few hours on it. The 100 is a starting point value now that statistics are being kept. The failure threshold for that attribute is 51. You are nowhere near it. The "raw" value seems to be 0. and the status is "ok" since the current normalized value is above the failure threshold of 51. Enjoy your new drive. Joe L. Quote Link to comment
Superorb Posted May 13, 2011 Share Posted May 13, 2011 Thanks guys, I'll keep this in mind from now on. Quote Link to comment
dgaschk Posted May 17, 2011 Share Posted May 17, 2011 Joe, Will preclear be added to the unmenu package manager? Is there anyway to make it operate from within unmenu? I guess even setting the config in the browser and then calling "telnet://..." would be useful. I will take a stab at a user script, but I'm not sure how far I'll get because don't know how to make the telnet call local. It would be nice to get the device id and have the options set from the unmenu gui. Thanks, David Quote Link to comment
prostuff1 Posted May 17, 2011 Share Posted May 17, 2011 Joe, Will preclear be added to the unmenu package manager? Is there anyway to make it operate from within unmenu? I guess even setting the config in the browser and then calling "telnet://..." would be useful. I will take a stab at a user script, but I'm not sure how far I'll get because don't know how to make the telnet call local. It would be nice to get the device id and have the options set from the unmenu gui. Thanks, David There may be some trickery that can be done to make it work, but it is not as easy as it might appear. unMenu waits for some output before it returns to the browser. That wait would be EXTREMELY long if you were to start a preclear from the browser. Quote Link to comment
B9force Posted May 20, 2011 Share Posted May 20, 2011 Hi everyone I'm preparing my very first unRAID system and trying to use the preclear_disk.sh script on my drives. On one of my drives, I'm unsure whether or not to use the "-A" option for the script. The drive in question is a WD Green Caviar 1.5 TB that I bought as an external USB drive ("My Book Essential") in June 2010 and have now removed from its enclosure to use with unRAID. Details are as follows: "WDC_WD15EADS-11_WD-WMAVU1208747" is the information shown in the "Disk Management" screen of the webUI (http://tower:8080); "WDBAAF0015HBK-00" is the product number shown on the USB enclosure; "WD15EADS-11P8B1" is the model number shown on the label of the drive itself. The following FAQ from WD suggests that the drive is an Advanced Format drive: http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3876 But elsewhere on the web there are many other sources which say that WD EADS drives are not Advanced Format. So I'm very confused... and hoping someone on the forum might be able to advise me on the best course of action. (E.g. Is there any definitive way to tell whether a drive is Advanced Format? If I use "-A" when I run the script and it turns out this drive is not Advanced Format, what will the likely consequences be?) Thanks in advance for any help, much appreciated. Cheers. Quote Link to comment
Joe L. Posted May 20, 2011 Share Posted May 20, 2011 So I'm very confused... and hoping someone on the forum might be able to advise on the best course of action. (For example... if I use "-A" when I run the script and it turns out this drive is not Advanced Format, what will the likely consequences be?) There is no impact on ANY drive except one that is a drive with 4k sectors internally AND where you have installed a hardware jumper to have it add "1" to all requested sectors. (making a request for sector 63 actually end up accessing sector 64, which is aligned on a 4k boundary) Your drive is not an EARS drive with a hardware-jumper, therefore, you the "-A" option is perfectly fine for you. Don't get all confused by "advanced format" stuff. It is partly marketing and partly engineering. It has been said many times already You can use a starting sector of 64 for ALL drives except an EARS drive with a jumper. (If you did, it would electrically add "1" and access sector 65, making it not aligned with a 4k boundary since logical sectors are still presented to the disk controller as starting every 512 bytes.) Joe L. Quote Link to comment
B9force Posted May 20, 2011 Share Posted May 20, 2011 Your drive is not an EARS drive with a hardware-jumper, therefore, you the "-A" option is perfectly fine for you. Don't get all confused by "advanced format" stuff. It is partly marketing and partly engineering. It has been said many times already You can use a starting sector of 64 for ALL drives except an EARS drive with a jumper. Great, thanks Joe! And sorry I didn't pick this up in my forum reading/searches so far. (There certainly is a lot of information to digest for an unRAID noob like me!) Quote Link to comment
mrmachine Posted May 22, 2011 Share Posted May 22, 2011 I was attempting to preclear two disks when I got the following errors on one of them. I'm running this in screen, and I can't figure how to access the complete scrollback buffer, but this is what I can see in my terminal scrolback buffer. ================================================================== 1.11 = unRAID server Pre-Clear disk /dev/sda = cycle 1 of 1, partition start on sector 64 = Disk Pre-Clear-Read completed DONE = Step 1 of 10 - Copying zeros to first 2048k bytes DONE = Step 2 of 10 - Copying zeros to remainder of disk to clear it = **** This will take a while... you can follow progress below: = = = = = = = = Elapsed Time: 0:01:09 0+0 records in 0+0 records out 0 bytes (0 B) copied, 8.3341e-05 s, 0.0 kB/s ./preclear_disk.sh: line 636: let: percent_wrote=(0 / ): syntax error: operand expected (error token is ")") Wrote 0 bytes out of bytes (% Done) ./preclear_disk.sh: line 1773: / (1306076122 - 1306076096) / 1000000 : syntax error: operand expected (error token is "/ (1306076122 - 1306076096) / 1000000 ") ========================================================================1.11 == ST3750330NS 9QK0J3Z5 == Disk /dev/sda has been successfully precleared == with a starting sector of 64 ============================================================================ ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ** Changed attributes in files: /tmp/smart_start_sda /tmp/smart_finish_sda ATTRIBUTE NEW_VAL OLD_VAL FAILURE_THRESHOLD STATUS RAW_VALUE Raw_Read_Error_Rate = 84 ok Spin_Up_Time = 93 ok and... == Disk /dev/sda has been successfully precleared == with a starting sector of 64 ============================================================================ ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ./preclear_disk.sh: line 811: [: : integer expression expected ** Changed attributes in files: /tmp/smart_start_sda /tmp/smart_finish_sda ATTRIBUTE NEW_VAL OLD_VAL FAILURE_THRESHOLD STATUS RAW_VALUE Raw_Read_Error_Rate = 84 ok Spin_Up_Time = 93 ok Start_Stop_Count = 100 ok Reallocated_Sector_Ct = 100 ok Seek_Error_Rate = 71 ok Power_On_Hours = 74 ok Spin_Retry_Count = 100 ok Power_Cycle_Count = 100 ok End-to-End_Error = 100 ok Reported_Uncorrect = 99 ok Command_Timeout = 100 ok High_Fly_Writes = 97 ok Airflow_Temperature_Cel = 69 ok Temperature_Celsius = 31 ok Hardware_ECC_Recovered = 42 ok Current_Pending_Sector = 100 ok Offline_Uncorrectable = 100 ok UDMA_CRC_Error_Count = 200 ok No SMART attributes are FAILING_NOW 0 sectors were pending re-allocation before the start of the preclear. a change of 0 in the number of sectors pending re-allocation. 2047 sectors had been re-allocated before the start of the preclear. a change of -2047 in the number of sectors re-allocated. SMART overall-health status = root@unraid:/boot# The whole thing took a couple of minutes to run. I've attached the three report files. Is this disk fried? Should the preclear_disk.sh script catch these exceptions and explain the error more clearly to the user? Cheers. preclear_start__9QK0J3Z5_2011-05-23.txt preclear_finish__9QK0J3Z5_2011-05-23.txt preclear_rpt__9QK0J3Z5_2011-05-23.txt Quote Link to comment
Joe L. Posted May 22, 2011 Share Posted May 22, 2011 You might not know, but it is absolutely impossible for me to know every way your disk can fail in your hardware. Your disk is not pre-cleared. It appears as if your disk stopped responding at one point. Thanks for the error report. I'll see if I can do anything. Most times, when a disk stops responding it takes a power cycles to get them to respond again. Joe L. Quote Link to comment
dhy8386 Posted May 24, 2011 Share Posted May 24, 2011 Joe, I love using your preclear script. I have gotten used to it and use it for all my unraid drives to have the confidence i am putting in a good drive into my array. I recently built a hackintosh, and want to "Test"/"burn in" a new seagate drive i am using in it. I dont have the ability to put the seagate into my unraid server right now - even just laying it in there - to run your preclear. Question is, can your tool be run from say a linux live cd or do you know of an OSX tool which essentially does the same thing as preclear and can give me the same feedback (possibly drive genius' Integrity Check or Intech Software's SpeedTools [the Integrity tool])? Much thanks. Quote Link to comment
prostuff1 Posted May 24, 2011 Share Posted May 24, 2011 Joe, I love using your preclear script. I have gotten used to it and use it for all my unraid drives to have the confidence i am putting in a good drive into my array. I recently built a hackintosh, and want to "Test"/"burn in" a new seagate drive i am using in it. I dont have the ability to put the seagate into my unraid server right now - even just laying it in there - to run your preclear. Question is, can your tool be run from say a linux live cd or do you know of an OSX tool which essentially does the same thing as preclear and can give me the same feedback (possibly drive genius' Integrity Check or Intech Software's SpeedTools [the Integrity tool])? Much thanks. Create a spare unRAID usb drive using the free version of unRAID and run the test on the drive that way. Quote Link to comment
dhy8386 Posted May 24, 2011 Share Posted May 24, 2011 Indeed, should have tried that first. I was presupposing that my hardware config would be problematic since it wasnt compiled for unRAID but should have at least tested. Will do so now. Quote Link to comment
Gambit Posted May 25, 2011 Share Posted May 25, 2011 I have just setup my server and am about to start pre clearing 4 drives. I plan on using unMenu and Screen since I don't have a physical monitor available, which should continue to process after any telnet session dropouts (at least that's what I understand from the config tutorial anyway). However my concern is since my server only has 1.3Ghz (dual core) and 1GB ram (hopefully upgrade soon) will this hinder the speed or number of drives I can pre-clear at once? All four drives are 2TB each so I was hoping to pre-clear them as efficiently as possible. Thanks. Quote Link to comment
Joe L. Posted May 25, 2011 Share Posted May 25, 2011 I have just setup my server and am about to start pre clearing 4 drives. I plan on using unMenu and Screen since I don't have a physical monitor available, which should continue to process after any telnet session dropouts (at least that's what I understand from the config tutorial anyway). However my concern is since my server only has 1.3Ghz (dual core) and 1GB ram (hopefully upgrade soon) will this hinder the speed or number of drives I can pre-clear at once? All four drives are 2TB each so I was hoping to pre-clear them as efficiently as possible. Thanks. you should be fine. Quote Link to comment
upthetoon Posted June 2, 2011 Share Posted June 2, 2011 I have tried preclearing the same drive twice now (2TB Hitachi Deskstar, 0F12117), both times it has crashed/became stuck in writing the zeros (second stage). The first time it got to 44%, this time 55%. I used screen to launch the script. If I do a ps I can see the script is still there... root 7161 7012 0 07:26 pts/1 00:00:05 /bin/bash ./preclear_disk.sh /dev/sdg but I don't think it's doing anything because this is what top shows... PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 3398 root 20 0 4112 2856 620 R 5 0.1 12:02.99 dd 3365 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 2 0.0 4:24.72 flush-8:96 437 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 2 0.0 6:38.60 kswapd0 6048 nobody 20 0 288m 85m 3520 S 0 2.2 1:14.43 python 1 root 20 0 828 308 264 S 0 0.0 0:02.56 init 2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd 3 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.13 ksoftirqd/0 Both time it has also taken down the unraid and unmenu interfaces with it and I'm not sure how to launch them again without a hard reset. My shares are also down but applications such as sabnzbd are still working. Is this a drive issue? Quote Link to comment
Joe L. Posted June 2, 2011 Share Posted June 2, 2011 I have tried preclearing the same drive twice now (2TB Hitachi Deskstar, 0F12117), both times it has crashed/became stuck in writing the zeros (second stage). The first time it got to 44%, this time 55%. I used screen to launch the script. If I do a ps I can see the script is still there... root 7161 7012 0 07:26 pts/1 00:00:05 /bin/bash ./preclear_disk.sh /dev/sdg but I don't think it's doing anything because this is what top shows... PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 3398 root 20 0 4112 2856 620 R 5 0.1 12:02.99 dd 3365 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 2 0.0 4:24.72 flush-8:96 437 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 2 0.0 6:38.60 kswapd0 6048 nobody 20 0 288m 85m 3520 S 0 2.2 1:14.43 python 1 root 20 0 828 308 264 S 0 0.0 0:02.56 init 2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd 3 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.13 ksoftirqd/0 Both time it has also taken down the unraid and unmenu interfaces with it and I'm not sure how to launch them again without a hard reset. My shares are also down but applications such as sabnzbd are still working. Is this a drive issue? We don't know... sounds like your system log and/or your add-on process used up all available memory, so the OS started killing thinks that were idle the longest. (the emhttp process, etc) Post your system log. If you can. You can re-start emhttp by logging in and typing nohup emhttp & Quote Link to comment
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