New 8TB Drive Not Preclearing - MBR signature failing to write properly

[caplet55]

I have an unraid system which has been largely trouble free for a long time but I needed to add a new drive as space was running low. I had 4 x WD RED 4TB drives installed and so I replaced the parity drive with an IronWolf 8tb and am looking to add another ironwolf 8tb to the array. Both ironwolf drives are brand new and although the parity drive is fine the second 8tb drive just will not preclear, clear or format. 

 

The 4tb drive I removed from parity also failed to preclear and in the end returned the "wrong magic number error" so I assumed it was a dead drive but now this drive will not clear either so I'm not sure if there is a problem with my system or the drive. 

 

I'm not that technical but like a lot of people using unraid I usually follow directions pretty well lol. 

 

If anyone has the time to take a look at the diagnostics I'd really appreciate someone who knows what to look for seeing if the issue if the system, the drive or ME.

 

Thanks in advance for any help.

tower-diagnostics-20220930-0928.zip

[DarthKegRaider]

Does it show any problems (bad sectors etc) in the "Attributes" tab within the disc in unRaid's "Main" window?

Do you have another machine to plug it into, so you can run some diagnostic tools over it?  Like the Seatools, or Spinrite?  A failed new drive is not unheard of, so it might be a dud.

 

I'm currently upgrading a failing 3TB IronWolf drive with an 8TB unit, still copying the parity.  I didn't do any pre-clearing though, just shut the machine down, yoinked out the failing unit and swapped it out.  Seems to have worked fine for me in the past

[JorgeB]

Disk looks OK, could be a preclear issue, just add it to the array and let Unraid clear it, you can also run an extended SMART test first if you want.

[caplet55]

Firstly, thanks both of you for your help. 

 

DarthKegRaider; No bad sectors shown, the disk looks fine to me. Unfortunately I only have macbooks so no PC that I can plug it into directly. I guess I could buy a caddy and there might be some OSX tools for seagate drives so I will check on that. 

 

JorgeB; I did start an extended test but I aborted it after 50% to try another preclear (I just got impatient and thought the drive was okay) - as you say the drive itself looks okay but there is something stopping it from writing a recognised unraid MBR. I updated to 6.11 this week and was hoping that it would solve the issue as I was on 6.9.x previously and figured the preclear script might have been updated but I get the same errors.

 

I will start a new extended test this afternoon and if that's okay then I will add it to the array without a preclear and come back with the results.

 

Thanks again for the suggestions - it's much appreciated

 

 

 

[caplet55]

Update. 

 

I started an extended test on the drive which finished with no errors.

I added the drive the array and it started a clear from within UNRAID.

The clear completed successfully which left me with an unmountable drive. I assume that it was a lack of FS that caused this problem so I used the format button below the  STOP button on the main page.

Unfortunately the drive has been rejected with a 'Unmountable: Unsupported partition layout' error. 

 

So a different error but still not accepting the drive into the array. I did spot that the drive FS was showing as Auto prior to me formatting it.

 

Not sure if you would need them but I've included the current diagnostics in case I screwed something up.

tower-diagnostics-20221002-1715.zip

[JorgeB]

51 minutes ago, caplet55 said:

The clear completed successfully which left me with an unmountable drive.

That's normal, you have to format the disk after it's cleared.

 

Disk failing to format is not normal, two of your SATA ports are set to IDE mode, that's a known problem with those AMD chipsets and that disk is using one of them, set them to AHCI/SATA and try again.

 

[caplet55]

Bloody hell! I had no idea, I'd never have found that tbh - thanks for the catch. I won't have a chance to change the ports until later today but as soon as I do and try and format the drive again I will let you know how I get on.  I suspect that it will come good though - fingers crossed and thanks again.

[caplet55]

So I found the setting in the BIOS for the 2 ports which were set to IDE - changed their setting and booted up the array. Clicked format with a fingers crossed and Boom! formatted drive set up in the array like there was never a problem in the first place. I'm over the moon and can't thank you enough for pointing me in the right direction. As I said before I just would never have spotted that setting as an issue but I will be able to pass on that advice now as a possible solution if anyone has anything similar happening to them. Thanks again.