Formatting after drive replacment

[Slowrider8]

Hi, I am attempting to switch out a drive in my array with a different one. The old drive is totally empty, besides the 27.9GB of "file system stuff". I'm only replacing it because I want to make sure I don't to have matching HDDs running in my array in the future, there was no particular failures or anything on the old one however.

I followed the steps here: https://wiki.unraid.net/Replacing_a_Data_Drive and the parity rebuild has started, but there was no point where I was told to format the new drive. The array devices list now says "Unmountable. Unsupported partion layout" for the new disk, and the format optin has come up in array operations.

The parity rebuild has got past that first 27.9GB and is flying through the 0s now so it won't take too long but have I messed up by not formatting the new disk beforehand? Or once the rebuild is complete should the disk come back as mountable?

Also since the old disk was empty, would there be a problem with formatting the new disk now anyway? I assume it would just need to do a parity rebuild/check again?

 

I've also just discovered that were was a new update to do with formatting >2tb drives, and I'm still on 6.11.2. Could this be a related problem?

 

 

 

Edited November 10, 2022 by Slowrider8

[itimpi]

When you do a rebuild, then you end up with whatever was showing on the emulated drive before starting the rebuild.   In other words if it was unmountable at that point it will be unmountable after the rebuild.

 

if you want to format the drive to hold an empty file system then you can do this at any point.    Unraid will treat the format just like any other write operation and update parity accordingly.

 

one thing you did not mention is what release of Unraid you are running?   A bug crept into the 6.11.2 release that could cause incorrect partitioning of drives larger than 2TB.   This has been fixed for 6.11.3 release.

[Slowrider8]

2 minutes ago, itimpi said:

When you do a rebuild, then you end up with whatever was showing on the emulated drive before starting the rebuild.   In other words if it was unmountable at that point it will be unmountable after the rebuild.

 

if you want to format the drive to hold an empty file system then you can do this at any point.    Unraid will treat the format just like any other write operation and update parity accordingly.

 

one thing you did not mention is what release of Unraid you are running?   A bug crept into the 6.11.2 release that could cause incorrect partitioning of drives larger than 2TB.   This has been fixed for 6.11.3 release.

 

If by emulated drive you mean the previous one, then it was mountable before.

 

I just noticed the update after checking the forums and the update checker hadn't told me there was one available yet so I am still on 6.11.2. I guess this could well be the problem.

 

What's the best option from here? Cancel rebuild, update unraid and then just format the new drive and count myself lucky there wasn't any data on the old one?

 

[itimpi]

19 minutes ago, Slowrider8 said:

 

If by emulated drive you mean the previous one, then it was mountable before.

 

I just noticed the update after checking the forums and the update checker hadn't told me there was one available yet so I am still on 6.11.2. I guess this could well be the problem.

 

What's the best option from here? Cancel rebuild, update unraid and then just format the new drive and count myself lucky there wasn't any data on the old one?

 

Really up to you if you complete rebuild as the format wipes any contents anyway.

[JorgeB]

32 minutes ago, Slowrider8 said:

What's the best option from here? Cancel rebuild, update unraid and then just format the new drive and count myself lucky there wasn't any data on the old one?

If there's data you can rebuild the disk again after updating to v6.11.3 and you won't lose any data, if there isn't you can just format the disk since it's much faster.

[JorgeB]

Just now, JorgeB said:

if there isn't you can just format the disk since it's much faster.

This assuming the rebuild finished, if it didn't like the screenshot shows you still need to finish it.

[Slowrider8]

I stopped the rebuild, updated and restarted the server, then started the array and rebuild again and now the disk has been properly mounted, no formatting required. Thanks