Is it possible to run Pre_clear from my win 7 PC?  Or do I have to connect a monitor and keyboard to my server?

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Oscar

Unless you have a slackware running in a vm on your Win7 and hardware passthrough of your SATA ports, no.

 

There's no need to connect a monitor and keyboard, though it can help with troubleshooting. Preclear works great from a telnet window. You do currently have to powerdown the server cleanly when adding and removing drives but that can be done from the web interface.

 

If you're going to use preclear across a telnet connection then you might want to install unMENU first, then the "screen" package, so you don't lose touch with a preclear session should you lose your telnet session. See http://www.lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=UnRAID_Add_Ons

The telnet client is disabled by default in Win7.  To enable it, go to Control Panel>Programs>Turn on and off Windows features then check the box next to 'Telnet Client' (not Telnet Server).  Click apply.  To use Telnet, open a command prompt session (just type 'cmd' in the Win7 search).  Once there, type 'telnet tower' (or whatever your server name is) or 'telnet 192.168.0.100' (or whatever your server's IP address is).  It will take a bit to process, then it should give you your server's login screen.  Default login is 'root' with no password.  First step is to type 'cd /boot' to get into the root directory of the flash drive (assuming that is where you've placed the preclear script).  Now type 'preclear_disk.sh -l' to see a list of all your drives available for preclearing.  Remember the drive letter of whichever drive you want to preclear (for example, SDA or SDB).  Finally, type 'preclear_disk.sh /dev/sdX' where X is the drive letter of the drive you want to preclear.  If you are not using screen, you must leave this telnet session open during the entire preclear process.

 

An alternative to the built in Win7 telnet client is PuTTY.

I would recommend you download PuTTy. It's much nicer to use than the build-in telnet client.

 

FYI, The only time I have hooked a monitor and keyboard to my server was to set-up the BIOS when I first built it. That was something like 3 years ago now.

 

Peter

thank you all for the info.  I will get it done this weekend.

 

O

Be aware that when you will powerdown your pc or just close the telnet session, the preclear will also stop.

Best way is to start a screen and do the job insde it. That way, closing the telnet session will not affect the preclear.

Install it via unmenu install package.