Tom,

 

When adding a new drive to an existing array the statement to a user is that all non-factory cleared drives will be cleared before the array is brought back online.  This fine, but the user has no way of knowing when a new drive is shown as "unformatted" that it is also "pre-cleared", and that an extended down-time will not occur when the array is started.

 

What do you think of showing the words "pre-cleared" instead of "unformatted" on the management display if the disk has a valid pre-clear signature?  It will make it much more obvious to the array owner that the down-time will be minimal, and it will make the message far more meaningful.  (might also change the words "factory-cleared" to "pre-cleared" so it encompasses drives you clear prior to their sale, and the ones they clear themselves.)

 

Joe L.

I second this, though I recognize the issue that doing as Joe suggest implies that LimeTech officially support preclearing drives, which technically it does not.  I would suggest that a precursor to this step should be a preclear function integrated into unRAID, which is of course far more complicated than just changing some verbiage on the webGUI.

I second this, though I recognize the issue that doing as Joe suggest implies that LimeTech officially support preclearing drives, which technically it does not.  I would suggest that a precursor to this step should be a preclear function integrated into unRAID, which is of course far more complicated than just changing some verbiage on the webGUI.

 

Actually I do think that LimeTech does officially support precleared drives. It just does not provide a tool that does the preclearing,  nor officially support Joe L.'s preclearing tool.

I second this, though I recognize the issue that doing as Joe suggest implies that LimeTech officially support preclearing drives, which technically it does not.  I would suggest that a precursor to this step should be a preclear function integrated into unRAID, which is of course far more complicated than just changing some verbiage on the webGUI.

 

Actually I do think that LimeTech does officially support precleared drives. It just does not provide a tool that does the preclearing,  nor officially support Joe L.'s preclearing tool.

Yes, Lime-tech does officially support precleared drives:

This on their product page on the lime-technology website http://lime-technology.com/products/hard-drives :

Hard Drives

One of the best qualities of an unRAID server is that you can easily add capacity over time, taking advantage of on-line hard disk sales and specials as they occur.

 

Why buy hard drives from Lime Technology?  Obviously we can not compete with daily on-line specials.  However, all our hard drives are tested and burned-in for a minimum of 48 hours. They are then pre-cleared - when plugged into your unRAID server, the software will skip the lengthy clearing step - you just plug into your server and the drive is immediately ready to be formatted.

I second this, though I recognize the issue that doing as Joe suggest implies that LimeTech officially support preclearing drives, which technically it does not.  I would suggest that a precursor to this step should be a preclear function integrated into unRAID, which is of course far more complicated than just changing some verbiage on the webGUI.

 

Actually I do think that LimeTech does officially support precleared drives. It just does not provide a tool that does the preclearing,  nor officially support Joe L.'s preclearing tool.

Yes, Lime-tech does officially support precleared drives, although we have no way of knowing if Tom simply writes zeros and a pre-clear signature, or goes through the same pre-read/write/post-read my preclear_disk.sh uses to detect and reallocate unreadable sectors:

This on their product page on the lime-technology website http://lime-technology.com/products/hard-drives :

Hard Drives

One of the best qualities of an unRAID server is that you can easily add capacity over time, taking advantage of on-line hard disk sales and specials as they occur.

 

Why buy hard drives from Lime Technology?  Obviously we can not compete with daily on-line specials.  However, all our hard drives are tested and burned-in for a minimum of 48 hours. They are then pre-cleared - when plugged into your unRAID server, the software will skip the lengthy clearing step - you just plug into your server and the drive is immediately ready to be formatted.