Issues preclearing 14TB WD Red Plus USB external - failing preread

[dtbingle]

Just bought a WD Red Plus 14TB (WD140EFGX) that I intend to replace & upsize the parity drive with.  My normal process is to put the new drive in a USB3.0 external drive enclosure, plug into Unraid box, and preclear it before adding to the array.

 

However, the 14TB drive keeps hanging within the first 2-4% of the pre-read cycle and has I/O errors showing up in the syslog.  After a half dozen attempts, the preread process made it passed this 2-4% mark (13% and going strong), but had the same I/O errors listed in syslog.  So I/O errors still there, just this time the preclear process didn't get stuck and hang for eternity.

 

Are the consistent I/O errors during the first few % of pre-read indicative of a bad drive?

Something funky happening as a result of doing this process via USB external vs. SATA?

Related to software versions and preclear (Unraid 6.11.5, UD 2022.12.28, UD Preclear 2022.12.23)?

syslog.txt

[Vr2Io]

7 hours ago, dtbingle said:

Are the consistent I/O errors during the first few % of pre-read indicative of a bad drive?

Usually are bad drive, you should check the SMART. But Unraid usually can't read thr USB-SATA bridge, so best should put to Windows and check the SMART.

[dtbingle]

Thanks.  I'll let the preclear run its course, assuming it doesn't hang up, and then plug in drive to another PC via SATA and check SMART status.  Looks like a few more sectors popped up with I/O errors (16 sectors total now) and at 56% preread.

 

If SMART test passes, how would you interpret the I/O read errors at various sectors during this preread?

Additional, what else should I be looking for in the logs for additional issues (ie. power issue, connection issue, etc)?

 

Full diag logs attached, preread cycle at 57%.

tower-diagnostics-20221231-2338.zip

[JorgeB]

This looks more like a USB problem, not a disk problem.

[dtbingle]

7 hours ago, JorgeB said:

This looks more like a USB problem, not a disk problem.

 

Got it, thanks!

 

What in the log makes you suspect USB problem and not a disk problem?

For example, can those returned hex values be looked up and point towards a USB problem?

Or are you going off of experience where these types of errors show up, but disk preclears fine -> usually USB problem?

 

Last question, what would cause a 3TB drive to run with no errors, but 14TB is consistently throwing I/O errors around same % of the preread process?

[Vr2Io]

Dec 31 17:22:15 Tower kernel: sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] tag#0 UNKNOWN(0x2003) Result: hostbyte=0x00 driverbyte=DRIVER_OK cmd_age=12s

 

Diagnostic have 14TB disk SMART and indicate fine. According above message, it look like some timeout issue happen. Anyway if endup not use USB ( JMicron controller ), then suggest connect it there and preclear ( if you consider necessary ).

Edited January 1, 2023 by Vr2Io

[dtbingle]

As an update, preclear finished successfully this time around.

Installed into array as parity drive, rebuilt successfully and seems to be working fine.

SMART test also showed no errors.

 

As mentioned above, the errors were like due to some USB issue and not disk fault.