Should I preclear drives I used in an old server?

[ks-man]

I'm getting started with a new unraid server.  I have two new HDD and one new SDD (cache) for the array which I already precleared.  I now want to add my old drives.  One is my old parity drive so there isn't any data on it that needs to be transferred so I can add it to the array now before moving over my existing data and media files.  

 

My old drives are between 3-8 years old and none have given me any trouble in the past.  Should I preclear these disks before adding them to the array or is that pointless since the drives have been working fine and all I need to do is add them to the array which will clear them and maintain parity?  Thanks.

[itimpi]

It is really up to you.   The only reason I could see to pre-clear them is to run a confidence check on them.   If you say that they have been working fine and as long as you check the SMART information for the drives to see if it all looks looks good then the preclear could be superfluous.