Wipe Hard Drive for RMA in the Array without affecting the parity drive??

[agent2]

Hey guys, 

 

I have an array with just two hard drives. Those two being Seagate Exos X16 SAS HDDs. The thing is that one of them has a nice red cross next to it and it says that it's contents are emulated. The parity drive is still keeping it going (thank goodness). But as that's the only drive in the server that's working, it's not safe for me to keep it running.

I have requested an RMA from Seagate which looks pretty straightforward, but here's the problem: I don't have an external SAS adapter to just remove the drive and wipe the contents (I need to wipe the drive before I send it in as there's A LOT of data on there), so I have to wipe it from within the server to get it ready for the RMA. I just don't know how to do it. I. have this script to wipe the HDDs, but it requires the whole HDD to be empty from the get-go, so any help to wipe a full HDD from within the array would be much appreciated. 

 

Cheers! 

[trurl]

Bad connections are more common than bad disks. 

 

Attach diagnostics to your NEXT post in this thread 

[agent2]

nas-diagnostics-20230327-1956.zip

[JorgeB]

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Health Status: DATA CHANNEL IMPENDING FAILURE DATA ERROR RATE TOO HIGH [asc=5d, ascq=32]

 

Yeah, that disk should be replaced, if you want to try and wipe it you can with the preclear plugin, first unassigned the disk, then start array, then you can use preclear on it.

[agent2]

OK I'll try that, I'll report back if it worked. 

[agent2]

13 hours ago, JorgeB said:

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Health Status: DATA CHANNEL IMPENDING FAILURE DATA ERROR RATE TOO HIGH [asc=5d, ascq=32]

 

Yeah, that disk should be replaced, if you want to try and wipe it you can with the preclear plugin, first unassigned the disk, then start array, then you can use preclear on it.

Hey, do you mean the pre-clear plugin or the docker app? I found two packages and am unsure which you mean...

[JorgeB]

Either, plugin should be easier to use.

[agent2]

Hey, so after unassigning the Hard drive and installing the UD preclear plug-in, I can't see the HDD show up when I go to launch pre-clear, any idea why? The array has been started without the data drive assigned...

[JorgeB]

Post a screenshot the main page.

[JorgeB]

Ahh, I believe you need to wipe the partition first, you can do that with the UD plugin.

[agent2]

[agent2]

Just now, JorgeB said:

Ahh, I believe you need to wipe the partition first, you can do that with the UD plugin.

How would I do that? I haven’t been able to find any reference to this in Unraid. 

[JorgeB]

In the UD settings enable destructive mode, you will then see a red x next to the disk to wipe it.

[agent2]

Yes I saw it now, I am wiping the disk now, looks like it's going to be way a very long time...

[apandey]

If you can successfully pre clear it without errors, I guess there is no need to RMA it then. That proves you can write to the whole disk ok 🤔

[Michael_P]

1 hour ago, apandey said:

I guess there is no need to RMA it then.

 

Aside from the SMART failure lol

[apandey]

1 minute ago, Michael_P said:

Aside from the SMART failure lol

Haha, yes. My point was pre clearing should not succeed in this situation. Keen to see the result

[Michael_P]

SMART fail is a drive fail - no point in ignoring SMART, that's its only job

[agent2]

Yeah the pre-read conked out, here's the log. 

preclear_disk_ZL27KHEZ0000C102J0F2_27209.txt

[JorgeB]

You should only do the clear, no point in running pre or post reads.

[agent2]

Oh OK, yeah I am redoing it without now...

[agent2]

So clearing the drive worked, but zeroing yielded errors. 

preclear_disk_ZL27KHEZ0000C102J0F2_17669.txt

[JorgeB]

Read errors are expected since the drive is failing, but it should now be clear of your data.

[agent2]

Awesome, thanks for all the help!! I'll reply if there are any further issues.